Poll: When you retired, how many years of expenses had you saved POLL

[COcheesehead]

If you tracked this data, when you retired how many years of expenses did you have?
Years of expenses = retirement assets / planned expenditures

 

[HawkeyeNFO]

Who cares what I saved? The important number is what you HAVE at the time of retirement. That includes savings and return on investments. 25x expenses is a common rule of thumb as you know.

 

[COcheesehead]

Who cares what I saved? The important number is what you HAVE at the time of retirement. That includes savings and return on investments. 25x expenses is a common rule of thumb as you know.

Have, earned, saved, etc, the intent of the poll is what amount did you retire with and how many years did that represent,

 

[statsman]

What we had right at retirement we knew would be different than what we knew would come later. In our case, we still lived in Silicon Valley with a mortgage and a HCOL at retirement. Less than 18 months later, we were in Central Texas, having sold the house off in California and buying a new house outright in a MCOL area. This was pretty much planned at retirement. We went from a mortgage to no mortgage. We pocketed nearly 2/3rds of what we cleared after capital gains taxes, closing expenses, and paying off the mortgage on the sale of our Silicon Valley house.

 

[W2R]

On the day I retired, I had about 31 times my planned annual expenses. (The timing of my retirement was determined by when I became eligible for retiree health insurance, not by the size of my nestegg).

So for me, the day I retired was not the last day of saving for retirement. The market was booming and I was still in LBYM mode. Therefore my nest egg continued to grow.

I remember at that time, somebody here on the forum said, basically, "SAVING in retirement? Why would anybody save in retirement?". To me the reasons are the same as why anybody would save while working so that's why I remember that puzzling question.

 

[Car-Guy]

I'm really not sure how to answer that question/poll since my spend rate has changed a lot since I retired. (As expected)

 

[COcheesehead]

I'm really not sure how to answer that question/poll since my spend rate has changed a lot since I retired. (As expected)

Mine has as well and I track the variability of the number on my financial dashboard. It goes up and down. If I add in social security it almost doubles.

Its just a fun poll.

 

[Happyras]

Gotta start spending more, just realized. Booking only luxury class cruises the rest of this year!

 

[brett]

I took a tape on our after tax spending for each of the four years leading to early retirement.

Not by category, just total spend. Easy to do since all payments go through our current account or credit cards that are in turn paid through our current account.

Post retirement the number was somewhat accurate. We spent the first year of retirement homeless. Travelled internationally for seven months, then rented a furnished condo for three months.

Massive changes on our lifestyle but surprising the total spend was plus/minus 10 percent each year thereafter.

We are spending more now, twelve years on because of inflation. Travel costs have increased far greater than the rate of inflation.

On the plus side, our equity investments did far better than expected.

 

[Gumby]

Meaningless if one expected to pay for most or all yearly expenses out of pension and/or social security income. If you specified net expenses after other income sources, it might be more useful, because that is what you need your stash to actually cover.

 

[monte1022]

x35 w/o SS. No pensions

 

[Aerides]

No pension, and since we were retiring in our 40's we ignored SS. So we went with about 30x, maybe 31 or 32?

And about half of it was in taxables, so we'd have no worries about making it to 59.5 on the first chunk.

The conventional 4% says 25x, but that's for a 30 year retirement, and we want 50+, so figured it was safer to overshoot a little.

 

[FLSUnFIRE]

I don't really have "planned" expenses but use trailing 12 months expenses as my guide. The end of the month I FIREd I had 51.3x my trailing 12 months expenses and at the end of last month I was at 48.4x my expenses. Lowest point since my FIRE date was 37.3x and the highest was 55.7x. I might have a spreadsheet with that info going back to 1999. ;/

 

[MichaelB]

Meaningless if one expected to pay for most or all yearly expenses out of pension and/or social security income. If you specified net expenses after other income sources, it might be more useful, because that is what you need your stash to actually cover.

Exactly.

We had about 25 years of expenses, but a chunk of that was destined toward college and weddings for 3 ungrateful offspring, so really about 20 years of expenses. No pension and very little SS. I had already retired when I first encountered this forum and FIRECalc, and my first run at my original numbers gave me a resounding 84% probability of success.

 

[bada bing]

I'm in the middle of a 9-10 year planned transition from full time employed to absolutely retired. Sometimes called the go-go years. My budget has a lot of discretionary fat. I still work seasonally (6 weeks per year), earning about 25% of my spending budget. There's financial milestones ahead in my transition to fully retired. Man plans and God laughs, but I hope:
In 4 months I start Medicare
In ~5.5 years I start SS
In ~6.5 years I start Pension
In 4-8 years I quit working at all and sell the side hustle.

