Poll:For Those in Retirement 10+ years

[djustind]

I would be curious to know, those of you that have been retired 10+ years, has your net worth increased, decreased or is about the same as when you retired?

 

[SomedaySoon]

Limited change, but now I am seeing new income streams come online (SS, Pensions) so I hope it will increase soon...

 

[Car-Guy]

Decreased but that was fully expected since I've been spending like a drunk sailor while I was still young enough to enjoy it. I had a great time and enjoyed myself. Father time is now slowing my spend rate, which was also expected. FireCal still says I'm still good to 100, which I'll never see, so no financial complaints here.

Honestly I'm surprised I've maintained as well as I have... It's not from a lack of trying. Full expect to be an outlier on this thread too. ("again").

 

[folivier]

I'm with Car-Guy, decreased. But we've been through a few different motorhomes and trips. Now have a cabin and condo. But FC still says 100%.

 

[mystang52]

Increased, surprisingly significantly.

 

[MRG]

We're up 100k in investments, and our home has gone up 250%. We've been blowing some dough since the pandemic. DW is on SS, I'm FRA now but will evaluate every 6 months.

 

[Midpack]

Our nest egg has doubled since I retired in 2011. Fortunate timing mostly, e.g. the SP500 is up about 3.2X since I retired.

Of course what will happen in the next 10 years has nothing to do with anyone’s past ten years…

 

[ShokWaveRider]

Ours has increased over the last 15 years by about 30%. No sacrifices made, just osmosis from a lifetime of LBYM.

 

[38Chevy454]

About equal, for my bit over 6 years retired. But like several previous replies have spent big on some large one time purchases, such as buying a snowbird place. No concerns since the big expenses are what money is for, to enjoy what it can buy. If just looking at normal living expenses, it would have been increased.

 

[pb4uski]

NW is 124% of what it was when I retired at the end of 2011.

Looking at just our retirement portfolio, it is about the same, but a substantial part of it has been "invested" in real estate.... used to replace our one-car garage with a 2-car garage with loft space, pay off our mortgage, other home improvements and our Florida condo.

 

[W2R]

My net worth today is 173% of what it was the day I retired, back in 2009.

But bear in mind that the stock market was just coming out of the 2008 mess back in 2009, so everybody's portfolio was rising significantly at that time. Also, there has been a lot of inflation and I didn't adjust for that in my calculation.

For this post, I defined my net worth as my portfolio value plus my bank accounts plus the value of my home. I really don't have a lot else (no boats, second homes, RV's, etc) because I don't want those things. No loans or mortgages either now or the day I retired.

 

[flyingaway]

Wow, it is time to discuss the 8% SWR.

 

[scrabbler1]

I retired nearly 15 years ago to the day, in late 2008 (at 45), when the markets were nearly at their bottoms. Since that time, my portfolio has slightly more than doubled, and I have been living solely off my portfolio (no SS or pension yet).

 

[Sunset]

Our assets have increased 172% since retirement in 2014.

This does not account for inflation, and obviously, we we need to spend more.

 

[audreyh1]

I would be curious to know, those of you that have been retired 10+ years, has your net worth increased, decreased or is about the same as when you retired?

It’s very dependent on when you retired and the following market conditions. Some of us get lucky, others are unlucky.

I track our net worth against inflation since retiring. Inflation plays a big role over those longer times. Fortunately we are still ahead even against inflation even though inflation-adjusted growth has been hit hard the last couple of years.

 

[LateToFIRE]

Not retired, but worth noting that assets have doubled last 10 years, and tripled last 15 years (since 2008). Had I retired in those timeframes I am quite certain my response would be "significantly up" given that most of the aforementioned increase has been from asset appreciation rather than savings. Not that I haven't been saving, but I'm past an inflection point - growth is significantly larger than savings.

