Getting started on the final countdown

Days to retirement: 2941 (May 1, 2019)

Just had a birthday and I'm now less than a decade away from retirement.  How much do I hav e saved? How much will I get from CPP/OAS?  How much is my penision going to pay?  How will I make up the difference?

Questions that need to be answered and some sort of plan put in place to be able to live comforatably and not have to sell off the house to live.

The first step is going to be to determine how much I'm going to need in monthly income (net) to live and how much of a shortfall there is between what I will get under CPP/OAS and my very fortunate company pension plan.  That comes to $1976 a month combined after taxes (figuring the 24% bracket).

My current take-home salary (after deductions for ESOP, donations and self-paid benefits like health/life insurance) is about $3800.

The fortunate part is that $800 biweekly goes to mortgage payments.  Figure that additional expenses will eat at least one of those, so toss that into the calculator.....

Still works out to a shortfall of $2000 a month before taxes, and not figuring in a claw-back on CPP and OAS.

Current savings is not great, which is where the rubber hits the road.

Time to sit back and work out a budget and crunch numbers, or blow the whole wad on the lottery in the hope of winning a multi-million prize. Based on the odds, monekys are more likely to fly out of my bum than for me to win the lottery.

Which is where this blog will cover: my investigation of my finances and if there is a shortfall in what I've saved, and how I'm going to cover it (second job, post-retirement cutbacks.....)