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The Arizona Trail is 800 miles, trans-state, with far fewer, other hikers than the Big 3 longer trails. A few, more or less full-time hikers do it as training for the Pacific Crest Trail since the AzT season ends about when the PCT season starts. A different suggestion: One guy hired and helped a we...

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Sequence risk does not suddenly appear. Those who monitor their annual WDs relative to their remaining portfolio balance will see it. I believe some of McClung's dense tables of 30 year retirement WDs show each remaining annual balance as a decimal amount of the starting balance.

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Allocating is merely the last step of bear market prep. Delay SS for more from a steady income source, and keep your necessary expenses low in spite of your soaring portfolio balance, since those steps reduce the need for future higher portfolio withdrawals. Expecting to spend from only your bond fu...

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As soon as future returns are known, we can then calculate what would have been the best allocation to have been in. Welcome to the risk portion of risk and reward. This seeking of the best or the optimal, is a form of greed. When we give it up and just accept something that is near enough to being ...

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When discussing what is the truly safe, safe withdrawal rate, folks are looking for certainty for every year of a specific future 30 year period. The bad news is there isn't any certainty, nor is there going to be any. The current information is as good as it needs to be. You can strive for more exa...

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Have you annuitized some of your money? I stayed 30 years at the blue collar job that had a no-COLA pension and a 401k. I annuitized 30 years of labor and sweat, working outdoors year 'round in Arizona, with no AC. Took the pension early but delayed SS until 70, when it will be near the pension's m...

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Power-stretch fleece has the highest insulation to weight ratio, and is the BH priced alternative to merino wool. I carry a full coverage layer (hooded top and watch cap, long johns, fleece socks and mittens) separately for dry clothing to sleep in, plus down booties and a thin breathable nylon runn...

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In retrospect, I invested in commodities because I was greedy. I wanted to keep having good portfolio returns without accepting as much risk. The immutable law of risk and return prevailed, and my portfolio value suffered from my owning commodities. There was significant loss due to foregone opportu...

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but to use something like the IRS SEPP 72(t) withdrawal methodology .........or divide balance by remaining life expectancy http://crr.bc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/IB_12-19-508.pdf The researchers used the annual RMD % numbers on the entire portfolio, including backing up to start at age 65. T...

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The problem is figuring out how much the future will resemble the past. What we can do: Expect to adapt in retirement. Delay SS to boost our steady income. Downsize our housing. Live in a lower COL area for retirement, if that suits your spouse. Track our annual spending vs. portfolio size so we ca...

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Patience is fullness. You do not have to learn how to do your entire tax return. You do need to learn where your current income fits into the tax brackets so you can see how much gain you can harvest without bumping into the next, higher tax bracket. The converting to other mutual funds will be done...

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Standard reply about foreign diversification: In the early 1990's, the America Abroad mutual fund bought only those S&P500 businesses that had more foreign revenues, trying to clone foreign exposure but with American accounting regulations. The returns were identical to the 500 index since all of th...

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Dollars suit me for the bond allocation. We have a decade or more of retirement spending in bond funds.

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a fall in us stocks leads to a fall in European stocks the next day My foreign stocks include European, and developed Asian, and Emerging Markets stocks. As mentioned, since foreign stocks have not kept up with the domestic market, that is diversification, just not the direction that we wanted. My ...

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In retirement and with only two years of 5 digit Roth conversions still available, I'm welcoming the next multi-year drop, before the eventual recovery. I apologize for being so self-centered.

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I would rather be half right, than all wrong about the future.

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There is a fine line between learning what doesn't work in investing and discerning what happened to just not work during the studied period, another type of recency bias. I'm not betting it all on one country, especially the one that has done the best. Where is the most growth expected in the futur...

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I know that I don't know, and I learned that the hard way.

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To justify the cost, consider taking the REI tour then returning on your own when you want a repeat visit.

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by Dottie57 » I know there will be a bear market ........ sometime. I have a good asset allocation for me. Ditto A decline will save me having to rebalance. (I need a emoticon for lazy.) Crashing is what stock markets do periodically . For perspective, if our entire life spans were 24-36 months lik...

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by workerbeeengineer MnD, you can try “Living Off Your Money” by Michael McClung. His “Prime Harvesting” strategy has been discussed here a lot. When reading McClung, keep in mind that his recommendations can be adopted individually, with each one being an incremental improvement over some past pra...

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Having each shelf tall enough for a specific size of clear plastic tote boxes is good, not necessarily the same size on every shelf. A tote without a lid is similar to a drawer, but it can be easily removed from the rack.

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Thank you for the update and for the explanation of the reduced payment. That's good info for others.

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I don't care which way my EM exposure moves. It is just another slice of my equities. There's always something that is up relative to the others. Striving for more return through allocating didn't work for me, but saving more worked well. Diligent saving plus steady long term investing will harvest ...

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OP, Just by being here at Bogleheads, you will do well in retirement. By retiring early, you already have about three decades of practice at living below your means in order to save for retirement. You will not blindly spend 4% plus inflation of your retirement day assets without ever comparing thos...

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My BIL uses Awesome cleaner from Dollar Tree on his newly acquired, hundred year old kerosene lanterns.

