Adjust SWR due to financial "sea change" ?

[Dawg52]

My dilemma exactly. I'm sure we'll work out compromises that lead us to still doing some things and not doing others. Life goes on. But this "ticking clock" concept REWahoo, you and I have come to realize is an interesting one..... It's making this market downturn more "interesting" than I'd thought it would be. DW and I aren't experiencing any threats to life's basic requirements. We can still easily afford the house, car, groceries, etc., but deciding what to do about discretionary spending is making us a little edgy.

Let me recommend..........

 

[walkinwood]

Great thread!!

All of us on this board are "planners" - or else we wouldn't be here. But deciding on when to ER is a highly individualistic lifestyle choice. I am with Rich-in-Tampa. Worrying about increasing the chances of "success" from 95% to 99% isn't for me.

We chose to ER almost as soon as we were able to convince ourselves that we could live off the 4%/95% rule at the same level as we had for the past 5 years. Now, barely a year later, we find that we may have to go back to work or cut our expense drastically because our portfolio fell ~30% in the first year. Big deal! So, we go back to work! I think this reinforces Rich-In-Tampa's point of mid-term corrections.

For us, it was more important to ER than to worry about the risk of having to go back to work. We do not regret our decision and wouldn't give back these past 10 months even if we could.

Another point I'd like to make is that once you get to being able to live of ~4% of your portfolio, you don't need to go back to earning your entire annual expense - you just need to earn enough to keep from taking more than the 4%. In our case, that's not too hard to do.

 

[Moemg]

Let me recommend..........

When all I can afford is Boone's Farm I'm returning to work !

 

[2B]

View attachment 5740

I think this cartoon is very relevant. When shopping for assisted living spots, two different social workers at the places we looked at said that 50% of the people over 80 have a significant level of dementia. I asked the second one if that meant the people in their facility. They said that the people in the facility are probably closer to 75%. She was referring to the general population of people over 80.

Not only is it not likely that you'll live to be over 80 but, if you do, you may not be throwing fast balls anymore. Planning to live the carefree lifestyle until you are 100 is probably overly optimistic.

 

[2B]

Let me recommend..........

I think it was George Bernard Shaw that said, "Candy's dandy but liquor's quicker." However, I don't think any woman ever had to get me drunk to take advantage of me.

 

[Meadbh]

Not only is it not likely that you'll live to be over 80 but, if you do, you may not be throwing fast balls anymore. Planning to live the carefree lifestyle until you are 100 is probably overly optimistic.

Yeah, 80 could be a good time to take up bungee jumping.......

 

[Moemg]

The funny thing is my Mother is 92 and her physicians hand her scripts for tests but they tell her it is optional . So maybe there are some perks of growing older !

 

[Rich_by_the_Bay]

The funny thing is my Mother is 92 and her physicians hand her scripts for tests but they tell her it is optional . So maybe there are some perks of growing older

So there's a new in primary care internal medicine. A take-off on the "slow food" movement (a reaction to fast food), it's called slow medicine; kind of a hands off approach, keeping a higher threshold for intervening actively, symptom focused, willing to defer definitive diagnosis if that saves a lot of hassle. You really have to have the patient and family on board, because practicing like that in this country is sometimes inconsistent with "community standard."

But it has its place, as in your mom's example.

 

[OhSoClose]

My FIL fortunately doesn't live with us but it became a brief topic of conversation before reality set in with the help of some health care professionals. He's in a memory care unit but DW spends lots of time visiting and dealing with his issues.

My experience with my in-laws echoes much of your own. MIL with advanced dementia is in a nursing home, FIL has recently been diagnosed with dementia as well. DW spends a huge chunk of time carring for FIL and taking him to visit MIL, who rarely recognizes either of them. FIL is also highly suspicious that some guy in nursing home is preying upon MIL (shades of Sandra Day O'Connor experience). Further planning is difficult at this point. I give sympathy and support to DW, but she wants to make the calls with regard to FIL.

Well, we've gone off the SWR topic. But I think maybe I can tie these experiences back to SWR. With medical advances, we are likely to all live a long retirement. The first half of retirement will be great stuff, while we all have both our physical and mental abilities. The second half of retirement could well be just a period of time waiting to die -- a period that is meaningless at best, painful at worse, and can be quite expensive. DW and I have discussed that she or I or both of us may simply check out of this second half. And that has the benefit, of course, that we can increase our SWR at the time we first enter retirement.

How is that for cheery??

And I, too, vote that ReWahoo take his trip. If we all make a donation, say to FireCalc, will some of that money go to ReWahoo so he take the trip? If feel like organizing something positive here.

 

[REWahoo]

And I, too, vote that ReWahoo take his trip. If we all make a donation, say to FireCalc, will some of that money go to ReWahoo so he take the trip? If feel like organizing something positive here.

I don't see a penny of any donation to FIRECalc, but [-]I'll see if I can't set something up[/-] I sure appreciate your kind thoughts.

 

[Dawg52]

Is there an echo in here? Change your "retired at 58 and am now 61" to "retired at 58 and am now 62" and this could have been my post.

I too hear a 'do it now while you still can' voice whispering in one ear and a 'you'd better cut spending now' voice in the other. I'm struggling with canceling a planned 6 week RV trip to the northwest this summer - a trip we've been planning for months. Will the $5,000 I save make a significant difference in our quality of life sometime down the road? Or will I kick myself for not taking the opportunity for a wonderful trip when I had the chance?

Ain't life great?

Just camp out in your back yard this summer. You got it all right there. Roasted rattlesnake over the camp fire, nice warm humidity during the day, mosquito bites late afternoon, nicely [-]burned[/-] tanned skin, watching videos in the RV of the pacific nw..........what is there not to like?

As CNBC would say....."these are unprecedented times". Adjust and move on.

 

[ziggy29]

Just camp out in your back yard this summer. You got it all right there. Roasted rattlesnake over the camp fire, nice warm humidity during the day, mosquito bites late afternoon, nicely [-]burned[/-] tanned skin, watching videos in the RV of the pacific nw..........what is there not to like?

What's humidity? Since La Nina hit the scene, we've had almost none of it. All we've had is one dry day after another, with a few dry and very windy cold fronts every few days.

But we do get a lot of dust blown into our eyes as a result. Fun.

 

[2B]

I've found a trick (by accident) to get DW excited about traveling. We offer to rent a condo/house for a week or longer and invite the kids/grandkids. She suddenly doesn't [-]give a sh*t[/-] care if her father is left in the good care of the memory care facility. The chance to get her babies and grandbabies in one place takes over as the "prime directive."

I'm scheduling a week in Branson, a week in Rhode Island and a week in Port Aransas during the coming months. I know the poorer kids won't be able to get time off or be able to fund (which may become our problem) these trips but I get to inconvenience fish and generally recreate. One may actually take hold which is the week in Port Aransas. The others may or may not have much participation. Once they are scheduled and paid for, she is at my mercy.