I recently discovered ERN.com and wish I found it years ago.  I would certainly have been more comfortable with my situation.  I’ve been quasi early retired for about four years when my old company closed and I decided to get out of the industry.  While I may eventually go back into the work force I am making sure to live such that my portfolio will last assuming I don’t go back to work.  I’m making my way through the SWR series and apologize if some of this is discussed and I just haven’t gotten to it yet.

Here are some questions I have that I always struggle with when reading ER posts:

• How do people figure an expense amount now that will stay constant for 40-50 years when so much in life will change? My kids are currently 12 and 9 and while I can be confident in my family’s expenses for the next 3-5 years I have no idea what expenses will be like 20 years from now.  I’m not talking about healthcare costs but even just regular living expenses.  Is it realistic to assume that my expenses at 40 will be the same at 60 simply adjusted for inflation?
• For future expected major one-time expenses (i.e. college costs, child wedding expenses, etc.) do people usually keep those amounts separate from their “retirement” portfolio?
• Current SWR (S&P high and CAPE>30) for a 50 year horizon is about 3%. My annual expenses are roughly 2.2-2.4% of my portfolio.  Is there a good way in the spreadsheet to reinvest back the savings and see how it affects a future SWR? 
• Regarding increasing your SWR to keep pace with inflation, I’ve always been of the opinion that the larger your expense budget is the less susceptible to inflation you are. This is clearly because you have far more luxuries in your budget which are easy to scale back if you need to.  Somebody with $40k of annual expenses will be more impacted by inflation than somebody with $250k of annual expenses.  Is this a fair way to look at things? 
• Similar to the last question, it seems that the SWR is brought down significantly to bring the fail rate down to acceptably low levels (typically under 5% and definitely under 10%). That being said a much higher SWR will work 90%+ of the time.  Would it seem fair to assume the higher your annual expenses (and thus the higher your ability to cut expenses) the more able you are to start at a more aggressive SWR as you can reign expenses in more easily if necessary due to a rough market period?

I know some of these questions may fall into the realm of common sense but everything I read about early retirement deals with setting specific rules early on and sticking to them.  While I currently can withdraw 2.3% of my portfolio and likely sustain that indefinitely eventually the time will come where we may want to buy a vacation home, join a country club or something similar.  I’m trying to get a handle on how to approach early retirement when so many of the factors change.  Who would have thought four years ago with markets at their highs that we would see the bull market we have experienced?  It is humorous to read the SWR blog posts from late 2016 that talk about CAPE levels of 28 and seeing the comments about market risk at such high levels only to now see Dow 31,000. 

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this (assuming you made it this far) and thanks to ERN for putting together such a comprehensive site for us early retirees.