2008 was a great year to retire

[corn18]

I wonder if the folks that retired in the middle of the Great Recession knew that it would be a great retirement?

 

[street]

I didn't retire in 2008 but would like to comment on your question. I beleive a person that retires in bad market times and have money invested and can keep that money intact. You know there will be great times ahead of you. I retired in 2016 and markets were unstable and going down and people told me I was crazy for going out then. I also knew if I could weather that storm there would be a good pay out if I didn't bail out.

Know one knows but if a person can stay the course it will pay.

 

[HawkeyeNFO]

How 'bout the 2007 cohort? They probably needed a piddle pack for a couple of years.

 

[youbet]

I have a bit of a range of time to call my official "retirement" date. The last day I worked for Mega was in June, 2006. For a year or so after that, I collected unemployment, got my severance package invested and considered myself among the "long term unemployed." Since then, I've given up on finding employment beyond doing whatever DW tells me to do and I've taken to calling myself "retired." So, depending on exactly where you draw the line between Mega booting me and me deciding I was "retired," it's pretty close to 2008.

Yes, the markets' almost unrelenting upward trend coupled with low inflation has been good financially. Like many here, our net worth is actually greater today (real) than it was 15 years ago despite having zero earned income over that time. We do live frugally/modestly.

Favorable investment performance and our ability to contain expense growth to reasonable levels has been a pleasant surprise I certainly didn't predict back in 2008. It's been a good 15 years since Mega planted the boot on my rump.........

 

[flyingaway]

If you had $1M in 2008, that was much better than someone with $1M in 2007. However, in that case, you might have $1.4M in 2007 and did not retire (and moved to more conservative allocation), and you also lost one year of retirement.

How that was great?

 

[W2R]

I wonder if the folks that retired in the middle of the Great Recession knew that it would be a great retirement?

I retired on 11/9/2009, and even then I had no idea that the Great Recession was about over. All the financial news people were saying it would be a "double dip" and the second downturn (which never happened) would be worse than the first.

My former username was Want2Retire, and I was more than ready so I retired anyway. And wow, it has been a great retirement. My portfolio has done pretty well, too.

 

[Accidental Retiree]

DH and I both lost our jobs in 2008, June and November respectively.
We were in our early and mid-50s.

It didn’t feel so great at the time, I must say, but we muddled through.

We must have been more prepared than we’d realized, but there was a lot of “on the (no) j*b” training happening, too.

Neither of us ever got another job, but by January 2013, I thought we had about gotten the hang of things and we quit looking or thinking about looking. That’s when we “officially” retired.

 

[corn18]

The corollary to this is I wonder if the folks that retired in the late 60's knew that they were headed into the worst time in history to retire?

 

[mistermike40]

The corollary to this is I wonder if the folks that retired in the late 60's knew that they were headed into the worst time in history to retire?

This made me think... who among the active posters on this forum retired first, and what year? If someone retired around 1971 at 50 years old they would be 100 now. I wonder if anyone still posting here retired in the 1970's, or even the early 1980's... maybe someone already did a poll on this?

 

[Retch The Grate]

This made me think... who among the active posters on this forum retired first, and what year? If someone retired around 1971 at 50 years old they would be 100 now. I wonder if anyone still posting here retired in the 1970's, or even the early 1980's... maybe someone already did a poll on this?

Imoldernu had retired a pretty long time ago I believe (checked his profile, 1989), but he has sadly passed away. In the more general fire community Intercst from the Motley Fool board retired in 1994 iirc and he was one of the very early FIRE proponents. Dory36 who wrote Firecalc originally went out in a similar time frame. I don't remember anybody FROM the Motley Fool early retirement board who had been retired for a long time already back in the 90s, but there was a significant generational gap in usage of things like online forums at that time point...

 

[braumeister]

Imoldernu had retired a pretty long time ago I believe (checked his profile, 1989), but he has sadly passed away.

