Do We Have 10+ Year Retirees?

[Rianne]

All the wisdom on this forum brings me to the question of portfolio longevity. I can hope for the best in the future, but what about those who survived the 2008 crash, dips in the past (15-20 years) and are doing just fine?

I can guess from a few posters but it would be interesting to see the numbers.

-At any point did you have to curb your spending?
-How did you adjust your portfolio during 2008-2012?


I tire of the hype in financial media about what to do next. Learning from the past is advantageous to the future (personal experiences, not graphs, calculators and tables).

 

[arky]

Entering my 12th year of retirement (retired Jan 1 2008) with a stash that is ~40% greater than the day I retired. So far, so good. Didn't adjust my AA until six years in (went more conservative) and never adjusted my spending.

 

[Rianne]

Entering my 12th year of retirement (retired Jan 1 2008) with a stash that is ~40% greater than the day I retired. So far, so good. Didn't adjust my AA until six years in (went more conservative) and never adjusted my spending.

Share AA in the beginning? Conservative changes to what %'s? Impressive, 40%. Are you frugal anyways? We recently went big into CD's when 5 year was 3.5%. I now wonder if that was too conservative.

 

[W2R]

All the wisdom on this forum brings me to the question of portfolio longevity. I can hope for the best in the future, but what about those who survived the 2008 crash, dips in the past (15-20 years) and are doing just fine?

I can guess from a few posters but it would be interesting to see the numbers.

-At any point did you have to curb your spending?
-How did you adjust your portfolio during 2008-2012?


I tire of the hype in financial media about what to do next. Learning from the past is advantageous to the future (personal experiences, not graphs, calculators and tables).

I retired on November 9th, 2009, so I am in my 10th year but won't be 10+ years until November. So take my answer with a grain of salt.

No, I never had to curb my spending. See below for an idea of my spending patterns so far (not including the various costs of buying and moving to my Dream Home in 2015). I am spending more now than I did during the first few years of retirement, but TBH I was spending less before I retired than after. No more need to save for retirement.

During 2008-2012 I just stuck to my 45:55 AA. It stood by me really well! I was not tempted to sell low, so given my own particular level of risk tolerance, that is a good AA for me during a crash. My portfolio today is 35% greater than it was on the day I retired and would have been 43% greater had I not bought my Dream Home in 2015 and moved into it. Also, due to my "age 70" SS kicking in, last year I spent only 0.60%. I truly do need to "Blow That Dough" at this stage in life.

As of last month I have begun slowly transitioning to a more conservative AA, with "110-age" as my goal for equities. This year, 42:58, then 40:60 next year, then 38:62 the following year (at age 72) and continuing with 110-age from there on out.

 

[NYEXPAT]

Retired 32 years this October! Assets halved early on due to divorce, now probably 50% higher. Spending has doubled in the past 4 years since my son was born. SS for the whole family more than offsets the increase.

 

[Nemo2]

Stopped working the end of December 1988. Didn't 'retire', since I hadn't been employed long enough. Currently DW & I are worth close to four times what I had when I quit.

We're not spenders, we aren't enthralled by eating out, but we do like to travel a bit.

 

[Dawg52]

Almost 12 years for me. I was known as the head banger during the crash. My AA remained the same until all was recovered but I adjusted to a more conservative allocation afterward. I did buy a vacation condo in early 2014 and it has been a decent investment to this point.

 

[ls99]

Almost 12.5 years of goofing off. Made one adjustment about six years ago moving some $ to Wellesley. Spending habits have not changed. Look at totals every few months when I get a roundtoit. House was paid off a few months after retirement.
Now big expense is paying rent to the school board and local municipality. Else all is well.

 

[arky]

Share AA in the beginning? Conservative changes to what %'s? Impressive, 40%. Are you frugal anyways? We recently went big into CD's when 5 year was 3.5%. I now wonder if that was too conservative.

When I retired, I was at ~60:40, down from ~75:25, a few years earlier. Currently, I am closer to 30:70. I am on the frugal side but never really followed a budget. My fixed income (which includes a pension and SS) more than covers all my spending.

 

[REWahoo]

Retired almost 14 years.

-At any point did you have to curb your spending?

Have to, no. However we did reduce our spending slightly during the market unpleasantness in 2008 - 2009.

-How did you adjust your portfolio during 2008-2012?

