Reviewing Plan on a Lazy Sunday

[Flieger]

Throwing your numbers in Firecalc and using the Bernicke spending rule to a 100% success rate gives you a spending level of $224K/year. I think you will be fine. Congrats!!!

I had not done that, thanks for the idea! I ran it and put a minimum $500k ending balance at any time, it still came up at ~$197k/year!

Flieger

 

[youbet]

Remember "failure" in Firecalc simply means you insisted on taking 4% when the market was down, so in the end you have to live on SS alone ($70K in your case)

Not really. Failure in FireCalc means your portfolio hits zero before the time period you chose is over. You might be withdrawing 4% or more or less.

 

[pb4uski]

Not the most chipper of topics, but I would take into consideration the reduction in SS if/when one of you passes.

If you still need 110k/year and SS is reduced by half (maybe less), then how will you make up that difference?

Otherwise numbers look good to me.

I do two FIRECalc runs... one for the both of us living long and another for me getting run over by a beer truck tomorrow and using the Investigate tab I look at maximum safe spending at 95% success and then spitball if we/she can thrive on that level of spending.

 

[BlueberryPie]

Sorry I meant you insisted on sticking to whatever % you told Firecalc to use. The point being that very few people are likely to stick with a number when they see they portfolio shrinking year after year.
The other point was that, when you have other income like SS, how terrible is it if you have a 2% chance to run out of money? You might have an end of retirement less epic that it could have been? You'll have to sell the family house? You"ll have to eat rice and beans?
Are you willing to accept a very large chance you'll die richer than you started to avoid as tiny chance of running out? It's a personal choice but looking at more dynamic withdrawal rates gives you options.