Need Advice On Withdrawal Strategy

[DEC-1982]

That doesn't make sense because you don't know whether stock prices will be down or up in the future. And the general trend over time is up, not down, over time. The instructor is off in both the buying and selling scenario. In 25 of the last 30 years the stock market finished higher at the end of the year than when it started. That favors buying early while it's low, and spreading out selling over the year.

What one needs to do is run though a couple of hundred scenarios, doing withdrawals at the beginning of the year, and the compare them to another couple of hundred scenarios doing monthly withdrawals, and see which one comes out better. I haven't done that, and I look forward to somebody doing that and posting their results.

I'll investigate a bit and see if this has already been done in the past.

 

[NW-Bound]

...
I'm thinking that I could either liquidate my estimated needs for the year and have it in cash to draw from, or I could sell as needed in small amounts going forward.

I'm new to all this so I'm just curious- what do you all do?

I have always had a lot of cash in my accounts, good for 8 years of living expenses without taking SS. It's because I have very little bonds.

And so, I withdraw as needed. I also use some of that cash to do fortuitous market timing as I see fit. Because of the large cash buffer, my withdrawals have nothing to do with my decisions to buy or sell. My withdrawals are also irregular due to discretionary spending.

 

[DrRoy]

I build my next year's spending $ over the course of the previous year and then transfer it to a MM fund.

 

[Chuckanut]

I use a variable withdrawal spreadsheet to figure out this year's withdrawal amount. I use it as a guideline, not a line in the sand I must stand on. So far I have not had a good reason to withdraw a different amount.

https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Var...able-percentage_withdrawals_during_retirement

I withdraw the money (usually as part of balancing) and deposit it into my spending MM account. There it stays until I need it. If I don't spend all of it, it remains in the account just in case next year's withdrawal is on the low side, or some unexpected big expensive hits me. So far so good.