On the day I retired from full time work (3 years ago) I had 18X my go-go fat FIRE budget. 2023 looks like I'll go over my budget by ~10%. 2021 &2022 were slightly under.
When I reach 72 (knock on wood) I won't require anything from portfolio

Firecalc has always said I was over 100% success and the numbers now are better than retirement day. I worked 2-3 years too long.

 

[Midpack]

I answered but the answer depends on SIRE vs FIRE, and the large number of people somewhere in between. You don’t need to save much if anything if you’re SIRE.

 

[jollystomper]

Meaningless if one expected to pay for most or all yearly expenses out of pension and/or social security income. If you specified net expenses after other income sources, it might be more useful, because that is what you need your stash to actually cover.

I agree. I would look more at something like how many years of net planned expenses after pension/SS income in cash did one set aside when they retired, since that more seems to be the ongoing debate related to much cash on hand one should have, and did that turn out to be too much/too little/just right.

 

[COcheesehead]

Meaningless if one expected to pay for most or all yearly expenses out of pension and/or social security income. If you specified net expenses after other income sources, it might be more useful, because that is what you need your stash to actually cover.

I prefaced the question with if you tracked the data. So someone who has significant pension income likely wouldn’t care and not pay attention to the number.
For the rest of us living off our portfolio, it is a pertinent number.

It a fun poll.

 

[COcheesehead]

I agree. I would look more at something like how many years of net planned expenses after pension/SS income in cash did one set aside when they retired, since that more seems to be the ongoing debate related to much cash on hand one should have, and did that turn out to be too much/too little/just right.

Hey, start a poll. That’s a good question.

 

[Gumby]

I prefaced the question with if you tracked the data. So someone who has significant pension income likely wouldn’t care and not pay attention to the number.
For the rest of us living off our portfolio, it is a pertinent number.

It a fun poll.

Maybe some pensioners wouldn't care, but I have always tracked the heck out of the data. I knew precisely how much I had on the day I retired and a very good idea what my expenses would be. The ratio was 25x, not counting the value of my house. It's more now, because the pensions and SS have been paying the expenses.

 

[Winemaker]

DW and I were pretty comfortable living on our w*rking salaries. I mimicked our future income to match the past income. We "scrimped" by on $85k net after taxes, provided we both continue to live past 70, our pensions and SS will provide $120k, without the rental income. If we didn't have that available, I answered in the poll that we had 24 years saved up. Yes, fat FIRE, we saved because DW thought I'd get killed at w*rk in a coal mine. I didn't, so we reap. Thank the dear Lord!

 

[Markola]

I’m not a good fit for the poll, because I seem to be retiring often.

 

[USGrant1962]

Maybe some pensioners wouldn't care, but I have always tracked the heck out of the data. I knew precisely how much I had on the day I retired and a very good idea what my expenses would be. The ratio was 25x, not counting the value of my house. It's more now, because the pensions and SS have been paying the expenses.

+1

I was a little over 26x for portfolio/spend, but that ignores SS which was 15 years out when I pulled the Megacorp plug. My spend plan was about 37x of my post-SS projection. So I guess my number was something like (15x26 + 25x37) / 40 = 33x. I never thought about it mathematically that way. Interesting.

Also the poll is (like many here) structured poorly by lumping the historical and commonly applied 25x/4% rule with everything from an aggressive 4.76% WR to a very conservative 3.33% WR. What's the point of these super wide ranges? Everything in the top two categories is grossly conservative, and everything in the bottom two is grossly aggressive - for living off a portfolio. If you are not living off a portfolio in ER the question is rather meaningless.

 

[Alex The Great]

I voted for 10 years or less because this is covered by cash I have. The remaining part is invested and I realize it can drop to 0 at any time. Although even cash is not a safe heaven anymore but I hope it will last for a while.

 

[COcheesehead]

+1

I was a little over 26x for portfolio/spend, but that ignores SS which was 15 years out when I pulled the Megacorp plug. My spend plan was about 37x of my post-SS projection. So I guess my number was something like (15x26 + 25x37) / 40 = 33x. I never thought about it mathematically that way. Interesting.

Also the poll is (like many here) structured poorly by lumping the historical and commonly applied 25x/4% rule with everything from an aggressive 4.76% WR to a very conservative 3.33% WR. What's the point of these super wide ranges? Everything in the top two categories is grossly conservative, and everything in the bottom two is grossly aggressive - for living off a portfolio. If you are not living off a portfolio in ER the question is rather meaningless.

No one is forcing you to answer or post. Like many polls on here, take them for what they are worth, but complaining solves nothing.