For background pertinent to today’s post, please refer to the following Never Retire newsletter posts from April:
My girlfriend and I spend a fair bit of time strategizing our future, in terms of where we’ll live, our cost of living now and in the future, and how we’ll generate cash flow into relative old age.
Thankfully, we also spent an equal amount of time—if not more—enjoying the life we have now under rent control in Los Angeles, as two people who will likely Never fully Retire.
Also thankfully, we both have creative interests and pursuits that can double as work. Given our current low cost of living and plans to lower it even more going forward, that work only needs to produce relatively modest income.
However, all we truly know is the big picture (see the link at the top of this post). Specifically where we want to live, what we can/want to spend, and roughly when we’re striving to make it happen.
Within this larger plan, there’s a process. You must respect the process. Something I, admittedly, can have a difficult time doing.
It’s part of the reason why I enjoy writing this newsletter so much. It helps me keep my eye on the ball. On the bigger picture while we brainstorm and sort out details.
To illustrate the fact that no two Never Retire strategies will look alike, all you have to do is look at potential variations we could imagine in our situation.
We’re moving to Europe. Probably Spain. Maybe Italy. It’s decided. Within this anticipated certainty, there’s variation in terms of plans. We’ll get to that another day.
However, let’s say one day we woke up and said, we want to stay in the United States, however we want to own a home here.
No way we could do it in Los Angeles. No way we could do it in any place we’d actually like to live on the West Coast.
So—
I would suggest Buffalo, New York. A stone’s throw away from where I was born and grew up.
In Buffalo, my #1 neighborhood choice would be Elmwood Village.
However, with the typical home going for well north of $500,000, we could not afford to pay cash there. A key component of our Never Retire plan is eliminating our housing payment when or shortly after we make our move.
However, the latest data just came in on the up-and-coming neighborhood adjacent to Elmwood Village—
We could do there what we plan to do in Europe in the next few years.
We intend to spend a majority of the nest egg we amass to pay cash for a place to live. It’s because we don’t want the stress of a huge obligated expense each month.
We’ll use cash flow from work to cover the rest. We’ll keep building on surplus savings to cover our cost of living if/when we choose not to work or experience reduced income.
You could flip this plan in the other direction.
Stay in Los Angeles. Stay under rent control.
Buy a multi-unit property in Buffalo’s Grant-Ferry neighborhood and rent it out.
For example—
We could purchase this property for cash.
We could rent the two three-bedroom, one-bath units for about $1,400 each. So that’s about $2,800 in cash flow each month.
Even when factoring in maintenance costs and such, we’d have more than enough money to cover our low rent in Los Angeles and a lion’s share of our remaining cost of living. Our other cash flow from work would take care of the rest of our expenses as well as savings, travel, and, who knows, maybe another income property.
Outside of having no housing payment, getting yourself into a super favorable rental property situation as a landlord could seal the deal on your Never Retire strategy. Combine the two—no housing payment alongside rental income—and you’ve really got something going.
And I’m just riffing on one example because it’s an area I’m super familiar with. You could certainly come up with countless other broad strategies and specific options to execute them.
My goal—to get your wheels turning.
Once you shake the internal and external stigma associated with the reality that you’ll Never Retire, you realize this seemingly uncertain path opens more options and more certainty than drawing down a traditional retirement nest egg while you play golf ever could.
What a great “leg up” strategy. Completely do-able and excellent food for thought.
Love how you recommend rethinking retirement plans from different perspectives. So many ways to slice and dice this ….thinking outside the box.