Some Of The Ways I Prepped For Retirement

 

For each of us, there are different things we find important.  For me, it is to easily and simply meet my most basic needs – food, water, shelter, clothing and warmth.  Everything else is secondary.  I’ve been seriously working toward early retirement for a while now.  At the age of 55 I had a dollar amount in mind and a plan.  Since then, I’ve been doing everything I can to get myself ready. 

 

The first thing I did was to get rid of any debt I had and at the same time save as much cash as possible.   Even though I had a 0% interest car loan I paid it off.  I paid off any little bills that were hanging around and a big medical bill that I’d been working on from previous years.  Also, I began to earmark a certain dollar amount to go into our emergency fund which I had already decided needed to be much larger than it was.  Along with that I began funding a HSA account through my employer.  I wanted to make sure that giant medical bills are a thing of the past.  Thank the Lord, I am still debt free!

 

Once my emergency funds were covered (and last year they were tested), which just happened to coincide with eliminating all of my debt, I became a serious super saver.  Every bit of extra cash I could get my mitts on ended up in my savings account.  Etsy sales, bonuses, tax refunds, stimulus payments, leftover cash at the end of the month, etc.  You name it, I saved it.

 

While saving I also began stockpiling food, household items, first aid and pet supplies that I would need to have on hand when I first retired.  Then I began to work on certain clothing items.  Shoes, socks, undergarments and a new winter coat were top priority.  To fund these purchases I worked a lot of overtime and used that extra money each payday to buy whatever I needed.

 

My overall goal was simply to cover my basic needs as best as I could and free up the need to make these purchases once my paychecks stopped.  In the process I’ve managed to set up my home so my monthly expenses are quite low and very manageable.  Now that I’ve done all of this work ahead of time I feel quite comfortable retiring early.  I am prepped and ready!