Not to break the thread, but I thought I'd actually contribute something on topic
jayp465 said:
Assets include a fully paid off home worth at least 500K.
Are you willing to move somewhere else that might have lower home prices? I'm not sure how large your house is, but I'm making a guess it's in a pretty expensive market? (California perhaps?). Would you be willing to move to a nice 3 bedroom for $250k? You can get a pretty nice house in a nice area for $250k, and free up $250k for investing (or more).
jayp465 said:
a little over 200K in cash giving me CD rates of about 4%
Why so much in cash? It seems you would be missing out on some market returns. If you're in reasonable health you might be living off this money for 40 years or more.. putting some of this cash into an index fund might be a good idea. I've heard of 6 months of cash as an "emergency stash", but this is pretty extreme. I'd say you could leave maybe 40k for 6 months emergency money, and then put the rest into bonds / stocks?
jayp465 said:
My 401k and IRA are split about 60% stock mutual fund and 40% cash and bond equivalents.
Yeikes, so you have $265k in muni bonds, another $200k in cash, and then around $144k in your IRA / 401k in cash / bonds as well? In my opinion, it's a bit of an excessive ratio of fixed income investments. As I mentioned before, you might be spending a long time with this money, you really should be looking at the long term.
I'd say that you should have somewhere around 65/45 stocks/bonds (plus or minus). With your options and all included, you seem to have around 56/44, generally considered a bit low.
I don't know how much you're into investing, but if you read enough early retirement boards, you'll see a lot of recommendations to use index funds. They have low expenses, and generally out-perform individual stock picks. If you're not in the business of choosing stocks, or you don't have a ton of free time, I'd suggest gradually moving your stocks over to index funds. There are plenty of nice mixes listed here & there that you could use (50% whole market, 20% bond fund, 10% reit, 20% international or something like that)
I'd also suggest (as I just mentioned) that you get some international stocks into your portfolio. I certainly wouldn't recommend individual stocks, but a nice glob of the vanguard international index would be a good idea. Low expense ratio, and it helps a little bit against potential USA financial problems.
As you've said, you will be patient. You can also contact management and express an interest in receiving a severence. I've heard multiple reports of people surprising their managers with wanting to leave, and the managers being happy to offer some type of bonus to get out. This is generally better than dealing with a low performer, and sometimes they're already looking for one headcount to lose anyway.
![:-\](https://www.early-retirement.org/sk/forums/images/smilies/undecided.gif "Undecided :-\")
