Well, I wrote what I thought was a nice blog entry on my investing and retirement goals but it did not save/post so I will try again. 

In this post, I will discuss our various retirement accounts and our investing strategies (hopefully it does not bore people!)😁 Again, we both will be retiring in 5-7 years which will put us at ages 57-60. What are our retirement goals? Well we are trying to figure that out. It will include some travel, some volunteer work, and some paid income (to have interactions with people and some sort of schedule). What will it take to be comfortable in retirement? For us we are still figuring that out, although we do know it is more than we have now, especially as we started late!

Retirement Accounts:

State Pension - Her should be about 40K

457 - Her currently 130K (managed by vendor) currently adding 500/check 

State Pension - Me should be about 30K (would be more but I will not have 30 years and not be 62 at retirement so there are some penalties)

403b - Me currently 140K (managed by vendor) currently adding 500/check

Roth - Me currently 12K (Vanguard Target Date Fund) will be adding until retirement

Acorns Roundup - Both 1K Just a just another way to save some money. I am on the legacy fee structure so cost is minimal. I like it as we buy stuff that we normally would it is just rounded up and added to an ETF. Basically set it and forget it! Just a simple way to save some dollars for later use.

Robihood Brokerage account - Both 19K We started this in Nov 2021 to build a dividend based account to have another stream of income in retirement. As of now, all dividends are put back into the stocks they come from. I do have a couple of non dividend payers in the mix but other wise it has been a good use of our dollars. 

Robinhood notes: I know Robinhood gets a bad rap based on the meme stocks, day trading, etc.. But I will say I like the ease of use and the fact that I am not a day trading, it works well for me.

Dividend goals:

1) Get dividents to 100/quarter (Q1 of 2022 105.67)

2) get dividends to 100/month average

3) get dividends to 500/ quarter

4) get dividends to 500/month

5) get dividends to 10K/year (lofty goal considering our timeline but it is a goal none the less!)

I think that about sums up stuff for today. Will blog again soon

Hey everyone, this is my first attempt at blogging and hoping to use it as a way to keep me more motivated on my finacial journey towards retirement.

A little background info:

Currently 52 married to my wife for 30 years! One son who is 29 and married. I have been a teacher now for 18 years 3 years as a substitute and now 15 at my current school. Looking to hit the 20 year mark at my current school to lock in the healh insurance for retirment.

Prior to going back to school at 29 for education, I worked a lot of low paying dead end jobs (retail counter, wharehouse, construction laborer, retail management) Then my big break came when I started my own business which I ran for 6 years before I gave up and went back to college to pursue my degree in teaching high school social studies (BS) and high school special education(MS). After starting my teaching career I stated to make head way on our debt at the same time my wife was able to get a county gov't job (which she is now the director of her department) So the first 5 years of our professional careers we spent paying down debt and started our retirment accounts (she a 457 and me a 403b, both being gov't employees we also have a pension plan as well) we both started with 25/ paycheck (have to start somewhere) while paying down our debt (CC's, studnet loans, personal loans, business loans, etc...) Anyway, we made really good headway and as each was paid off we increased our contributions to current level 500/paycheck (for each of us) to these accounts in addition to other savings accounts accounts (which I am sure I will delve into in a future post). 

Retirement accounts as of now:

Pension-Her

457-Her

Pension-Me

403B-Me

Roth - Me

Brokerage-Both (just started end of last year - self managed)

E-Fund-Both

Credit Union Savings-Both

Current Debts as of now:

House- owe about 40K

Vehicles - 2 cars, when it comes to cars we each get a new car about every 10 years as needed. We stager the payments so we don't have 2 car payments at a time (my wife's car is a 2015 Forester, paid) My car is a 2020 Corolla hybrid (3 years left to pay at 0% int). We are not fancy car people just looking for good solid cars that get the job done. We only will buy when interest in .9% or less, no reason for us to finance at a greater rate!

Anyway, I think that will wrap up things for now