Prior to Firecalc, Who did you kick around ideas with?

[walkinwood]

Before I found this forum, I had no clue! I wanted to retire early but had given no thought to the amount of money I would need. I had no idea what SWR meant.

I would not have ER'd when I did if I hadn't come across this forum.

 

[jkern]

Back in my mid 20s I went to the bookstore and library and read anything I can get my hands on about money and investing. I starting doing it just because it seemed interesting.

A couple of years later I wrote my own retirement calculator program before they existed on the market.

 

[Lsbcal]

1950's: Comic books with Scrooge McDuck jumping into those pools of money. Appealed to me even back then.

1960's: Thought I didn't really need money. Just some education and sex.

1970's: Married took care of one need. Had a Vanguard Money Market account. Read a book at the library on No-Load Mutual funds.

1980's: Took the newsletter Growth Fund Guide. Started investing in No-Load Mutual funds. Took the Telephone Switch Newsletter which advocated market timing based on a 39 week moving average. They called the 1987 crash correctly but communications weren't sophisticated in those days and most people missed that call (newletter came out monthly, had to have a phone message subscription to catch this and act immediately).

1990's: Mostly just in and out of funds based on Forbes, Fortune, WSJ, Rukyesar's Wall Street Week, and even some discussion on internet "boards".

2000's: Reading M* Bogleheads before they moved to current site. Started to think about this "buy and hold" idea. Retired and discovered the ER forum.

2009 to current: Hated that I went into that decline 55/45 and had to suffer it. I may have a better approach now but it hasn't been tested yet in a blood bath. Also participated in VPW discussions. VPW is a great complement to FireCalc for setting AA and spending goals.

 

[Chuckanut]

I had a few good friends who were into investing and they got me started on stocks and mutual funds. I soon learned that my stock picking skills were like my dart throwing skills, except they cost me a lot more than a few beers when I lost. So, back to mutual funds and eventually index funds since I found that most money managers where about equal to my dart throwing skill level.

I read books by Andrew Tobia (The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need) and owe him a lot. He really started me down the right road. I also had his software - Managing Your Money?? - which I really liked. Then if found Jonathan Clements who kept me on the right road and helped me to not get side tracked by schemes and 'new' ways to invest.

You folks are pretty good too!

 

[rbmrtn]

Couple of buds at work in the mid 80s. Read Money magazine, Kiplingers, SmartMoney, the library had S&P outlook and Valueline. My parents considered bank CDs to be a risky investment LOL.

I have several of Marty Zweigs books and also subscribed to his newsletter. Marty passed in 2013, always watched him on wallstreetweek.

Also looked at Mutual Fund Forecaster, Norman Fosback, it did pretty good back in the day.

NoLoad Fund-x was another one that was ok and is still around.

 

[GravitySucks]

+1 on Gomez Aadams.

 

[calmloki]

As Gumby said... Did watch my Dad work hard and with skill, often at his own business and my Mom being thrifty and thinking outside the normal coupon clipping style - she would buy pallets of railroad "damaged goods" with broken open cases of canned goods or explore buying properties that were not attractive to the average buyer (and normally outside our financial reach). Early retirement didn't cross my mind, and while working for a company wasn't antithetical I just seemed to go my own way. Result was a fair sized stack of rentals and Firecalc being kind of unusable for me. I have bought into the buy and hold idea with index funds, but mostly because buying piddly amounts of individual stocks is so meaningless on the winning side. Retirement still is foreign to me though we snowbird. Just don't have a hard working/not working line and saying I'm retired ... uhh, retired from what?

 

[Midpack]

WRT FIRECALC (great tool, but not a be all, end all - nothing is). I became aware of SWR in the 90's, Bengen first published in 1994.

Frankly I've never had or sought anyone to kick around investing ideas with. My Dad has asked what our net worth is several times, I won't even tell him. I've been far more open here than anywhere else, anonymity makes all the difference, and even then there's a lot I'd never divulge.

