- Joined
- Apr 14, 2006
- Messages
- 23,154
....So, why am I so jittery? I think because growing up, money was always tight - I mean like at times, one step from homeless, no heat or hot water in freezing winter, rats and other nasties living with us, bill collectors always stopping by (back when bill collectors would actually bother to stop by), like that kind of "money was tight"......
As the product of a poor, peripatetic, and parlous childhood myself, I have also always felt the pressure to make sure the larder will never go bare. Since I was 18 and walked out the door with the clothes I was wearing and $20 in my pocket, I have been financially on my own (well, after we got married, the young wife joined my team), with no one to provide a safety net. So I have also obsessed about finance, most especially my retirement plan. My final solution, as I have described here before, was just to amass such overwhelming firepower that no matter how much I screw up, we won't lose the retirement battle. So we worked to the point where our secure income sources (SS and two pensions) cover our spending. We also have a relatively conservative portfolio that would fully cover that spending at a 4% draw (we haven't needed to draw anything on the past 5 years of retirement). And we don't include our mortgage free and fairly valuable house in the portfolio.
Could we have bailed from work sooner? Probably, but we actually enjoyed our professions. Will we die with a lot of unspent money? Almost certainly. But the safety and security we enjoy now is priceless.