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As was discussed on the BH forum, (C)VPW isn't for everybody. If you do want to maximize the use of your entire portfolio, if you have quite some flexibility in your spend, and if you have some cushion (e.g. SS, annuity, etc) to help you deal with the rough times, then it works great. On the...

I would be surprised. It would be very expensive (cost of inner components) for Apple to do it like that. Anyhoo, no point taking a chance since the (US) pricing is roughly the same as you pointed out.

The international travel is what makes the difference. AT&T has been on the GSM bandwagon (same radio technology as Europe), while Verizon has been on the CDMA bandwagon (same as Japan). Oh, and Canada has been all over over the place. Now they are all converging on LTE, which is really good...

For sure, I should have qualified my comment with a big IF, that is... IF this would make you happy (or happier). You may also find other pleasing ways of dealing with increased wealth, e.g. charitable donations, funding some friends or community projects, etc. You have a world of...

You're certainly doing nicely in your accumulation/savings process. And really not spending much. You're obviously young and bright. You might consider raising the bar in terms of spending & standard of living goals. Sure, more savings, but hey, you have plenty of time in front of you.

Roughly 7% of planned retirement income. Boston suburb. Hm. I never paid attention to the fact that it will be that high (it's significantly lower compared to our current pre-retirement gross income). Room for thought...

Funny. I was thinking about this post & thread while exercising (yeah, this is part of the retirement plan too!), and making such a public post about my ER target date... This was... LIBERATING!! :)

Count me in. Or at least, this is the plan of of record. July 4th is Independence Day. See what I mean? :greetings10: This actually works well for us, as I have a deferred compensation plan with a first lump sum 6 months after my resignation, and I would like to make it happen on a taxable year...

+++++ 11111111 I could be retired by now if i had received basic common sense honest advice from ML. Didn't quite happen that way. :-(

Thanks for sharing. This is certainly thought-provoking, although maybe not entirely surprising.

$50 is 1% net return on a $5k investment. That's a lot. Seems to me that you are being EXTREMELY nice with this brokerage company, while they are happily ripping you off... $50 per transaction, really? It costs them cents... And given such numbers, I am ready to bet there are other more subtle...

I suspect you could retire tomorrow without a sweat. It seems that you made several especially conservative assumptions, neglecting SS (try to divide your expected SS income by 3% or 4%, and you'll see this has a LOT of value!), and using 3% market returns. Notably with a budget prediction that...

Here is a bit of useful reading for you! I know it helped me a lot... Budget models of retirement spending - Bogleheads

Bert, I realize your post is a bit tongue-in-cheek, although maybe not so much... Maybe I suggest that you consider changing jobs first? At your age, this might do the trick for a decade or so... Seems to me you're ready for a big change, not necessarily for retirement. Just my 2 cents.

This is a great point, actually. Let me log this one on your behalf as an improvement request.

******** is still a pretty new tool, not fully mature. I know the author wanted to take great care of emulating the Firecalc's results though, even in its quirks (e.g. end of the year's math). If you stumbled upon a case where this isn't the case, I'm sure the author would love to know and...

I asked myself plenty of questions in this respect, and I ended settling on a simple principle in my Excel sheets. Any extra cash (small job, lump sum, pension, SS), recurring or not, goes in my portfolio balance when received. Any dividend is automatically re-invested (DRIP). And the withdrawal...

Modhatter, Firecalc is no longer maintained, which is too bad... Other similar tools are being worked on by brave souls. Excel does support Median formulas, and it is fairly easy to do something equivalent with a programming language. I would agree this would be a better metric to display...

Slowsaver, Midpack answered with infinite wisdom... I will not rephrase,this was simply very well said. I would just add a couple of things: - take your time (give yourself AT LEAST until the end of the year) to make your decision about AA. Read a lot, think a lot, don't overreact. Sticking...

Yes, this is indeed a continuation of his past recommendations, albeit made in a mild manner. I just don't quite understand the reasoning, notably in a deep risk context. He does state himself that gold isn't such a good hedge against inflation somewhere in the booklet. He show some numbers...

I did a second pass on the booklet, reflecting on the statements that struck me the most, this all seems very sensible (as expected from Dr Bernstein), but... there is one part I don't quite get. Why does the author keep suggesting some precious metals (e.g. gold) in the portfolio? For both...

Just read the booklet last night, following your advice (thank you!). This is actually a reasonably easy read, I would advise to read the real thing, not just the blog summary of what is already a fairly short write-up. Sure, if we followed past advice from the author (I did!), we're already...

Yes, you're quite right. I didn't check again this precise section of this (excellent!) book, but this does seem a tad inconsistent with what Mr Bernstein seems to advocate everywhere else in his literature. (I personally did follow his advice of using TSM as a foundation, then adding some...

Very true. I would just point out that such strategy is really a must before retirement, while after retirement, it may not matter as much. The key point is that bonds generate a lot of (taxable) dividends, so if you reinvest it, you really don't want to pay taxes on such dividends. Now if...

Well, sounds to me that: a) Tough luck, sorry about that b) Come on, you flushing the toilet is the root cause of all issues? Maybe DW is actually saying something else... Maybe she is not quite comfortable with your new life as a retiree... I don't know, maybe you should give her some space...