(Luckily) We both learned to save & live below our means from our parents, but nothing whatsoever about investing from them. I've always insisted on understanding ideas in detail, never been satisfied to take much on faith alone - even from "experts."

As for investing, my primary path was:

• Fortune/Worth/WSJ/Wall St Week
• Beating the Street - Lynch
• A Random Walk Down Wall Street - Tobias
• The Intelligent Investor - Graham
• Your Money or Your Life - Dominguez & Robin
• The Millionaire Next Door - Stanley & Danko
• The Coffeehouse Investor - Schultheis
• The Four Pillars of Investing - Bernstein

I also read several of Bogle's books interspersed with the above, among others.

As for retirement planning, the most influential sources for me were:

• Work Less, Live More - Clyatt
• Retire Happy - Stim & Warner
• How to Retire Happy, Wild & Free - Zelinski
• ER.org & Bogleheads
• The Boglehead's Guide to Retirement Planning

The list of sources I've read or listened to and consciously ignored or mostly discounted is much longer - but I learned from most of them too.

 

[FANOFJESUS]

I had no one to talk to about these things. That's the principal reason I love this forum.

I don't think it is safe to talk to anyone about this. Everyone I meet seems to want money out of me and I am only low income. That is why I love this forum.

 

[Retiredmajor]

Like many of you I figured stuff out on my own. Reading, studying, etc. I really didn't have others to talk to and I found out most others weren't thinking about this like I was. Money was never discussed as I was growing up. That was too bad. I have grown children now and we talk about money regularly. I give them advice and have connected them with good readings and two of them with a Financial Advisor. We talk about managing debt, 401k's, saving, etc. I'm retiring this year at 60, my wife is too and she is 59 and they see what we are able to do.

By the way, this site is awesome and I'm learning new things every day....so thanks for that!

 

[Crewer]

I started watching Wall Street Week with Rukeyser in the late 70s (I think). Boy, that takes me back. I loved it. When watching with my aunt one time I found out the Owens part of my family was from Owings Mills. Anyway, I think part of Rukeyser’s thing was don’t sweat the short term things – great advice.

DH and I paid a CPA or FA for an hour or two soon after we started our first jobs out of grad school (70s). Two things I remember were turn income into capital gains because rates on cap gains (I guess income tax rates were high at the time and cap gain rates were much lower) and watch out for fees. Anyway we always maxed our 401ks or equivalent (TIAA-CREF), whatever job, probably because we’d come from frugal backgrounds.

In spite of the FA advice we were DINKs and easy prey for various investment guys. We went for a couple single premium annuities in the 80s during the time of high interest rates because they promised so much. Of course that wasn’t sustainable and the companies went out of business so the annuities were taken over my MetLife and the new rate was puny by comparison. We paid off our high rate mortgage ASAP and even bought series I and E savings bonds that had inflation protection. Sounds like it’s the parental influence of live frugally and save all you can. We kept maxing the 401ks even when that meant using after tax money and the 401k finally had a Vanguard fund, which was where we went.

As part of my severance package in the late 90s (it made me an official early retiree and gave us the retiree medical insurance that we still have), I got an Ernst and Young financial advising class that I think was pretty thorough and complimented a number of those books that I’ve also read. The class included a retirement calculator that wasn’t as sophisticated as they are now but gave me confidence that I could stop being the main breadwinner and go part time in my husband’s consulting business, which is what I’ve done every since.

 

[GrayHare]

As a kid I'd see proxies arrive in the mail and wonder what they were. When my parents said, "We own shares of the telephone company," it took awhile for me to understand the concept. How can we own the telephone company when dad doesn't work there?

A friend of my parents liked to talk stocks. So as a teen I began to track via newspaper the share prices of the companies he mentioned. Some went up and some went down. Then on paper I pretend-invested in a few, and quickly learned I could lose my shirt if not careful. My dad taught me about dividends and what P/E represented.