A thread well worth perusing at your leisure:
Sharing 23 years of Frugal Retirement

 

[brett]

We learned two things from previous recessions and stock market retreats. Especially the 2000 (i think) hi tech recession.

The first was do not panic, do not sell at a loss, and do not move everything into low interest fixed term instruments.

The second was this is an opportunity. It is the perfect time to take fixed money and buy low when everyone else is selling. Buy smart, buy quality.

It was against my grain. DW, who has no financial training or interest convinced me more than once that this was the common sense path to follow.

So glad that I listened to her. It worked for us....in spades.

 

[rodi]

I think UncleMick has been retired a pretty long time... but not *that* long.

My grandfather early retired with full pension in his 50's... Yes - it was the late 60's. And yes they were seriously negatively effected when the 70's inflation came along.

- the pension wasn't COLAd. So inflation killed them.
- Gramps would have lost some pension/SS if he went back to work - so Grammy went to work for the first time since my mom had been born... became a "Shop Girl" at a gift shop in La Jolla in her early 60's... Did that for 10 years. She ultimately enjoyed it a lot - especially doing the window dressing several times a year. But it was a big shake up when they realized she'd have to get a job.

Lesson learned - make sure you account for inflation when planning your retirement.

 

[freddyw]

I retired on March 1, 2008 and the Great Recession was just getting underway. As I recall, it started fairly slowly but went quickly downhill around mid-year. It was quite an adventure for someone to retire early and loose about 30% of their initial portfolio in their first year. Don't let anyone tell you that loosing that kind of money doesn't cause high anxiety and the urge to pull the plug and sell to prevent further losses. During that time, I was totally dependent on my portfolio to support my retirement with no pension or soc security. It was really difficult watching as the market dropped by hundreds of points day in and day out without knowing where the bottom was. Fortunately I stuck to my plan and didn't panic sell although there were MANY sleepless nights.
Looking back, it definitely made me stronger in my commitment to "stay the course" and not panic if the market nosedives but it does give one pause as to how quickly thinks can go from peachy dandy to holysh*t. Now, 13 years later, I am close to drawing full social security and my portfolio has grown so it is an entirely different situation. Hope this helps.

 

[scrabbler1]

I retired on October 31, 2008 at age 45. Retiring while the markets were crashing gave me unexpected boost to the start of my ER, something whose financial benefits I have enjoyed every month since that time.

What happened was that the NAV of shares of my main bond fund I chose to buy, using the proceeds of the company stock (whose value remained stable) I cashed out, dropped sharply (~25%) in the few months leading up to my resignation. This created a huge buying opportunity to buy many, many more shares than I had anticipated. Those extra 25% shares generate an extra $250-$400 per month, every month.

 

[Dtail]

This made me think... who among the active posters on this forum retired first, and what year? If someone retired around 1971 at 50 years old they would be 100 now. I wonder if anyone still posting here retired in the 1970's, or even the early 1980's... maybe someone already did a poll on this?

An active (and funny) poster "Nemo2" retired in 1989. Not sure any other active poster has retired earlier.

 

[corn18]

An active (and funny) poster "Nemo2" retired in 1989. Not sure any other active poster has retired earlier.

1989 was a VERY good year to retire.

 

[fritz]

I retired on 11/9/2009, and even then I had no idea that the Great Recession was about over. All the financial news people were saying it would be a "double dip" and the second downturn (which never happened) would be worse than the first.

My former username was Want2Retire, and I was more than ready so I retired anyway. And wow, it has been a great retirement. My portfolio has done pretty well, too.

I retired in September of 2009 at 58, when the start up company I was working for went under. Was pretty much ready to retire financially, so decided I'd had enough fun (although I did some very part-time consulting for the 2nd start up company that rose up out of the ashes of the 1st start up that went under.

It has been a great retirement for us as well - wife retired at 57 in 2010. Our portfolio (we have no pensions, unfortunately) has also done pretty well, too.

 

[audreyh1]

I retired second half 1999. Ha!

Worked great for us. Maybe not so great overall for my cohort.

