Well, it’s Jan 20, 2007 and I’ve just done another of my semi-annual financial checkpoints. The year 2006 was a very good one for the stock market, and although I usually do these reviews in February and August, I bumped it up a few weeks so my calculations could take advantage of the current record-highs in the market indexes. It is always a pleasure to do a financial review when the markets have been doing well, and always a chore when they haven’t ;-)

A couple of significant milestones were hit this time. I don’t like to publicly post too much personal information, but let’s just say that our Net Worth has now hit a nice round figure that even 5-years ago I had listed as my “Retire At” financial target. And I’m only 53.

Of course, now that we have hit this target, it seems more like a “theoretically possible” figure, and I’m not ready to run into work and give my notice this week. In addition to the basic Net Worth calculations, I also updated my Retirement Amortization tables, which I haven’t looked at closely for a year. Not only have I have worked out future “anticipated savings and investment growth” on a quarterly basis, I have also projected a quarter-by-quarter post-retirement income target and investment draw-down schedule. Again, partly due to deliberately conservative assumptions, and partly due to the well-behaved stock market, these figures were much sweeter this time than they were even 1 year ago. It now looks to me as if retirement in 4-years, at age 57, should be (dare I say it?) “easy”.

I also notice a significant change in mind-set this time too. In the past when doing these financial checks I would fall into a manic-depressive cycle. I would alternately give in to wild daydreams of care-free leisure and wealth, or a depression over what seemed like an endless drudge of salary-slaving into the dim and distant future. This time, and for the first time, retirement in 4-years feels “real” to me. The 4-years do not seem that far away, the financial numbers I have come up with look quite comfortable and it won’t take improbable assumptions to get there.

On the other hand, as it starts to become “real” to me, the image of retirement also, and oddly, becomes more scary than euphoric. This trepidation isn’t there because we can’t afford retirement financially, but because this step seems so final. Once we do this thing, there will be no turning back from it. This is the biggest gamble of our lives and once that step is taken we have cast our fate to the wind and Que Sera, Sera. Well, I’ve still got 4-years to psych myself up for it, and I guess no one is forcing me to quit work. Still, it is very odd to feel this way about what has been my one consuming dream for the last 15-years.