So sad. I've had a couple of acquaintances with Glioblastoma. Unfortunately, you don't survive that one.

Yes, just a complete gut punch. The rest of your life you thought you had and were planning for is almost certainly gone. Just sick for him and his family.

Which this guy appreciated and was planning to retire next year at age 58 when the multi-year project he's been working on wraps up. That's much earlier than a lot of folks

Damnit, don't tell me that man. I'll be 40 in a few months!! lol.

Hope you have a speedy recovery.

During my working years, I always tried to keep work problems at work and not bring them home. I was not successful doing that at times. It's difficult to do but enjoy life and your family. Don't sweat the small stuff.
After retiring, it's very clear now. I enjoyed my work but why did I get frustrated with a few things at that time. It was just work. It's much better for my health if I just let it go and enjoy everything else.

Ragoo said:

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Heck I'm 40, just turned last week, and had a stroke on Easter Sunday. Turned around and crashed a bike 8/10 riding around the neighborhood with my daughter thinking I was a BMX pro jumping curbs. Ended up in ER both times. Have PFO closure surgery tomorrow and hopefully get my neck brace off for an occipital condyle fracture next week. Life is fragile. Which in part is why I opted to do the pool and patio expansion at the house. Among other future things I want to do.

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Damn Ragoo, that's really tough.
Hang in there !!

permabull said:

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permabull said:

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I made an example plan just now in income lab to show you guys many of you can probably retire much earlier than you thought.

I made an example couple 58F and 60M assuming they retire now and paid into social security while working. I chose a pretty conservative setting as well and it shows them starting out with a 6.76% withdrawal rate on their portfolio as being safe



It also shows the upper and lower guard rails for when they can increase spending and when they might need to cut back and by how much. The reason they can start so high is because eventually social security will kick in an cover a chunk of their expenses so its okay to spend more early on.


You can see the yellow is the so called "hatchet" as your portfolio won't have to do all the heavy lifting forever. You can test this plan throughout history and see how bad it would have gotten. So if this plan was run by someone who was unlucky and retired right into the great depression how would it have worked out?



As you can see they did have to make a spending cut in this extreme scenario, but they eventually recovered and never ran out of money. In this plan the spending went from $67600 a year to $58200, both well above starting at 4% of their initial million portfolio.

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There is a TexAgs sponsor who uses this same software to project retirement spending who has a lot more experience than I do with it:

https://texags.com/forums/57/topics/3556370

I honestly think a lot of you sound way closer to retirement than you think you are and if you run a plan with this software you will see just how close you might be. I would highly recommend reaching out to Jeff and having an analysis like this run for your personal situation.

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I saw a video posted yesterday using this software to make a plan that illustrated it's power better than I can:



The end result was almost a 10% withdrawal rate of their portfolio in early retirement (and not to nitpick, but I bet they could have extended it a little further with a stagered claiming strategy and/or smarter asset location)

Thanks for the healthcare info. I am not there yet, as my wife is working and I am on a break but I don't think I will work more than another 10 years, so I need to figure this out.

ToddyHill said:

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I just knew it was time for me at 66.5 and felt comfortable financially doing it after working with an advisor for many years. After working many years, the last thing you want is to walk out the door that last time and immediately be stressed about finances , how to use your time now, and your health.

I was surprised how quickly I forgot about work after that last day in the office. For all of you who have some years left before retirement, keep after your plan, don't forget about your health and exercise , and I wish you all the best.

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I could not have said it better AgArch. It took me about a week to get comfortable with retirement. I feel so blessed to have my family, my health, a wife who loves me (and visa versa), the ability to exercise (for me that's splitting wood), and financial freedom. And some pets who love me more than I deserve is the icing on the cake.

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Now that's a blessed life...and retirement! KUDOS to you Toddy

Any of you retire while wife still worked for years? I'm early 40s and she's mid 30s. She makes double what I make, but my equity will likely be worth enough to retire when it is monetized (likely within a few years). Not sure I have the energy to be management in building a company again, managing definitely isn't my thing. But not sure how a "stay at home husband" role would feel either.

Would prefer she retired too, but she loves her job and it is pretty flexible day to day (but can't take off long periods for travel). We have young kids so that could certainly fill a lot of time, but they'll be in school half the time.

Maybe just get an individual contributor role in a mega oil and gas company? Not sure how they'd view remaining drive, although I know I'd be perfectly capable of contributing there. Also concerned I would not be able to not stress myself out even in a defined silo. I know stress will eventually kill me (and probably many others).

Edit: to be clear, I'm not getting private jet money or anything like that. But if it works out (equity can obviously change fast) we should be fine at a 3.6% withdrawal rate even if she did retire.

I haven't retired, but I've taken on the Mr. Mom role during parental leave for my youngest (I took the lead/responsibility for the older two who were in school) and I stayed plenty busy. The school day seems like a lot of time, but if you're really taking on the household responsibilities, the days go by quick. If my wife made enough to retire me, I wouldn't have a problem doing so.

My wife is still building her business while I'm retired. We dont have kids.

I don't see an issue here but I know a lot of dudes have issues with this. We've traded off as bread winners over the years. Most recently I was the breadwinner for the previous three years.

Now she is the breadwinner although she's still very early with her business and hasn't made enough yet to warrant calling it anything other than breakeven money to cover her startup costs.

