
Why not 42(0).69?


Did my spreadsheet update for the year, and our portfolio went up more this year than our best earning year of actually working. And that's gross, not net.
Considering our first year of retirement we saw a 21% drop (YoY, peak to valley was even worse), I'd say things are going amazing. 4 years in and our portfolio is 30% higher than our starting point (SPY is about 43.5% in that timeframe), which obviously includes 4 years of withdrawals.
I was actually telling my wife a few days ago we're potentially running into a situation of having too much money. Our taxable account probably has 1 full year remaining to draw from, which means the rest is locked behind 10% early withdrawal fees. However, we're about 15 years from being able to draw those down without it. That said, we'll also start dipping into the Roth ladder soon too, which should likely cover all our expenses. But that means we've got about a 1.5% withdrawal rate on our total portfolio, meaning we saved way too much money.
I've been doing better about spending more money, but switching from saver to spending is significantly harder than I imagined. I was reading some posts about people 8-10 years into early retirement that are finally getting it. I'll definitely revisit this when the market has a bear year and we drop back to our original portfolio value in 2021 though.
Down years are quite rare but be careful of thinking you're ahead, which you may be. The math of down is really bad. It just hurts our brain to think this sequence of returns is a breakeven with a 4% withdrawal rate. Would be very easy to think in Year 6 that you are so far ahead could change routine.Did my spreadsheet update for the year, and our portfolio went up more this year than our best earning year of actually working. And that's gross, not net.
Considering our first year of retirement we saw a 21% drop (YoY, peak to valley was even worse), I'd say things are going amazing. 4 years in and our portfolio is 30% higher than our starting point (SPY is about 43.5% in that timeframe), which obviously includes 4 years of withdrawals.
I was actually telling my wife a few days ago we're potentially running into a situation of having too much money. Our taxable account probably has 1 full year remaining to draw from, which means the rest is locked behind 10% early withdrawal fees. However, we're about 15 years from being able to draw those down without it. That said, we'll also start dipping into the Roth ladder soon too, which should likely cover all our expenses. But that means we've got about a 1.5% withdrawal rate on our total portfolio, meaning we saved way too much money.
I've been doing better about spending more money, but switching from saver to spending is significantly harder than I imagined. I was reading some posts about people 8-10 years into early retirement that are finally getting it. I'll definitely revisit this when the market has a bear year and we drop back to our original portfolio value in 2021 though.