My partner and I did several things different than our friends and co-workers and because of that we have considerably more than $995 saved for our impending retirement. First we live below our means and put money to the point of pain into our 401K and 403B. What that looked like is we drove older cars, didn't go on expensive vacations, we have reasonable pet options (one cat and one dog) and we rarely eat out. Second, no matter what happened to our employment situation, we didn't view unemployment as an unexpected vacation, got right back to it. Never collected workman's comp even though we had 3 instances where we would have collected. Worked jobs we didn't like just for the health insurance and avoided recreational drugs and alcohol. Third, we put off retirement which is planned for age 70 (2 years from now) to increase our SS and more important we put that time to our advantage, saving and investing at a high percentage of our income. I don't know why I have to defend my decision to work past 62 to age 70 to my friends who retired at 62 with little or nothing saved and a small SS benefit and constantly complaining about the cost of living. Fourth, we avoid debt and save for big ticket items. Paid off our mortgage early, did not buy the most expensive place we qualified for. Fifth and most important, we always maintained a detailed written budget and have sinking funds for emergencies and planned maintenance.
We are in a good place, but we are not high earners. We are rather disciplined. Taught ourselves that discipline, We actually set a plan out and worked to meet our goals over years. We got off to a bad financial start and accumulated a lot of debt. Finally the day came when we realized we are headed off the cliff and did a financial 180. Very very difficult, exhausting and humbling. We have since avoided putting ourselves into situations that could cost us time and money. True, there is an element of luck here but we do our best to eliminate "bad luck" situations.
We always do for ourselves as much as possible instead of paying someone to do it for us. I literally just came in after spending 5 hours outside taking parts off an old snowblower that was gifted to me and put them on my broken machine as we are expecting a blizzard tonight. I am not a mechanic, far from it, but I didn't want to pay someone to clear our snow as we did on the last storm and my snowblower blew up right in the middle of the digging out. When something is broken we figure it out and as such it is rare for us to pay a plumber, electrician or auto mechanic for repairs. We never pay to have the oil changed in our car although it is a pain in the rear last weekend we toughed it out in the cold and ice, the week before that we drained the water out of our baseboard heating system and replaced a stuck eight dollar purge valve that was leaking all over the floor, probably would have been 4 or 5 hundred dollars for an emergency plumber service call. Again we are not mechanics but we figure it out.
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