Bogleheads.org

Mel, thanks for all your and all of the Bogleheads continued education of the Bogle principles. It's much appreciated.

LadyGeek wrote: ↑Tue Nov 09, 2021 12:25 pm The thanks are much appreciated.

Amazing job. An amazing resource. My gratitude is immense.

Should be fun. Thanks, Rick.

Glad you are excited. My only advice to people pursuing FIRE is to stop and smell the roses along the way.

On a positive note, starting retirement with 25 multiples of your current spending (reciprocal of 4%), is a pretty good amount of savings for the next 30 years of spending. The 4% SWR (Safe Withdrawal Rate) method is flawed by its ongoing withdrawals (WDs) with no adapting to any of the changes in your portfolio value during retirement. Yes, that has the illusion of certainty due to its inflation increases. Do you really expect to precisely spend the same real (inflation adjusted) amount, every year for the rest of your life? Why would you not try to reduce spending after a severe market crash, or boost spending if the first decade of retirement had very good returns? SWR failed when high inflation occurred early in 30 year retirements tha...

I always assume a 50% drop is just around the corner. I am not sure what my capitulation point would be, I was never tempted during accumulation and hope my 3.5% or so with adjustments will work fine with my allocation. 50% has been mentioned a couple of times in this thread, and it's mentioned frequently on these boards. The trouble I have with 50% is that that market has doubled in just 5 years . So you can go back 5 years and find people also using the 50% figure as a kind of "max drawdown." Doesn't seem realistic to me now, given the rapid runup. A 50 percent equity drawdown would merely wipe out 5 years of gains. So I envision much deeper than 50 percent. I'm not predicting, just explaining. Yup, 50% is just a rule of thumb,...

I always assume a 50% drop is just around the corner. I am not sure what my capitulation point would be, I was never tempted during accumulation and hope my 3.5% or so with adjustments will work fine with my allocation.

Nice work. Greatly appreciated.

I am doing something similar. Mainly about leaving on my own terms. It's a work in progress...

Can you take a sabbatical? Yes, as long as you want might be a better question to ask.

All of the scolding you'll hear with an open question like that doesn't amount to much. You've got the capability to make a lot of money but that can now be a secondary concern.

Well done!

"Won the game" means you have enough money that you can pay for every single one of your children and grandchildren having special needs care for their entire life. If you can't do that then you clearly haven't won yet. I suppose there are probably some grandparents out there who wouldn't compromise on their retirement if it meant having to pay for a severely autistic grandchild after the money was put into a persistent vegetative state after a car crash. But all the real world people I know would have no hesitation about spending themselves into bankruptcy if they found themselves in a situation like that. I doubt 100x is enough for that. People who think 30x is enough to insulate from everything that could possibly go wrong in ...

"Won the game" means you have enough money that you can pay for every single one of your children and grandchildren having special needs care for their entire life. If you can't do that then you clearly haven't won yet. I suppose there are probably some grandparents out there who wouldn't compromise on their retirement if it meant having to pay for a severely autistic grandchild after the money was put into a persistent vegetative state after a car crash. But all the real world people I know would have no hesitation about spending themselves into bankruptcy if they found themselves in a situation like that. I doubt 100x is enough for that. People who think 30x is enough to insulate from everything that could possibly go wrong in ...

Dude2 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 21, 2021 9:08 am I never understood FIRE, and am in the camp of those that keep earning while it is still possible to do so.

Gets tricky the last few years. The balance between time on earth and the likelihood of funding your heirs lifestyle is something I have struggled with.

Regret minimization on a sliding scale. A lot of people will have 100% equity out of habit and take a loss that's difficult to recover without it having much effect on their lifestyle. It's a challenging time to decide how much to de-risk. Bogleheads tend to carry things too far in my opinion but at the same time if it provides some existential comfort who am I to judge?

You could do much worse. He's an interesting guy with a reasonable message. There is just not that much to say about sound investing and when you are a public figure you say the same things over and over.

Bill Bernstein is the most interesting investment adjacent guy I know, I listen to every interview he does and I do it even though I know all of the anecdotes he'll use because I know there will be a good tidbit in there.

I expect lower returns because it is the single best time to be a passive investor. Amazing low fees for amazingly diversified products at a button click.

That's my plan. I'm at 25x annual spending without accounting for Social Security. I'm going to do a couple of projects a year and manage some passive projects. I struggled with letting go at 56, all of this may change but it's my post-COVID plan at the moment.

My main letting go piece was accepting that there would be some kind of healthcare access at a reasonable price up to starting Medicare. If that gamble doesn't pay off, I'll need to adjust and I feel capable of that.

vineviz wrote: ↑Sun Apr 11, 2021 1:40 pm
He wasn’t, actually.

