Retired: 8-1/2 years ago
SS: Wife started SS 1 year ago, still postponing mine
Investable assets (not counting homes): 1.6x the value back in 2012
WR: Highly variable, but overall, going down each year
With Quicken, it's very easy to get the total expenses since I retired. And same with income. Subtract the income from the expenses, and that is what I took from various after-tax accounts (some got depleted and closed down), plus IRA withdrawals once I got to 59-1/2.
The total WR in the 8-1/2 years is 28.9% of the beginning portfolio value. Divide that 28.9% by 8.5 years, and I get the average WR of 3.4%/yr.
But when I started retirement, my expenses were a lot higher with kids in college, and we had quite a bit of non-recurrent expenses like home updates/repairs, etc... My recent 12-month WR is 0.6% of portfolio value as of today.
From 3-4% down to 0.6%? Yes, due to several factors. We eat and drink less. Just kidding.
There's some truth to that, but what we spend on food is not that much compared to whatever else.
Kids flew the coop, homes not needing work recently (except for the DIY solar thing which is still ongoing), no travel, not even RV'ing, wife's drawing SS. The portfolio goes up, and the WR goes down in dollar amount, and so the WR goes down even more in percentage. It all adds up.
It is good to go through and look at the numbers. Without Quicken, I would be hard pressed to come up with any of the above info. Most happy thing is the 1.6x increase in portfolio value. I will not tell you what the 0.6x increase is in dollar amount, but it is a 7-figure number. Heh heh heh...
How did this happen? Why has the market grown that much? How are we all so lucky?
PS. Note that none of the above numbers are adjusted for inflation. Too much work for that.