Worst case scenario?

Retirement Retired Fools
1

I’m curious what the crowd here thinks an adequate retirement plan is.

I’m mulling early retirement now that I’m in my 50s and sick of working.

According to the FIRE calculators, I should easily generate a comfortable income that handily exceeds my living expenses. And yet the pessimist in me can easily imagine scenarios in which the train gets derailed. Runaway inflation? A decade long stock market slide? Politicians torpedoing social security? Adverse health events that require skilled nursing for the rest of my life?

In your opinion what is reasonable and/or what do you wish you had done differently?

2

Hi RonBurgundy,

When I used calculators to model retirement, I used pessimistic factors:

  1. Portfolio Growth Rate: 6%
  2. Inflation: 3.8% to 4%
  3. Expenses: 10% more than actual.
  4. SS Payments: 30% less than the projection.

I got that plan to work and we retired at 55/54.

We have been financially solid for for 17 years.

Over those 17 years, we have withdrawn 305% of the value of our portfolio on the day we retired.

So, it worked.

Does that help you?

Gene
All holdings and some statistics on my Fool profile page
http://my.fool.com/profile/gdett2/info.aspx

3 Likes
3

The biggest issue for most early retirees is health insurance.

If you’ve got a good handle on that…then run the numbers.

I don’t think you’ll see more than 2% real growth (over inflation) in the stock market for a long time.

t

4

“I’m mulling early retirement now that I’m in my 50s and sick of working.”

Well, there is the option of finding a job or career you enjoy.

Howie52
Work is more than a way to get paid and live.
Folks can live on much less than they realize - but how one lives is a choice.
That choice extends to a choice of career or retirement.

1 Like