Welcome back! It’s time to add another piece to the Safe Withdrawal Rate Series (see here for Part 1). After churning out over 20 parts in this series so far I wanted to sit back and reflect on some of the things I’ve learned from my research. And something occurred to me: Withdrawal strategies in retirement aren’t easy! Contrast that with Mr. Money Mustache’s Shockingly Simple Math of Early Retirement post and Jim Collins’ Equity Series that was rewritten into a book The Simple Path to Wealth (paid link). Very influential posts and they are among my favorites, too! So, naturally, I agree 100% that saving for retirement is relatively simple!
Disclaimer: Saving for retirement with a savings rate of 50% or more as is common in the FIRE crowd requires a great deal of discipline. Especially over a 10+ year time span. It’s not easy! Only the math behind it is simple! It’s a bit like dieting; conceptually very simple – healthy diet plus exercise – but it’s not that easy to implement and stick to the plan!
Then, shouldn’t retirement be just as simple? Why am I making everything so complicated? I’m approaching 30 parts in this series, many of them with heavy-duty math and simulations and still a few topics on my to-do list! Am I making everything more complicated than necessary? Am I just trying to show off my math skills? Of course not! Just because saving for retirement is relatively simple it doesn’t mean we can just extrapolate that simplicity to the withdrawals during retirement. And that’s what today’s post is about: I like to go through some of the fundamental factors that make withdrawing money more complicated than saving for retirement. Think of this as an introduction to the SWR Series that I would have written back then if I had known what I know now! 🙂 Ironically, some of the issues that make saving for retirement so simple are the very reason that withdrawing during retirement is more challenging! So, let’s take a closer look…
Continue reading “Why is Retirement Harder than Saving for Retirement? (SWR Series Part 27)”
