Alternatives

[Brat]

You also could COBRA to bridge the gap on health care.

[jclarksnakes]

Val,
....I salute you. You are among the few people who know how to live on LOTS less than what they make. This has the double benifit of building up your portfolio and also needing to use much less of it when the time to retire does come. You could retire now but probably not live the life you want and you might also have that problem with waking up at night. It seems to me that you should set your sights on 2009 as your retirement year and then adjust as it gets closer. Make the final decision when you know you will be able to sleep all night with the decision.
jc

[Green Jeans]

Quote:

Originally Posted by modhatter Without any social security or pension, etc., the 2 million figure is probably your best bet if you want to have enough for travel and a lot of eating out.

I like to travel and eat too too, don't have social security to look forward to but do have some investments and a pension to factor in. This brings up a question I've had on my mind for a while - I'm 50 and if I were to retire today would have a pension of about 72K a year (full cola and subsidized health coverage included). What does that translate to in FIRE talk so far as what it's worth? Like how much real $ would a person have to invest to yield that kind of return? (Actually, judging by the way my other investments perform, other than the real estate, it's a good thing I got that job with the pension at the end of the line.)

[Green Jeans]

sorry, didn't mean to put words in modhotter's mouth. Only the first few lines of the post above were from his post. The rest was mine.

zaniew
confused about dryer sheets
quoting
and investments

[REWahoo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by zaniew sorry, didn't mean to put words in modhotter's mouth. Only the first few lines of the post above were from his post. The rest was mine. zaniew confused about dryer sheets quoting and investments

I can help on the quoting issue.

When you click on the quote button, you will see a [(slash)quote] following the quoted material. Scroll down and place your cursor below that symbol to begin your comment. That should separate what you want to say from what you are quoting.

[Nords]

Quote:

Originally Posted by REWahoo! I can help on the quoting issue.

And you can "Modify" your post to cut & paste the text where you want it to go... as shown above.

[jdw_fire]

Quote:

Originally Posted by zaniew I like to travel and eat too too, don't have social security to look forward to but do have some investments and a pension to factor in.* This brings up a question I've had on my mind for a while - I'm 50 and if I were to retire today would have a pension of about 72K a year (full cola and subsidized health coverage included).* What does that translate to in FIRE talk so far as what it's worth?* Like how much real $ would a person have to invest to yield that kind of return?* (Actually, judging by the way my other investments perform, other than the real estate, it's a good thing I got that job with the pension at the end of the line.)

When I put a $72k CPI adjusted W/D into FIRECalc with a 40 year life the 95% success rate requires a portfolio of $1,848,138.* To figure how much more portfolio is required to produce the value of the "subsidized health coverage" you will need to first determine what that value is on an annual basis.

[jclarksnakes]

That $1,848,138 is roughly 25 times your 72K a year with COLA. The number 25 is often used as a rule of thumb for multiplying an annual pension to see what it is really "worth". This fits with the 95% success rate that lines up with the 4% withdrawal and 95% probablity of success rate in the FIRE calculator. It seems to me that the problem with multiplying an annual COLA covered pension times 25 is that it does not take into account that if we had the lump sum instead of the pension and were taking 4% plus an inflation adjustment every year there is a very very good possibility that we would have something left at the time of our unfortunate demise to leave to our ungrateful heirs...uh I mean loving children. The value of full COLA coverage especially for the really early early retiree is enormous. IMO it is impossible to put an exact dollar value on this based upon not knowing when we will be taking the final journey and also having no real idea what inflation will do between now and that important date.
jc.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Now if COLA's and inflation were only the same thing...