Yeah I'm still working through how I'd feel, and it's still dependent on monetizing. More like I don't want to rebuild a new company, but the whole point of making the money seems to be to retire and to enjoy that you probably have to be on the same page as your spouse. Guessing I'll just work an extra decade as a result since I won't be busy enough otherwise.

Again, not even sure it'll happen anyway. So this is premature.

This has been something on my mind in the past 3 years.

Currently 52, have generational wealth. Wife is a SAHM. Over the past 3 years, I have went from working 6 dys/month to now 3 dys/month plus one day I spend in meetings with my partners. Currently have 3 teenagers and the last will be in college in about 4 years.

I still love my work, my business partners, and people I work with. Money has no bearing on if I continue working vs retiring. Love being around my kids, family but going to work 3 dys a month really gives me a purpose.

I will revisit and may consider retiring from clinical work when the last goes to college but will continue to run the business. I hope that one of my kids will take over the business and I can completely hang it up while still keeping everything in the family.

Sounds like a great place to be.

Live it up, amigo. Whatever that means for you.

Sounds like a great balance to me. If you can do work you love but it's on 3 days per month that's really nice.

YouBet said:

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This process has shown me one thing... how quickly a company moves on and how easily replaceable you become. I had two roles in the company.

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It's humbling, is it not? I actually anticipated this going into mine when I retired from corporate because I had seen so many people/friends in other roles throughout the company go through same thing. You are a cog. No more; no less. Everyone is replaceable.

When I first told our department head I was leaving, he absolutely panicked. I actually had to talk him off the cliff that he would not even know I was gone within a week of me not being there. I had groomed my replacement for several years at that point so me leaving was about as smooth a transition as you can have.

He has now retired himself about 5 years after I left. Coincidentally, I had some heavy nostalgia this morning for my old career. It was a blast of a time, but it was time for me to move on when I left, and I left my function in good hands which I'm still proud of.

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Agree completely. I just want to make sure I leave on good terms and the team doesn't miss a beat. I think that's why I feel a tad slighted when I'm not involved (as I want to help as much as possible) but it also shows they are in good hands so I should be proud of that.

Either way, it's nice having a lot less responsibility with the same paycheck next 2 months haha.

PDEMDHC said:

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YouBet said:

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This process has shown me one thing... how quickly a company moves on and how easily replaceable you become. I had two roles in the company.

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It's humbling, is it not? I actually anticipated this going into mine when I retired from corporate because I had seen so many people/friends in other roles throughout the company go through same thing. You are a cog. No more; no less. Everyone is replaceable.

When I first told our department head I was leaving, he absolutely panicked. I actually had to talk him off the cliff that he would not even know I was gone within a week of me not being there. I had groomed my replacement for several years at that point so me leaving was about as smooth a transition as you can have.

He has now retired himself about 5 years after I left. Coincidentally, I had some heavy nostalgia this morning for my old career. It was a blast of a time, but it was time for me to move on when I left, and I left my function in good hands which I'm still proud of.

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Agree completely. I just want to make sure I leave on good terms and the team doesn't miss a beat. I think that's why I feel a tad slighted when I'm not involved (as I want to help as much as possible) but it also shows they are in good hands so I should be proud of that.

Either way, it's nice having a lot less responsibility with the same paycheck next 2 months haha.

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I was a little bit as well. I basically ran our department for all intents and purposes, so I had some minor butthurt at the very beginning of it when the transition started. I was also there for most of my adult career and had built much of the department from the ground up, so I had a lot of blood, sweat, and tears in it.

Conversely, I was extremely happy to transition my function in my latest retirement. Not that I didn't like the company or role, but I was very ready to go from this one and happy to hand off.

I'm 51. My wife is older than I am so her retirement math differs from mine. I enjoy my job and have enough saved so it's just a matter of when she wants me home. I'm targeting a 2030 date but life happens and things change.

He Who Shall Be Unnamed said:

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Savings withdrawal calculator

Just found this calculator (compliments again of Chat GPT). It does more of what I'm practically interested in with the Advanced settings. You can enter in your initial portfolio amount, years of withdrawal, expected growth rate, and plug in an amount you want to have left in your portfolio (for heirs and charities, for instance) at the end of that term. It lets you reverse engineer what you can withdraw monthly to target that amount to leave behind.

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My goal was one million dollars before Covid hit thinking no problem and then inflation came and now my goal is three million dollars. I am plodding along and have never really used the stock market out of fear. My small thinking was if I had three million I could take out 100k with no taxes and last for 30 years. If I was making money on it then great it would last longer add social security it would last even longer and I would have some for my kids. I guess I could've put more in the market over the years but I am fine.

I just played around with this thing and it confirms my beliefs and I think in the next year or two I am done and moving on to my hobbies of metal detecting, wood working and junk scavenging and repairing.

I am 55, last kid is a junior in high school and the other two are a sophomore and senior in college. College is paid for in 529 plans and house paid off.

Mmmmmm. $1M to $3m w/o no money in market???

I am certainly not a financial advisor. And I probably lean way too aggressive in terms of my stock percentage for my age and number of expected working years. Those being said, you are likely to have 30 more years of life. Long term, there really isn't a better bet than stocks for being able to grow and sustain your retirement funds. And cash is a guaranteed 2-3% loser every year because of inflation, sometimes much more than that. It's never too late to get into the market.