In 2008 our AA was 55/45. After the dust cleared I modified our AA to a more conservative 40-45/55-60.

If you have trouble getting to sleep some night, here is a long-running thread on my financial journey in retirement. FIRECalc vs REW

Looks like it is almost time for an update...

 

[razztazz]

I retired in 1996 so I'm in year #24.

I have not had to curb spending. But I did up my cash-flow when I moved into a cheaper place.

Annual expenses, while they have zig-zagged up and down, were a whopping $544.00 higher in 2018 than they were in 1999. (the oldest verifiable numbers actually still available.) This does NOT count a new car I bought or money I used to bail out a relative a few years back. That money all came out of separate accounts and did not alter my retirement accounting at all.

I did not adjust anything due to 2008 because I was already out of the stock market in late 2007 and got back in, in early 2009.

 

[walkinwood]

Depending on how we count it, we're either approaching our 9th or 11th year. I wrote about it in more detail here
http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f29/10-years-91820.html

 

[scrabbler1]

I retired at the end of business on Friday, October 31, 2008. This was during the big market downturn. However, the downturn gave me an added boost as I began my retirement because it presented me with a wonderful buying opportunity, to buy about 25% more shares of my desired bond fund than I had anticipated when I was putting together my ER plan in 2007 and 2008. Those added shares have spun off extra monthly dividends each and every month in those 20 years and will continue to do so indefinitely.


As for my stock fund holdings, I did some minor rebalancing in early 2009 but mainly stayed the course and saw those stock fund holdings grow in value a lot. Nearly all of my rebalancing moves have been from stocks to bonds in my rollover IRA since that time as I lock in the stock fund gains while seeing my bond fund balance grow and grow without having to add any outside money to it.


As for spending, it has risen slightly, with the most volatile item health insurance. The ACA wasn't around from 2009-2013 so it was a little tense at times. But the ACA has given me some stability, despite recent rate increases. The rest of my spending has been pretty stable but has been creeping upward. It is still low, as a % of my portfolio because the portfolio has risen as quickly.

 

[Another Reader]

12 years at the end of March. The death of the last parent was the triggering factor. Did some stupid things like give the parents' portfolio to an adviser to manage. He lost almost 50 percent and never fully recovered from the down turn. Finally fired him after four years because I could not take the cost of his fee on top of his high ER mutual funds, his BS stock picks, and his poor performance.

I bought more properties during the down turn. Net worth is the highest ever now and the total net income is at least twice what it was at my last job.

 

[braumeister]

17 years here.

Portfolio has been adjusted from 60/40 to 50/50.

Spending has been adjusted to increase it a bit in real terms. We still enjoy travel, so we do more of it now.

 

[MuirWannabe]

Retired almost 14 years.







Have to, no. However we did reduce our spending slightly during the market unpleasantness in 2008 - 2009.







In 2008 our AA was 55/45. After the dust cleared I modified our AA to a more conservative 40-45/55-60.



If you have trouble getting to sleep some night, here is a long-running thread on my financial journey in retirement. FIRECalc vs REW



Looks like it is almost time for an update...

Yes, would very much like you to update that thread with the latest. I find it to be very useful and wish to begin similar tracking with my numbers at some point. It’s encouraging. Thanks. (Hope it doesn’t feel like w*rk)!

 

[ERD50]

... I tire of the hype in financial media about what to do next. Learning from the past is advantageous to the future (personal experiences, not graphs, calculators and tables).

I'll suggest that both are helpful.

Here's a link, and you can easily rerun it over a different time frame and different WR% (I used 3.5% on a $1M portfolio, it shows a 0/100, 50/50 and 100/0 AA). Then click 'Inflation Adjusted'.

https://goo.gl/KqbNWZ

You can personalize it for your approach. Someone else's comments may not have much value if they are approaching it differently from the start. Pension, SS, other sources of income - lots of influences that may not apply to you. It still can be good to hear what people say, just be aware that it might not have much applicability to anyone but them.

Because of the deep dips in 2000 and 2008, the starting point really matters. But the few time frame examples I ran, showed the retiree to be in pretty good shape.

Me personally - no I did not adjust spending. I planned on an overall conservative WR%, and historically, that means I can survive the dips w/o cutting back. So I didn't (cut that is, I did survive! ).

