[Rich_in_Tampa]

Best,

Nice going on your early retirement plan. Sounds like you are very close to the finish line.

I think you should buy some books to learn the basics. Pond, Quinn, Lucia are a few popular authors. Head to the book store and browse around. Investing and retirement planning are not the same thing bookstore-wise so you may want to look at both.

To answer your questions best I can as a non-expert, I determined my personal asset allocation (stocks v bonds v cash; and within stocks just a few more slices). Then I set it up making sure that after-tax dollars stay in stocks for the most part (or my low-yielding cash funds). Bonds (and esp inflation bonds) stay in tax-deferred accounts.

Stay aware that there is a tax consequence upon withdrawal of your deferred money. So if you need $4k a month to meet expenses, you can reach that by withdrawing $4k of after-tax holdings, but you need to withdraw $5k in tax deferred withdrawals (if you are in a 20% hypothetical tax bracket) to allow for the tax. (Sorry if that's obvious, but it's easy to overlook in the frenzy of setting all this up.)

For a couple of approaches, read Armstrong or consider Lucia's "Buckets of Money" book (I use a modification of the latter myself). Hope that helps get you started, and good luck.