To the person who wants to retire at age 45 or 50, I say lots of luck; while it's possible he or she may be able to withdraw 5% per year of the intitial inflation-adjusted corpus, I can easily conceive of circumstances in which even 2% may be too much. Further, with a time horizon that long, one has to face up to the reality that "merely" keeping up with inflation will seriously disadvantage him or her regarding wage earners, whose earnings will be increasing along with productivity increases.
My advice? Forget about retiring at 45; you're better off being a productive human being as long as you can, and you'll certainly worry a lot less about your money running out.
For the record, i agree with him. Intercst/those on that other sister website know that i do, because i disagree with the assumption made by firecalc that the great depression can be assumed to be the worst case scenario. To assume it could never get worse than that is simply naive, if i may just be blunt.
I think he's right not only about considering your productivity level in your 50s, but also not having to worry about money is a major good reason to work a little while longer. To elaborate, most people make more money as they get older and move up the ladder. Your late 40s/early 50s are likely to be your highest paid years of your career. To give those up really hurts from a financial standpoint.
Re: worrying about money, i have seen
many of you ER regulars here doing just that frequently either directly and blatently, or indirectly implying its a concern for you, as well as having to live an ER life without some of the luxuries of us working folks (such as a solid health plan that you can afford). Being at work can certainly suck. Worry all the time whether you're going to run out of money by the time you're physically unable to work I would have to imagine, could also suck equally as much, perhaps more.
I also remind you guys on some of my former discussion on how compounding works. When you cut out those last typical 5, 10, 15 years of a compounding model, you effectively cut out the real growth period of monetary growth. Anyone that's seen a compounding model over time knows that the real money is made at the end (aka in your 50s)
while you're still working and saving. That being said, for every year eariler you want to retire, you have to work
exponentially harder to make that happen (to make up for the lost compounding effect). That is a mathematical truth.
I think as with so, so many things in life, the best answer for me, and i charge possibly for most people, is a happy medium. For me that's probably going to be mid-late 50s. I think for most people, mid 40s is taking it too far, and 37 (looks at intercst), is just insane. Intercst, you will either continue your speaking engagements and/or you will go back to work some day. Its probably best someone tells you that now while you're still young enough to reconsider your approach. Now if you're worth 2mil+ now and living like the unibomber, then yes consider myself "corrected".
. A Google search confirms what you say. I had several brief visits at EDS HQ in the 90's and heard some Perot stories, but I guess they were old stories.
