Tag: 401(k)

Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Mrs. Wanderlust”

It’s time for another Safe Withdrawal Rate case study today! Believe it or not, but this is already the ninth installment of the series! Check out the other case studies here. Today’s volunteer is Mrs. Wanderlust (not her real name), a frequent reader of the ERN blog. She and her husband plan to retire in 2018 (more or less voluntarily) and asked me to run their numbers. One challenge in pinning down a safe withdrawal rate: large additional cash flows because they plan to purchase of an RV and then sell it a few years later. They will also have different budgets during different phases in retirement. And not to forget, a four-legged family member that’s factored into their planning. So without further ado, let’s start calculating…

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Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Ms. Almost FI”

Welcome to a new installment of our “Ask Big Ern” series with case studies on safe withdrawal calculations. This is already the seventh part, see here for the other parts of the series! Today’s volunteer is Ms. Almost FI and that’s not her real name, of course. She’s planning to retire early in 2019 and this causes a lot of anxiety: Does she have enough money? When should she take her pensions? What about long-term care insurance? All very valid questions, all impossible to answer without a careful customized analysis! Continue reading “Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Ms. Almost FI”” →

Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Mr. Corporate”

Welcome to the sixth installment of our “Ask Big Ern” series where I perform case studies in safe withdrawal calculations. See here for the other parts of the series.

Let’s make this Geographic Arbitrage Week because after Monday’s guest post on “Geographic Arbitrage,” I will now feature a case study with the same theme! Meet Mr. Corporate (not his real name) who reached out a while ago for advice on whether he’s ready to leave the corporate life. Just looking at his numbers I knew immediately that there is no way he and his wife can retire in their current location. But Mr. C found that moving to another country with lower living expenses will cut years off the time it takes to reach FIRE. And we’re talking about a country in Europe (he wouldn’t mention which one), with a high quality of life, nice climate, and a good healthcare system! Can he retire now? Let’s look at Mr. C.’s numbers…

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Our Net Worth as of 9/30/2017

Time flies! It’s been six months already since our inaugural Net Worth report. For some reason, we never did a Q2 update! Actually, there is a reason. Watching the ERN family portfolio progress is a little bit like watching paint dry. It’s slooowwww, at least in percentage terms! Every year in the first quarter, we get a nice noticeable bump when the annual bonus rolls in, but outside of bonus season, we feel a bit like living paycheck to paycheck! OK, that’s an exaggeration because we still max out our 401k contributions and pay down the mortgage principal (which we consider savings). But about half of our savings come from one single paycheck and the other half is spread over the remaining 23 paychecks. That’s the privilege of working in the finance industry! So in Q2 and Q3, we might have added a little bit of savings, but the growth in our net worth came mostly from the pretty solid returns in our different investments.

Let’s look at the numbers in detail… Continue reading “Our Net Worth as of 9/30/2017” →

Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for Mrs. “Wish I Could Surf”

Welcome to a new Case Study! This time, Mrs. “Wish I Could Surf” (not her real name) volunteered to open the doors to her finances. And every case study brings up something new to learn for yours truly. Today’s challenge: How would “alternative” investments factor into the Safe Withdrawal Rate exercise? Peer Street, Hard Money Lenders, Lendingclub, Prosper, etc. have gained a lot of popularity, especially in the FIRE crowd. When calculating safe withdrawal rates, I have only worked with stock/bond/cash portfolios because they are the asset classes with returns going back 100+ years. Doing the SWR exercise for a portfolio of Peer Street loans will require some “hacking” in my Safe Withdrawal Rate Google Sheet!

Further challenges come from the fact that Mrs. and Mr. Surf keep their finances separate (similar situation as in the Case Study for Rene) and Mr. Surf will still be working for a number of years, so we have to make some assumptions on how to assign the tax burden between Mr. and Mrs. Surf. Lots of work to do! So let’s get started and look at Mrs. Surf’s finances…

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Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Mrs. Greece”

Welcome back to our case study series! To see the previous installments, please check out the first three parts:

Mrs. Greece, not her real name, not even her country of origin, contacted me a while back and wanted me to take a look at her financial situation. Here’s Mrs. Greece’s background… Continue reading “Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Mrs. Greece”” →

Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Rene”

Welcome! Today is the third installment of our Case Study Series. Please check out the other two posts here if you haven’t done so already:

Today’s volunteer “Rene” (not her real name) was laid off earlier in 2017 and is now living off her severance package. She wonders if she has enough of a nest egg to simply call it quits and retire in her late 40s. And many other questions: if/how/when to annuitize any of her assets and what accounts to draw down first? So many questions! As I pointed out in Part 17 of the Safe Withdrawal Series, a safe withdrawal rate calculation has to be a highly customized affair and that’s what we’ll do today again. Let’s see what the numbers say!
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Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Captain Ron”

A month ago, I did a case study for a fellow FIRE planner (“John Smith”) and the reception was awesome. So why not do more of those? Without even asking for volunteers, I already got two more fellow FIRE planners who contacted me via email and shared their financial parameters. Today’s case study is for “Captain Ron” and, of course, Ron isn’t his real name, though he is indeed a Captain. Not the “Captain Ron” from the 1992 movie, but just a captain. More on that later!

captain_ron_poster

Why are case studies so exciting? One of the most important lessons I learned from my Safe Withdrawal Rate research (jump to Part 1 of the series here) is that the safe withdrawal calculations are best performed on a one-by-one basis. As we pointed out in our post last week, a withdrawal rate strategy should respond to market factors like equity valuations and bond yields as well as personal factors like age, retirement horizon, and expectations about pension and Social Security benefits. Further complicating the whole calculation is also the fact that we all have different distributions of assets over taxable, tax-deferred and tax-exempt accounts. So, let’s take a closer look at Captain Ron’s situation…

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The ERN Family Early Retirement Capital Preservation Plan

Fritz at The Retirement Manifesto suggested we start a series covering how different FIRE bloggers plan to implement their drawdown strategy. I realize we are a bit late to the party given how many fellow bloggers have already contributed:

So, better late than never: here’s the ERN family contribution. To begin, we are intentionally not calling this a drawdown plan. We will draw from our investments but hopefully never significantly draw them down. So, we are more in the PIE camp, trying to maintain our capital. Even if we were comfortable with leaving nothing to our heirs and charitable causes in 60 years, the drawdown over 60 years would be so small (especially early on, think of this as the initial amortization in a 60-year mortgage!) that we might as well plan for capital preservation rather than drawdown.

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Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “John Smith”

Welcome! Today is a premiere! Our first case study for a fellow FIRE planner “John Smith” (not his real name) who asked me if I can look into his early retirement plan, run some numbers and check whether he can retire already. John and his wife have done a phenomenal job and reached the “millionaire club” in their thirties! Congrats! Continue reading “Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “John Smith”” →