Most of the friends I have that retired over this timeframe have found themselves to be in the position of increased wealth, though probably not as dramatically as I described (because real estate has accounted for much of my out-sized growth). Last 10-15 years definitely looks like ideal timing to have retired, especially given the low inflation environment would have enjoyed.

But, in no way do I take that to be an indicator of the next 10-15 years.

 

[GravitySucks]

Up around 25% adjusted for inflation.

 

[5Miler]

I have been retired for 11 years and 7 months. My net worth which includes only investable assets and home value is almost exactly double what it was when I retired in Feb 2012. Actually just a tad bit higher than double as of today.

I was living solely off my 4% IRA withdrawal rate for the first 10 years until I began taking Social Security. Of course SORR was the primary driver of that good performance as it was difficult to lose money during that time frame.

Have been at 0% withdrawal rate since Jan 2022 due to SS. I'm proving to be not too good at increasing my spending.

 

[harley]

I voted "about the same", which is amazing when you think about it. I retired 16 years ago, just before the Great Recession. Our NW went down somewhat, and we, like Car-Guy, spent like unrestrained, feckless sailors. We've currently got 3 houses, and are finally moving into a slowdown period. My plan (for what it's worth) is that in our older years our spending would go down. We'll be selling one house this year, and that will slow the bleeding. Plus DW started her SS, which will also help mitigate the spending. We're planning to leave money to DD when the time comes, so I've maxed out the 22% bracket with Roth conversions over the past number of years. That's not really spending, since the tax money always belonged to the gov't, but it still lowers the obvious bottom line.

Now we'll just have to see how well the plan works.

 

[youbet]

I selected "remained about the same." In nominal terms, my investable assets have more than doubled in nominal terms since I Fired 18 years ago. But in real terms, I suspect they've more or less held even. I'm not interested enough to go do the work of doing the comparison with inflation adjustments.

We collect two pensions (one no cola, one mini-cola), so for those we've obviously fallen back in real terms. I get SS (DW doesn't) and I suppose that has more or less increased with inflation.

We're been doing some estate planning and it appears, now in our mid-70's, some significant gifting is in order going forward. And we're paying for the grand kids post secondary educations. Therefore I suspect our portfolio will begin to shrink. But we're in good shape.

 

[Dash man]

I’ve been retired since the end of March 2013. DW chose to work another three years. Our net worth has grown ~300% since I retired, with a nice chunk coming from stock options that took off for DW’s company. We also had some timely purchases of Apple, Microsoft, Broadcom, Eli Lilly and Amazon. I have since sold Amazon, but hold onto the others. Two of three properties we’ve purchased since my retirement have also done well. Things are definitely slowing down for us due to health reasons, but we plan on gifting money each year.

 

[youbet]

Not retired, but worth noting that assets have doubled last 10 years, and tripled last 15 years (since 2008).

Sounds like a subject for another poll focusing on those still in the accumulation stage such as yourself.

 

[LateToFIRE]

I selected "remained about the same." In nominal terms, my investable assets have more than doubled in nominal terms since I Fired 18 years ago. But in real terms, I suspect they've more or less held even. I'm not interested enough to go do the work of doing the comparison with inflation adjustments...

I was just about to make this point about the many responses where assets have grown - you beat me to it. When I project my own retirement plan using reasonable assumptions (I have a home-grown model that allows me to change and stress lots of variables) I also PV (present value) the ending balance to see where I would stand in real terms. Its always a bit jarring - happy to see I'd probably croak with more than I started with, but kinda disappointed to see it woulda shrunk on a real (inflation-adjusted) basis. First class issue to fret about of course. What it basically tells me is I'll have plenty of room to get it wrong.

 

[Mr. Tightwad]

Net worth has increased roughly 150% since 2008 retirement.

 

[MichaelB]

Our nominal net worth has increased, our inflation adjusted net worth has declined a bit.

Our spending has included significant one time expenses such as 10 years of private college education and 3 wedding gifts, all of which were planned. Without the costs of college we’d be ahead a bit after accounting for inflation.