Submitted by BakeSoggy t3_yheuvs in personalfinance
TL;DR I started saving late for retirement. I currently have $550k saved. I'm starting to have mental and physical health challenges. I would like to start traveling more, but to do that I would need to cut my savings rate. I'm wondering if what I have will be enough.
I'm a 51 year old professional services consultant working remotely for a software company and I earn a little over $150k per year. My spouse doesn't work except for the occasional temporary job. I didn't start putting money in my 401k until my early 30s. My spouse and I currently have around $550k in retirement savings across all our accounts, plus another $200k in home equity. We were flirting with $1 million net worth before the stock market started dropping in February. I've been maxing out my 401k and IRA contributions for 5 years and last year I was able to take advantage of the catch-up provisions for the first time. This year, I'm on track to save roughly $45k using a combination of Roth IRAs, 401k and mega-backdoor Roth.
I'm really anxious about whether we've saved enough to this point. Fidelity and others say that I should have saved over 1 million by now. OTOH, the average American only has roughly $100k saved for retirement. My spouse and I have estimated our current expenses at about $60k per year, including the mortgage. Our cars are paid for and the only debt we have is around $8k in student loans. We can get rid of things like streaming services and gym memberships to save money if we had to.
My question is this: I've got a very stressful customer-facing job. This year was the first time we've really done much vacationing. We had to postpone a couple of big trips due to COVID. But we weren't traveling much before COVID either due to my crazy work schedule. Our youngest just left for college. My company just announced a major restructuring. There has already been one round of layoffs. There'll likely be a second round after the current quarter ends on Monday, and there's a good chance I could be cut. I'm starting to suffer both physical and mental health issues due to both age and the stressful nature of my job.
My spouse has some relatives who belong to a vacation club and basically live in resorts in the Caribbean for much of the year. My spouse would like us to sign up as well. To do that, I would need to cut our retirement savings rate in half at least.
I know it basically sounds like I'm asking for permission in this post. My parents will leave me and my sister $500k each when they pass on in a few years. For a long time, I had envisioned doing something similar with my children, perhaps even adding to what my parents did to create multi-generational wealth in our family. But my physical and mental health challenges are getting to the point where I'm wondering if it's time to ease off the gas and start relaxing. If you check my profile, you could easily figure out what some of those challenges are.
I hope to get a range of responses to this post. Make them as direct, honest and brutal as possible. Thanks in advance!
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ETA: several responders assumed that I'm looking to quit my job. I'm not. I'm 100% remote and I plan to take my laptop with me most of the time. My only question here is whether I should keep saving so aggressively or whether I can afford to slow it down and maybe save $20k per year towards retirement rather than $45k.
[deleted] t1_iudm4kc wrote
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