Recent content by phil70

One of the reasons I don't post more often on this site is the number of grouches. OP's story/question may not be of interest to everyone. His philosophy on work/life may not be to everyone's liking, but he did not say anything offensive or disrespectful, was not selling anything nor...

Interesting discussion. For anyone really interested in research on long term happiness, I would recommend the book The Happiness Curve, by Jonathon Rauch. Turns out the research shows happiness just organically increases with age. The book changed the way I view my own issues with happiness...

Thanks. That sounds like what I will probably do when I get to my withdrawal phase.

I'm not in RE yet, so I'm not sure what I will do exactly. Your approach seems like it is based on sound reasoning. However, there are all kinds of countervailing factors: will pulling out the extra withdrawals from the appreciated asset push you into a higher bracket in the current year or...

OP may want to read this article from Darrow Kirkpatrick. https://www.caniretireyet.com/new-research-the-best-retirement-withdrawal-strategies/ He's not advocating a bucket method, but discussing alternatives for how to draw down from different parts of your asset allocation. Unless you...

SecondCor521's advice explained it for me. Since I was using the "Mixed Portfolio" option, it limited the number of cycles because Firecalc does not have data for all asset classes for the same number of years. If you use "Total Market" you get many more cycles, with the trade off of less...

Thanks SecondCor521. I switched my portfolio to the total market and it pulled 100+ cycles. I appreciate the assistance.

I've been a regular (obsessive) Firecalc user for several years, but I've justed started looking under the hood since it is giving me 100% readings if my wife and I retire today. I'm trying to figure out what historical data firecalc uses and what cycles. I'll start by saying that I think it...

It's sort of a "fuzzy" milestone, but recently, every calculator I use (firecalc, I-orp, Flexible retirement planner) says we have a virtually 100% chance of success if we retire now. There are still a lot of variables (my projections include assumptions about down-sizing and cost of college...

Thanks, pb4uski. That was my thinking as well. After thinking about, it seems logical but I was surprised at how much better my plan looked in Firecalc using that bucket method. I try to take all these calculators with a grain of salt, but appreciate your confirmation. Interestingly, a Monte...

I have read some old posts about the problems with modelling a bucket strategy in firecalc. I am not trying to model a continuous bucket during the full term of my retirement. The plan I want to model is this: I have four years between expected retirement date and the beginning of a pension...

My milestone is not numerical, but more "peace of mind." Our family finally became "financially secure," rather than "financially independent." By that I mean, if we both lost our jobs, we could survive, virtually forever, without working. It would not be the quality of life we want, but we...

I'm officially throwing my hat in the ring. I turn 50 in May 2020. DW is older than me, and a gentleman doesn't tell his wife's age, but she will still be able to call herself "early-retired." Should have a decent pension from DW's employer kicking in in 2024, hopefully $2.5+mm in liquid...

+1 on dumping the VUL. Any form of permanent insurance is not efficient unless you are extremely wealthy and trying to solve estate tax problems. We dumped our permanent insurance two years ago, bought more term insurance and invested the balance in Vanguard funds. The agents will try to...

One quirk is that if you leave your Roth 401K to your descendants, they have to continue RMDs based on their ages. If you leave a Roth IRA to your descendants, there are no RMDs. Sort of a loophole for the Roth IRA as a way to pass wealth to the next generation. You might want to do some more...