Recent content by ER Eddie

Good luck y'all. I walked away from the mating/dating game when when I was 48. I'm 62 now. Life is good. No interest in finding a romantic partner.

Good. It's nice to see some physicians who are clued in. The medical-pharmaceutical-food industrial complex has been under this spell for way too long. Good news that you don't have any appreciable plaque. That's the main way I got my doctor to back off on the "high cholesterol, you must...

Yeah, like I said a page back, many people associate "purpose" with a big, ambitious, service-oriented goal. "Life Purpose," that sort of thing -- something big, imposing and serious, maybe ordained from above. After a lifetime of work and self-sacrifice, that's the last thing they want to...

I'm coming up on 5 years retired, and I'm doing well. But prior to retirement, I read a book called The Retirement Maze, by Pascale and Primavera. It was depressing. So many stories of people struggling in retirement -- not financially, necessarily, but psychologically, socially...

Doesn't seem complicated to me. Seems very simple. (I suppose the verbiage in my post was a little convoluted, but the actual practice is simple.) Yes, I understand that. (To be clear, by "portfolio," I mean stocks/bonds/savings). Yes, I know. I'm not worried about what I'm using the...

Right. I said "annual expenses" to keep the verbiage simple, but a more accurate description would be "the amount I need to withdraw from my investment/savings accounts in order to cover the expenses I still have after my pension covers some of them." I take your point about having a WR of...

I guess people calculate withdrawal rate differently. My overall stash is going up, too, but my WR is around 2%. I must be calculating withdrawal rate differently than you are. I take my average annual expenses, then divide that by the amount I had in my accounts when I retired. The...

Very good. Thanks for the confirmation.

For clarity (OP here), I'm not actually using the 4% rule to determine my withdrawals. I spend what I spend. I just like to know whether I am below the 2% level or not. And in order to know that, I need to know how to "adjust for inflation." It's just a mathematical question, not a...

This may sound like a dumb question, and I think I already know the answer, but I want to check here to make sure. Sometimes I think I "already know the answer," but it turns out I don't. :angel: This part I understand: When you're using the 4% rule, the amount you are allowed to withdraw is...

Dave was very helpful to me 25-30 years ago, when I was 40K in student loan debt and trying to get out from under that. He provided a lot of motivation and good advice. I combined his teaching/motivation with lessons from the voluntary simplicity movement to turn my life around (financially...

God (/s). It's the Protestant work ethic. You demonstrate your spiritual worthiness through hard work. Ramsey is a conservative Christian. I assume all his sub-hosts are, too. Of course, you don't need to be conservative Christian to have imbided the Protestant work ethic. Even if you're...

Just passed the 4 year mark myself. Money hasn't been a problem. Finding things to do hasn't been a problem. Establishing new (deep) social connections has been a bit of a problem. Not falling into hedonistic episodes has been a bit of a problem. But that's ok.

The idea of FIRE is to "work yourself to exhaustion and beyond" and have "no life"? I tuned out at that point. Maybe he should do just 5 minutes of research on a topic before he spouts off about it. nah...

All of those except the first would apply to any age.