Later a friend studied economics in college and subscribed to Barrons. We'd talk about the news presented there. When during the '80s I finally had some money to invest I spread it across a few stocks, at least one of which I still own. Also watched WSW and liked Marty Zweig. "Don't fight the Fed!"

 

[Cobra9777]

Back in the early 80s, I had a very brief career working for a small family of mutual funds. It led nowhere career-wise, but I got licensed as a securities dealer and learned a lot that helped later on. After that, I got an MBA and learned even more.

While working at Megacorp, I continued to read about investing and retirement planning, but probably not as much as I should have. Talked with coworkers occasionally, usually just about the investment options in the 401K and AA strategy. Went to a few retirement/investment seminars at Megacorp, which were pretty useless. No family that I could talk to about such things. DW and I just kept maxing out our 401Ks, plowing money into equity funds, and we both stayed our whole career at employers with DB pensions, which seems to have worked out quite well.

I discovered FIRECalc and this forum in 2012 about a year before I retired. I had already sort-of determined (via my own Excel model) that our numbers were good-to-go (or very close) and was looking for validation anywhere I could find it. At the same time, I was working with our Fidelity Private Client Group rep who had me feeding numbers into the RIP tool with favorable results, but I wanted other validation.

After reading on the ER forum for a while, I realized how little I knew about the finer points of transitioning from the accumulation phase into retirement. So I've stuck around a while, learned a ton, and avoided lots of mistakes. Great resource and one of the most civil discussion forums I've ever encountered.

 

[aja8888]

+3

Add me to the list, please...

 

[Nightcap]

The Unindicted Co-Conspirator. Although I started lurking here back in 2008. I read a few books - liked Andrew Tobias and the aforementioned Dr. Meltzer, disliked a number of loud mouthed self-promoters (*cough* dave ramsey *cough*). FI frankly crept up on us when we weren't looking.

 

[Walt34]

I had no one to talk to about these things. That's the principal reason I love this forum.

+4

When first married to the ex I started reading Michelle Singletary's column in the Washington Post after the Evening Star ceased to exist but that was about it. Later on I subscribed to Money Magazine for a while but figured out it was junk and stopped it, then tried Kiplinger's for a while but gave up on that too. The ex had a federal job with the old CSRS system and my employer closely followed the federal example so we would both have decent retirement incomes. Therefore I didn't give retirement finances much thought until the divorce. I then realized that I was halfway through my career ("normal retirement" was 25 years but later went to 20) and after buying a house and pickup truck and I was six figures in debt. Kind of a scary realization.

After that I avoided debt whenever possible, especially cc debt, and began the LBYM lifestyle, and found and married a lady with near-identical values. Life's been good since.

I didn't find this forum until several years after I retired.

 

[rodi]

My parents (mainly dad) always modeled (and discussed) the basics of LBYM and savings. So I could talk money/savings/goals etc with him.

Several coworkers and I used to talk about retirement, savings, investing, etc... Coincidentally, these were the coworkers who were also brown bagging their lunches vs eating out every day. Several have also retired early. We also discussed some of the calculators available to us (from crappy ones like the one money.com used to have to good ones like fidelity RIP). We also had access to financial engines calculator through our 401k.

But it was er.org that I learned of some of the studies (trinity, etc)... and started really working the plan.

 

[Luck_Club]

I had no one to talk to about these things. That's the principal reason I love this forum.

+5

I've read Money Magazine, and every other personal finance article or book I could lay my hand upon. I've asked advice from 100's of random strangers over the years, for lack of a confidant, and often that advice has been better than what is given from close friends.

Tried on many occasions to glean insight from friends, or start investment groups, to no avail. Have always been happy to share what I've learned over the years, even offering to help find and evaluate deals.

Someone else said something to the effect of "people are always out to get into my pocket". This is so true in my eyes, and as soon as people realize:
A) I can't help them get into a cushy corporate gig
B) I won't over pay for a service or good
They are gone like a fart in the wind.

It was a scary and lonely place once it felt like I had achieved higher wealth than my peers.