If he wasn't wrong, the concept is not useful.I am just leaning towards SWR being not a useful concept except for cutting off naive unrealistic expectations on the high side.

So many good voices. I would say I am just sort of drifting into it without thinking at all about the money and it feels pretty great. I have things that need tending and they will produce some income but it is now about finding the path to the next thing with a frugal heart and an active mind.

I don't understand how the forum can be moderated anymore. All my 2008 buddies and my 2003 buddies. Markets man markets.

CoastLawyer2030 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 7:43 am

bradshaw1965 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 7:09 am

Wiggums wrote: ↑Thu Mar 18, 2021 12:25 pm If you are working part time, you are not retired.

Slippery slope, I plan on having a small business that rises above the IRS definition of a hobby for the rest of my life.

This all gets into the classic argument of what "retired" means. Right now I work a 40 hour/week job plus run my solo practice for 10-15 hours a week. When I "retire" I will ditch the day job and just run my solo practice, preferably for 10 hours a week.

The goal is to have just 3-4 corporate clients and that's it. There might be weeks or months with zero work.

Prettt similar, A couple of projects a year and some family assets.

Wiggums wrote: ↑Thu Mar 18, 2021 12:25 pm If you are working part time, you are not retired.

Slippery slope, I plan on having a small business that rises above the IRS definition of a hobby for the rest of my life.

William Million wrote: ↑Tue Mar 16, 2021 10:41 pm Seems there's a cult-like subculture on Bogleheads insisting 4% SWR is too high. Seems to reflect the inherent conservatism of Bogleheads rather than any empirical studies.

Was health care for a long time. There is a large contingent of folks who out conservative each other, if you aren’t concerned about legacy it seems mostly to be a skewed sense of the statistical nature of mortality in my opinion.

I don't normally do comparisons but I am in your ballpark and plan on spending half what you are spending. To each his own but take a hard look at your spending more then your portfolio in my opinion.

Slowing down a whole lot...

Barry gets great guests, I'll deal with the verbal tics.

Watty wrote: ↑Wed Feb 17, 2021 10:51 pm I just found out that my next door neighbor has COVID that she likely got at work.

You are in the middle of a pandemic and you can afford to differ any decision about going back to work or not.

Even though your numbers look great I would put the decision about going back to work on the back burner until the pandemic is under control and things are at least halfway normal again.

In similar situation and that's my plan. I would defer this decision because you can.

I can't really wrap my head around the idea of LeanFIRE or how that information is useful to me. If I can't have the lifestyle I want to have, I am not ready to retire early and I'm not exactly financially independent, either. If there is some unforeseen circumstance that occurs in my life that makes working not feasible or desirable I can assess whether retirement on a reduced budget is possible at the time. But it's nothing I feel like I'm going to plan for in advance. If those circumstances even arose, I'd probably make other choices: leave a VHCOL area, consider move in with family, etc, etc. But I've got zero interest in planning for a lifestyle that does not seem reasonably likely and that I don't want. (It's okay if this information...

Since I get to define my own: Lean fire = id still look for a job if I got fired from work, but I wouldn’t starve. Fire = I probably wouldn’t look for a job if I got fired. Fat fire = the negative marginal utility of continuing to work for money subtracted from the money earned would be negative. So I guess fire = $200k / $5m assets or so. Lean fire is anything less than that. Make it $2m - $3m since that’s where I am now. Fat fire is probably $400k / $10m assets. A bit after age 50 depending based on my projections (been tracking for 20 years; they’re pretty good at this point). I used to think I’d keep working until 65 and have a pile in the range of $30m “just to be” uhnw; a goal since I grew up pretty darn poor. But I can’t for the lif...

This has been a really useful thread for me. Thanks to all that participated. It helps see fellow Bogleheads mindsets.

I have family in Mexico and have thought about spending significant time in a colonial city like San Miguel de Allende.

I've also thought about making Spain or Portugal a base of operation to explore Europe.

SE Asia has always called my name but seems a little more complicated then the last time I thought about it.

I have no illusions about the tradeoffs necessary, I probably will not full time expat for the rest of my life.

hi_there wrote: ↑Mon Jan 11, 2021 6:31 pm I don't think stay at home dad and retired are mutually exclusive. You can retire from your career and become a stay at home dad.

However, I think you do need to accomplish something to qualify as "retired", and this doesn't have to be related to age. For instance, if you are 30 years old and don't work after selling your software company for $20 million, you can call yourself retired.

Without judging, the restricted use of language like that is a limiting mindset.

