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Why does a $500k gift trigger a gift tax if you are still under the $11M lifetime exclusion? I thought you only need to file a form when going over $15k/year?

An approach to modeling this is to do two simulations with firecalc or other calculator. The first simulation is for the years from retirement until social security. Use the feature of the simulator that let's you leave a "terminal" value of the estate. For example, in firecalc it's on the...

The BLS has good data on expenditures by household type and region. Poke around the BLS website to get a baseline and go from their. Summary for 2018: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cesan.pdf

Well - I have to confess I went back to work last year. After retiring I lost a bunch of weight, did some great travel, and started volunteering. The volunteering turned into a full time gig, and I thought - if I'm going to work full time might as well get paid for it. I also got bored since I...

If I understand correctly, when running firecalc you should not count your dividends and interest income as "income." This is because the dividend and interest should be considered a withdrawal from your portfolio. Therefore you have expenses of $105k and income of $58k or a need of $47k. That...

As an independent contractor he is able to take advantage of a number of IRA/401K plans that allow fairly large contributions. For example, the Solo 401K allows $18K contributions plus an additional 25% of salary up to $53K. First link I pulled up...

This sounds like a difficult issue. Usually a wireless network won't degrade over a long period like that. You need to isolate the portion of the network that is slowing down. You can do this by using a different wireless device like a laptop and see if the laptop slows down when the streaming...

You must not have looked at the NY Times calculator very closely. The assumptions can be set by the tool user. For example, the house appreciation, rent appreciation, and down payment are all settable by the user (as is everything else). Just because a reasonable default is set in the calculator...

Does it have to be all or nothing? Can you negotiate more time off or any additional flexibility? Can the things you want to do be done without being fully retired? When I gave notice that I was retiring there were all sorts of offers to work part time or consult on an occasional basis. In...

I can't keep myself from dreaming a little due to the market run-up. When looking at the curves generated by FIRECalc and ********, there are tons of curves that end up with terminal values in the stratosphere - could this market run-up mean I'm on one of those great 30 year periods? There has...

Ratcheting up sounds like a great approach - after all if you re-run firecalc with current numbers and your desired increase in WR is still within acceptable probability of portfolio failure (say <= 5%) then why not enjoy the extra spend? Ratcheting handles those firecalc curves that show you...

With your reduced need due to the higher social security and pension income you should be good even at a 2% real return from 2017 until FRA.

At 2% real the terminal portfolio value goes to about $740K - below the need at FRA. The OP wants to retire sometime in 2017 which presumably makes him 59 in 2017. Penalties on tax advantaged account withdrawals go away at age 59 1/2, so it's possible there may be some penalty on withdrawals in...

A piece-wise approach to the problem is required for analysis. We have incomplete information from OP so we need to fill that in: Retirement age: 59 (assume no penalties from tIra and 401K withdrawals for analysis) Investment portfolio $1.1M (assumes no additional contributions until ER)...

Historic returns are not necessarily more optimistic than an estimate based on a fixed return. The historical returns include periods where the stock market was awful. In fact, you must use historical returns or monte carlo analysis to get a feel for the way sequence of returns risk could affect...

Nords, Can you confirm that the Trinity study included the 1% expense ratio? I thought both Bengen and the Trinity study ignored taxes and transaction costs. I can't find any reference to the 1% in the 1998 paper by Cooley, Hubbard, and Walz.

It would be more interesting for me if the opportunity cost of the housing was included in the numbers reported here. For example, using 4% with $500K of equity would add $20K to the annual housing cost. Just want to see how outrageous my $27K/year of rent is compared to others.

Yes - but that's not the point of that statement. The point is that he believes that period is most representative of our current conditions. So if you were to pick any one of the output graphs of Firecalc, the one starting at 1966 would be most like what he believes 2015-2045 would look like...

My understanding is that Firecalc is a tool that should pretty much show the same results as the Trinity Study and Bengen's paper that essentially determined the 4% safe withdrawal rate. In other words, Firecalc will do the same back-testing that the authors of the other studies did. There may...

1. Ikubak - April/May 2015- age 52 2. LoneAspen - Feb 2015- age 48 3. Neihn - Dec 2015- 4. Fourchristians - June 2015 5. ABQ2015 - March 2015- 59 6. Live and Learn - March 2015- 52 7. Utrecht - Jan 2015 - Age 50 8. haloFIRE - August 14, 2015 - age 47 9. Phil1ben - June 1, 2015 - age 55 10...

Please add me to the list! Will ER on or about the 4th of July, 2015 (yes - Independence day). Will be almost 53 yo at retirement - not as early as some on the forum - but well before my looks start to go ;D