Posts in category "post-retirement" - page 18
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One Year Into Retirement
It is now exactly one year since I retired on June 29, 2018. Incidentally, this also happens to be my 50th post on this blog! It was a fun journey so far. While I cannot say if this will continue into the future, there are some exciting times ahead. Everything is going almost exactly the way I planned. Still, since I haven't yet gone through a bad market cycle, I don't yet know if my financial planning will stand the test of time. One thing I realized is that no matter how much free time you create, it will get filled with something and you always feel like you are busy (at least that is how it is for me). I did not have a single boring day in the past year in retirement. Most days are uneventful, so it is not like there is something crazy happening everyday. Yet, I haven't felt like there is any free time. So what happened in this one year in retirement?
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Updating OS in Google Compute Engine
A few days ago, I decided to update my Google Compute Engine instance which was running an older Debian version. This was the same instance that is hosting this WordPress blog, so I had to be careful not to break anything lest I lose all the data and/or the service can be down. This post is a recount of my journey through the update process because I found some interesting things about Google Compute Engine (GCE) and how things can break if you are not careful and how things can go very smoothly if you plan properly.
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Renewing Passport in Bangalore
Just wanted to do a quick post on my experience renewing passport in Bangalore. May be this will help someone. So the story goes like this -- my passport is about to expire in 10 months and my daughter's is expiring in 4 months. We thought it might be a good time to start the renewal process not knowing how long it will take to renew. While my passport renewal could wait, I wanted to finish it along with my daughter in one go, instead of wasting time again for my passport renewal. Created a couple of accounts (one for myself and one for my daughter) on passportindia.gov.in.
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How to Change Scooter Battery
Recently, the trusted battery in my scooter finally died. We own a Hero Honda Pleasure and its battery has never been replaced since we purchased it in 2011. That is a full 8 years of service, which is quite amazing for a scooter battery. Anyway, we decided to replace it. Now, I have replaced car batteries a couple of times so far, but this would be the first time replacing a scooter battery. However, the instructions in the scooter manual for replacing the battery were surprisingly simple. So I thought there should be a post about it, because ... why not?
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Main Door Project
A while ago, our home's main door has been giving us a few problems. It has been about 8 years since we moved into our newly constructed house and seems like the maintenance work is now starting to creep up. The first sign of problems started when the door was sagging down at the hinges due to it's own weight. Being the front door of the house, it is quite heavy, and the clearance between the door frame and the door was very small to start with. As the cycles of the weather took their toll on the door, it slowly inched its way down until it started rubbing against the wooden frame at the bottom, and eventually getting stuck there when the door was closed.
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The Nun-Chucks Project
So far in this blog, I have been posting articles with advice and tips about finance and how to retire early. But when I started the blog, I did not intend to keep it strictly about retirement or finance. I just wanted to post my journey to retirement and retirement activities. My posts have been about financial planning, tips and advice, mostly upon requests from friends and colleagues. This post, and probably a few more upcoming posts will be a deviation from that style :D , since I want to write something about post retirement activities. You may skip this one if you are here just for some financial advice.
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Financial Support for Your Parents
You are currently working and deriving a salary. It is easy to support your parents with the salary. But how about when you retire? Hopefully, you have included supporting your parents as part of your expenses when calculating how much do you need to retire. Alternatively, they have enough corpus or other income that will let them support themselves and live independently. In my case, it was a mix of both and I thought I should explain how I am handling it. May be it will help you get some clarity on how you want to go about it.
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Bored In Retirement. Not.
When I announced my early retirement, some well wishers asked me if I would get bored with so much time on my hands at such productive age. When I told them that I will be working on some fun projects, which should keep me busy, they still wondered if I would feel bored after 6 or 9 months. Some call or email me every few months to see how I am doing. My relatives ask my parents if I am getting bored. It is now almost 9 months since I retired and yet my To-Do list keeps on growing and there is no scope for boredom. But it is fun that way because I am working on the things that keeps me interested and excited to jump out of the bed every morning to tackle them.
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My Annual Expenses Explained
In my last post, I went over my monthly expenses. In this post I will go over my annual expenses so you too can plan your annual expenses along those lines. For the year 2018, I budgeted an annual expense of Rs. 3,60,000. That comes out to Rs. 30,000 per month. Annual expenses are those expenses that occur less frequently than a year. So things like property tax, buying a car, painting your house etc will come under annual expenses. My annual expenses planning is shown below.
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My Monthly Expenses Explained
In one of my previous posts, I briefly mentioned that I planned my monthly expenses to be around Rs. 50,000 per month. In this post, I want to explain a bit more on how I arrived at those numbers. May be it will help you figure out your own expenses in your retirement.
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