Emotionally, I was fine. I do recall looking at the 2008-2009 drop as "historic". But also, DW still wants to work, and though she works part year at a modest paying job, it still covers ~ 1/4 of our expenses, so that does take some of the sting out. I also had not started SS or modest non-COLA pension (still haven't), so those were two more fall backs for me.

I did not sell stocks at the low. I actually did re-balance and bought stocks at what happened to be very close to the low. That was mostly luck, it was just at a point where I finally decided to re-balance, I pretty much let it roll otherwise.

-ERD50

 

[frayne]

Retired in 2005 and have slowly adjusted AA from about a 80/20 to a 50/50 mix. Spending has stayed about the same and overall net worth has increased by approx. thirty percent. Both still in relatively good health and pretty much do what we want. Also have self managed my portfolio and fortunate not to have money worries like many others.

 

[Car-Guy]

Only ~7 years for me. Certainly I have never made any attempt to cut back, matter of fact my spend rate last year was the highest "by far" since I retired. While I have been trying to blow that dough, my NW has been pretty static (+-10%) since I retired.

My biggest concern now is my increasing age and decreasing energy. I'm not sure I could have run much harder than I have since I retired but I now realize I can't keep up this physical pace many more years. Wish I would have started sooner.

 

[Souschef]

The main thing we have reduced over the years is travel. In the first years of retirement, we were spending about $40K a year on travel.
As time has gone by, and our tolerance for discomfort has decreased, we travel much less, but now at our own pace.
We no longer take Trans Atlantic flights, and our tolerance for airports in general has decreased sharply
DW is slightly mobility impaired, and has difficulty getting on and off a tour bus multiple times a day..
I have seen people comment that as they get older, they will take group tours. What they may not realize is the regimentation on tours. Bags outside at 7, on the bus at 8, etc.

 

[Mr. Tightwad]

Last day at w*rk was March 1, 2008. Net worth has doubled since then. Cash flow coming in is more than I spend.

No curbing spending or portfolio adjustments.

 

[ejman]

Last paycheck on 12/31/2002 at age 52, so 16+ years. NW is 2.3 times what it was at retirement, so obviously have not been spending anywhere near the biblical 4%. But, we have a very comfortable lifestyle where we buy everything we need as well as many wants (horses (wife's hobby), nice Hi-fi systems (my hobby), Newish cars etc). We live on 7 acres in a rural area (SW Oregon) with a very reasonable cost of living. I'm sure if we lived in a high cost of living large metropolitan area our numbers would be vastly different but such living situation is not our preference.



But isn't the beauty of FIRE to be able to move to where one wants to be? and if it results in lower living costs to boot - win-win.


As a result of our low WD rate (currently 1.05%), have never had to cut back. We have been trying to up the game but find that after many years of following the LBYM approach it's difficult to change and frankly I'm not sure that vastly higher expending would bring any more happiness than we currently have.

 

[omni550]

First day of retirement was 3/1/07.

I have not yet started collecting SS, and am living on my mini-pension and savings.

My net worth is higher than the day I retired. I purchased a snowbird condo in Florida (where I send 6 months/yr.) that was not even on my radar-screen when I retired. I go to Europe every year to visit my relatives and also travel domestically and internationally.

Life is good.

omni

 

[kcowan]

Retired in Aug 2002. Have lived on pensions with the portfolio providing extras like business class travel, cruises, car and condo purchases. I was an active portfolio manager for a few years with a great stock broker. I also invested heavily in Convertible Debentures which paid off handsomely. When my broker retired rich, I decided to move the portfolio to a discount broker where I had blue chip investments since 1995.

In 2007, we sold off a good portion of the portfolio and bought a snowbird condo to spend 6 months in Mexico. That has turned out to be a good decision financially. After 11 years of ownership, we are increasing our condo by doubling down. Hopefully that will pay off. Our WR was under 2% so the condo purchase is "blowing some of that dough".

Our AA has shifted from equities to real property as a result of the purchases and we no longer buy Convertible Debentures. Our equity pays 3% to 4% dividends with 7% total return over the 17 years.

 

[Moemg]

I retired Jan. 20. 2008 and proceeded to lose a lot of money since I had a high stock allocation . Since I use the 4% of portfolio for my budget I did take a budget cut but we still traveled and enjoyed the same lifestyle . Today my portfolio is 50% higher .My only advice would be is keep a few years in cash for down swings and travel all you can while you can.