 

[Andre1969]

With these kinds of exercises, I tend to think that if you had enough to retire in 2008, that means you had way more than enough to retire in 2007, or even earlier. So if you were only basing retirement on hitting a financial milestone, rather than working your age, SS, pension, etc into the equation, you most likely would not have hit that milestone in 2008.

Although, a lot of it can depend on the time of year you retire. For instance, I was in much better shape on 1/1/2008 than I was on 1/1/2007. But, I was in a lot better shape on 12/31/2007 than I was on 12/31/2008!

And if you were to pick, say, August 2007, August 2008, and August 2009, I was at about the same level, for all three years.

 

[Koolau]

With these kinds of exercises, I tend to think that if you had enough to retire in 2008, that means you had way more than enough to retire in 2007, or even earlier. So if you were only basing retirement on hitting a financial milestone, rather than working your age, SS, pension, etc into the equation, you most likely would not have hit that milestone in 2008.

Although, a lot of it can depend on the time of year you retire. For instance, I was in much better shape on 1/1/2008 than I was on 1/1/2007. But, I was in a lot better shape on 12/31/2007 than I was on 12/31/2008!

And if you were to pick, say, August 2007, August 2008, and August 2009, I was at about the same level, for all three years.

Retired in '05. Can't say I never worried during the Great Recession, but it wasn't because the portfolio had taken a big hit. I was more worried about a country wide or world wide financial collapse. The port. actually held up pretty well. I had a relatively low equities position (maybe as much as 35%) but my PMs made up for most of my stock losses as did my SPDAs, GIF, I-bonds and older CDs (remember those?). YMMV

 

[scrabbler1]

With these kinds of exercises, I tend to think that if you had enough to retire in 2008, that means you had way more than enough to retire in 2007, or even earlier. So if you were only basing retirement on hitting a financial milestone, rather than working your age, SS, pension, etc into the equation, you most likely would not have hit that milestone in 2008.

Although, a lot of it can depend on the time of year you retire. For instance, I was in much better shape on 1/1/2008 than I was on 1/1/2007. But, I was in a lot better shape on 12/31/2007 than I was on 12/31/2008!

And if you were to pick, say, August 2007, August 2008, and August 2009, I was at about the same level, for all three years.

I was waiting for my company stock (about 1/3 of my total portfolio) to reach a certain value because I would cash it out and put its proceeds into a targeted bond fund. The rest of my portfolio would be unchanged or, in the case of my old 401k, get rolled into similar funds in my new IRA.

The company stock's value had been zooming upward in the years leading up to 2008 and continued rising in the first half of 2008 until it dropped only 1.5% in the third quarter (the price was adjusted only once every 3 months). It was during that third quarter when my targeted bond fund's price began taking a big nosedive, something I kept rooting for in the third quarter and early in the 4th quarter during my final working days.

 

[Dtail]

1989 was a VERY good year to retire.

I seem to remember 1982 as being the best year to start a 30 year retirement.
Are your calculations in agreement?

 

[corn18]

I seem to remember 1982 as being the best year to start a 30 year retirement.
Are your calculations in agreement?

It depends. The answer is different for every scenario if you are trying to find the BEST or WORST year to retire. It's fairly consistent which are the good or bad years.

 

[CardsFan]

With these kinds of exercises, I tend to think that if you had enough to retire in 2008, that means you had way more than enough to retire in 2007, or even earlier. So if you were only basing retirement on hitting a financial milestone, rather than working your age, SS, pension, etc into the equation, you most likely would not have hit that milestone in 2008.

Although, a lot of it can depend on the time of year you retire. For instance, I was in much better shape on 1/1/2008 than I was on 1/1/2007. But, I was in a lot better shape on 12/31/2007 than I was on 12/31/2008!

And if you were to pick, say, August 2007, August 2008, and August 2009, I was at about the same level, for all three years.

Bingo! They key to having a successful retirement during a down turn is that you could have gone out 2-3 years earlier!