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Is the Trev H four fund portfolio complex, with twice as many equity funds as a 2 fund total domestic and total foreign portfolio? Trev H has factor exposure using funds with VG ERs. If simplicity is paramount, then a total world cap weighted fund is the best fund, but few are doing that, including ...

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I think you are just fine, since those percentages suit you. As usual, the most recent returns of other allocations will appear to be better than whatever you have chosen. My standard remark about trying to tailor your allocation to TSM: Trev H, a former prolific poster here, found a long term alloc...

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For a scenic drive, go past the Oracle area, past the giant copper mining pit, to Superior then turn right towards Miami & Globe. In Miami turn left off of the highway, towards the looming mining waste pile to see the old downtown buildings at the base of that pile. Maybe eat in Globe for authentic ...

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Your allocation is optimal for long term performance but your commitment to it will be tested when the stock market falls by a third or a half, erasing many, many years of your savings. What makes that allocation optimal is when the bond portion is sold to buy even more equity shares after stocks ha...

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That was a good article to keep on file to use on a slow day for financial news. Somewhat like a stopped clock being correct twice a day, someday gold will boom and bust again, with all of the attendant stress of correctly timing both events. Some one will famously get both right while most will mis...

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"Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections or trying to anticipate corrections than has been lost in corrections themselves." - Peter Lynch https://seekingalpha.com/article/3999897-losing-money-correction-even-starts-advice-peter-lynch August 2016 We are paid to tolerate l...

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Go ahead and try the new method. I will just stay with what has worked well enough during my period of exposure to stock returns. Early on, I was seeking more returns and was less successful than just buy & hold with some rebalancing. Good luck to you on finding what is better than the plain old way.

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What do folks use for long-term forecasting of their personal finances? Living within our means, expecting to adapt our spending to our resources, starting with 25 multiples of spending for retirement without SS (treating it as a bonus instead of a necessity). We are wary of any precision in long t...

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Can't wait to see what Vanguard customers eat for breakfast and pics of their dogs sleeping on the couch.

And the converse.

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Regrets: Thinking that there was an optimal way to profit from the stock market, and that I just needed to find it (singular). See how the greed leads you astray to more risk than fully adequate, index investing. Pearls: Saving pay raises (including cost-of-living increases) worked very well. Celebr...

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Looking for certainty in investing, sure doesn't work. Now I'm wondering if that applies everywhere in life.

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Most of the 50 previous responses had a snippet or more that describe my preference for retirement over the alternatives at either end of it.

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Consider selling and moving to a cheaper area with golfing. The carrying costs of the nice house are going to wear thin on a tight budget. My small town in the foothills of the higher, (cooler) part of Arizona, has many retirees, who left California for economic reasons after the year 2000 stock mar...

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Portfolios of almost all stocks with a sliver of bond fund holdings, will outperform an all stock portfolio due to rebalancing the bonds into stocks after a stock crash, thus buying even more stocks at their recently reduced prices. The ratio was either 93/7 or 87/13, rounded to 90/10 back in the da...

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Early retirement and ultralight backpacking gear, as mentioned by others.

Dyneema / Cuben Fiber ultralight camping gear.

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1) If she outlives me, a later SS start is better for us. 2) So far, delayed gratification has helped me to retire at 55, into the best years of my life. I'm going to try waiting until 70, because I can. Others are welcome to do whatever suits them. There is not a wrong answer, as much as less optim...

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Schiller has noted that those who had good returns in the accumulation years, should expect lower returns in the decumulation years. That level of forecasting accuracy is adequate for me. McClung, writing in 2015, wrapped his 30 year data beyond 1985 by adding in 1926 and its following years' data. ...

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About those 2% who do wait until 70 to start SS: Morgan Housel wrote that most people are not good at saving, therefore you have to act differently than most, to be a saver. That describes we Bogleheads quite well. I took my no-COLA pension (with its risky longevity) at age 55, spending 2-3% of the ...

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OP, sounds like you want more income from your current portfolio. Real estate is due for another crash, since its growth from the previous crash. My opinion is to work on adjusting your expenses to your projected retirement income instead of trying to garner more from your current assets. Can you fi...

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More money is good, but striving for perfection drives both innovation and dissatisfaction.

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Like much of the rest of life, there is not just one best answer for all, due to so many variables. This thread is the first one where I've noticed multiple market returns being considered in the waiting period. Most just assume one average number. For the polling, I'm delaying to 70 (high earner), ...

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Married Filing Jointly (MFJ), & one of us is age 65+ (68 & 59) taxable dividends and interest (D & I) have been over 7600 and under 7900 for the last three years, rounded to 8000 for this calculation no COLA pension is 40,800 and no SS until the month when I turn 70 in 2020 the 12% bracket for MFJ i...

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As mentioned by MotoTrojan, VG's Small Value fund is half mid-sized including its mid-blend. Take a look at it in Morningstar instant x-ray. The fund could be used if you boosted the % amount of it in your allocation, so it is not bad, just not exactly what its name suggests.

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Are you aware of Trev H's 4 fund, value tilted , all Vanguard (VG) portfolio, as a substitute for Merriman's 10 fund, other slice and dice portfolio? It consists of four equal slices of domestic LG and SCV plus foreign LV (actively managed VTRIX) and foreign Small blend. https://www.bogleheads.org/f...

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