HI all,
I've received really great advice from everyone here. I have my FIRE details in the HI I'm thread, so I won't repeat that here. I gotta, say, I have the same nervousness everyone else seems to have, which is comforting... but I haven't heard answers to a few practical questions:
1) How do you withdraw your money? Do you pull it out once a year, monthly? Do you have a "cash reserve" for 2 years and draw that when the market is terrible, and sell equities when it's great? (This was kinda my thought). Do you stop reinvesting dividends and just pull from your brokerage account on a credit card?
2) How do you REALLY behave when terrible things happen and how do you protect against madness? I can sit here with my gushy job and say "I would have held everything the same and reinvested in 2008/9, I'm not "selling low" like those other morons. I'm being dishonest if I tell you guys it'd be a cakewalk and I wouldn't think of "selling low." How did the people who were FIREd around that time deal with it?
3) What makes you change your withdrawal rate? I've been spending roughly 8400/mo for about the past 3 years... I mean real $$, not inflation adjusted. Most of that is mortgage and honestly, there's a lot of wiggle room in that so even though "inflation" happens, it hasn't mattered. I'm not a very disciplined person... hell... without Mint I would really have a hard time tracking my spending. But I also remove money from my greedy irrational hands through an auto-savings mechanism. I'm sure if 10k was available, I'd spend that... so I just keep the money out of my hands . But at some point, I'll spend more (I guess)... when you have a job, that's easy cause you get raises and stuff. But when you pay yourself it's gotta be brutal because by definition FIREd people are crazy savers I would think.
Thanks guys!
I've received really great advice from everyone here. I have my FIRE details in the HI I'm thread, so I won't repeat that here. I gotta, say, I have the same nervousness everyone else seems to have, which is comforting... but I haven't heard answers to a few practical questions:
1) How do you withdraw your money? Do you pull it out once a year, monthly? Do you have a "cash reserve" for 2 years and draw that when the market is terrible, and sell equities when it's great? (This was kinda my thought). Do you stop reinvesting dividends and just pull from your brokerage account on a credit card?
2) How do you REALLY behave when terrible things happen and how do you protect against madness? I can sit here with my gushy job and say "I would have held everything the same and reinvested in 2008/9, I'm not "selling low" like those other morons. I'm being dishonest if I tell you guys it'd be a cakewalk and I wouldn't think of "selling low." How did the people who were FIREd around that time deal with it?
3) What makes you change your withdrawal rate? I've been spending roughly 8400/mo for about the past 3 years... I mean real $$, not inflation adjusted. Most of that is mortgage and honestly, there's a lot of wiggle room in that so even though "inflation" happens, it hasn't mattered. I'm not a very disciplined person... hell... without Mint I would really have a hard time tracking my spending. But I also remove money from my greedy irrational hands through an auto-savings mechanism. I'm sure if 10k was available, I'd spend that... so I just keep the money out of my hands . But at some point, I'll spend more (I guess)... when you have a job, that's easy cause you get raises and stuff. But when you pay yourself it's gotta be brutal because by definition FIREd people are crazy savers I would think.
Thanks guys!