Has anyone crunched their numbers on retirement expenses. I'm asking a contrarian question of if you're earning $100k++/yr now, do you need $100k++/yr(adjusted for inflation) at retirement? For those planning to moFIRE with $250k/yr, what are you spending your money on? Isn't there a probability that you would spend more in retirement ? I mean when a person is working, they probably don't have much time for travel or any hobbies. But once they are no longer working, wouldn't those things (travel/hobbies) take up more money ? Choice of hobbies, lifestyle businesses, etc. are part of the equation. The standard BH retirement IPS needs this info, a large reason why we get millions of dollars of difference in these threads. I think it would be ...

novemberrain wrote: ↑Mon Jan 11, 2021 11:18 am

neb2020 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 10, 2021 5:17 pm Has anyone crunched their numbers on retirement expenses. I'm asking a contrarian question of if you're earning $100k++/yr now, do you need $100k++/yr(adjusted for inflation) at retirement?

For those planning to moFIRE with $250k/yr, what are you spending your money on?

Isn't there a probability that you would spend more in retirement ? I mean when a person is working, they probably don't have much time for travel or any hobbies. But once they are no longer working, wouldn't those things (travel/hobbies) take up more money ?

Choice of hobbies, lifestyle businesses, etc. are part of the equation. The standard BH retirement IPS needs this info, a large reason why we get millions of dollars of difference in these threads.

I live in a not particularly large house (about 1750 square feet), but in a VHCOL area. I think it has to do with interpretation of what lean FIRE is. My understanding is that lean FIRE is living in a basic fashion in a way that minimizes expenses which means minimizing the cost of housing as well. There are some places where even entry level houses cost $1M+ and mortgages would be $5K/month, that would not be lean FIRE in my opinion because that is an expensive lifestyle - for instance living by the beach in Southern California would not be lean FIRE, it would just be regular FIRE. Otherwise the definition of lean FIRE would be so broad it would really have no meaning. I respectfully disagree. By your definition Lean FIRE only encompasses...

Duplicate to delete.

Has anyone crunched their numbers on retirement expenses. I'm asking a contrarian question of if you're earning $100k++/yr now, do you need $100k++/yr(adjusted for inflation) at retirement? Right now, my base expenses are about $30k/yr, and with discretionary it goes to $45k/yr. Everything beyond $45k/yr, I save it. But if I were to run my numbers and pretend I am retired, for what I consider to be a good enough living standard on a per person basis - Let's assume home is fully paid off - Housing: $600/mth (HOA or Capex, property taxes, etc... but no mortgage/rent) - Electric/Water/Garbage: $150/mth - Cable/Internet/Phone: $150/mth - Dining/Grocery/Restaurant: $500/mth - Healthcare: $500/mth - Your Guilty Pleasure: $3000/mth So let's round...

This thread is so much more helpful to the way my brain works then the endless SWR threads.

So much talk for something that seems intuitively true. Stay the course, don't peek.

Whatever helps you to not tinker too much is going to be fine. Thinking is fine, I've never done great with the tinkering. The one thing that I would do differently is pay a lot of attention to taxes and distributions for taxable accounts. I think ETF's probably are better for this but that is a relatively new thing.

Paying too much attention to markets means your IPS is not written correctly. Some people love a ghost story some do not. Plan accordingly.

Lots of good analysis in this thread. I am going to take a moment to note that low expected returns does not answer to terrible. Language is very important to an investor. Do some reading. The Boglehead plan is simple but not easy.

Burnout is real. You probably need to quit your job but don't focus on retirement, focus on your next chapter and you'll be happier or at least that seems to be my situation.

He's usually a great interviewee, looking forward to it. Thanks for all you do with the podcast Rick.

Lots of roads to Dublin, what can you stick with minimal changes? Too much tinkering will almost definitely result in lower returns unless it is a passion that you can keep up with and own the results. It's not the blocking and tackling of any strategy that makes it simple but whether you can stick with it over the long haul.

Mentioned above, but why the jump to 3% when 3.3-3.5% seem more realistic. It's a pretty decent amount of spending in an upper-middle class retirement portfolio.

Thanks Rick, always enjoy listening. Great selection of guests.

I decided to go for a Pro with Apple Pencil for digital illustration and painting. I find it amazing that it outperforms a desktop with amazing tactile feel. I hate the word gamechanger but it's a whole new paradigm for this kind of creation for me. The hardware is expensive but the software is getting really good and is much cheaper then the Adobe and associated professional suites. I'm an outlier enthusiast but if anybody wants to do this kind of work I heartily recommend this combo.

I don't have exact quotes so there may be nuance, but they are both fixed income is for safety. Treasuries, CD's, etc are best bets.