Worst case scenario?

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?

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Over those 17 years, we have withdrawn 305% of the value of our portfolio on the day we retired.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

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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

“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.

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