A retiree who stopped working at 54 to live on $24,000 a year says doing the math to plan for retirement isn't enough

Courtesy of Bill Davidson

Bill and Rose Davidson in Sedona, Arizona.

• Bill Davidson retired at 54, and found that that planning for retirement takes much more than just crunching the numbers - you have to think about how you want to live.
• By considering what they'd like to do in retirement, Davidson and his wife were able to plan ahead and arrange their $24,000-a-year budget to create the travel-heavy lifestyle they wanted. 
• Business Insider is looking for retirement stories to feature in our Real Retirement series. If you're in or nearing retirement and want to share, email yourmoney@businessinsider.com.
• Read more personal finance coverage.

From figuring out how long your money will last to deciding how you'll cover things like healthcare, there are a lot of numbers to run when planning for retirement. But one retiree says many people who are planning for retirement are overlooking a big piece: how they'd like to live their lives once they're there.

Before retiring from his job in marketing in Oregon, Bill Davidson, 60, put a lot of thought into what he wanted out of retirement in addition to how he'd fund it. "Retirement planning should be much more holistic than just the dollars," Davidson says. "Many of the headlines are all about, 'You need $2 million to retire.'  It's all about the dollars," he says.

But how you'll spend that money, he's found, is just as important. "The dollars are important because they enable lots of things," he says. 

He started thinking about retirement decades early

One of the most important things, in his opinion, is to start planning when you'd like to retire and set that goal early. "When I was in my 30s, I wrote several goals. One of them was to retire at age 55," he says. 

He was able to meet that goal, and retired early at age 54. He and his wife, Rose, knew that they wanted to travel. Even on a limited budget of about $24,000 a year, part of their retirement planning was arranging their money to make that happen. 

They travel about a third of the year, and spend the rest of the year at their new home in New Mexico where they're involved in lots of community service together and hobbies separately. "We like to volunteer, and we do that a lot," Davidson says. "We love the performing arts, so instead of spending a few hundred dollars a year on annual tickets, we volunteer."

"We both have hobbies. I enjoy family history," he continues. "Travel is a big thing that takes us away from some of those, but often, it takes us closer to family."

As many other retirees have echoed in their own stories for Business Insider's Real Retirement series, it's important to have hobbies and things that you love to do in retirement, both with and separate from your partner. 

Bill Brown, 67, of South Carolina said he was surprised by how much time he spent with his partner, after years of having their own lives and careers. Retiree David Fisher, who lives alone in upstate New York, said keeping up your lifestyle in retirement and finding things you enjoy outside of the house are important factors for a happy retirement.

Figure out where you should live to afford the lifestyle you want

The Davidsons knew they wouldn't be able to retire they way they'd like to if they stayed near Portland, Oregon, where they'd lived for 15 years and raised their children. They ultimately made the decision to sell their home and move to New Mexico, where they could find lower living costs. 

There, they were able to direct some of the money they would have spent on basic living expenses to things like travel. Since retiring, they've visited China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Thailand, England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Turkey, Israel, New Zealand, Australia, and places across the US. "You can't do that" living in Portland, Davidson says. Their decision to move inland allowed them to maximize their limited budget while still living the lifestyle they wanted. 

When it comes to retirement planning, it's as much about the lifestyle you want as it is the money you'll need.

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