Everyone knows that delaying the starting age of social security increases your benefits. Its right there in your social security statement. But most people don’t know how big an impact delaying social security can have when looked at in terms of investment returns. If retirees knew how big an impact Read more
Sometimes it pays to go back to basics. With retirement planning it’s no different. The common, top down approach with retirement planning starts with total net worth and then uses a safe withdrawal rate (SWR), most commonly 4%, to figure out how much one can spend per year in retirement Read more
OK, deep breaths, deep breaths….The drivel the passes for reporting on retirement issues never ceases to amaze me. But this time I found a real howler. The “paper of record”, the venerable NY Times, recently published a piece on the 4% safe withdrawal rule, titled “4% Rule for Retirement Withdrawals Read more
Now that 2012 is behind us I wanted to update my analysis of the worst times to retire in history. See here for the original post. Armed with my own annual return data base I can now show at lot more detail as to the progress of the portfolios of Read more
Warning, this is a somewhat geeky technical post! Besides accumulating more wealth by working longer there is one very direct way to increase your income in retirement. Beat the market’s return. Higher returns will lead to higher SWRs (safe withdrawal rates) for the most part. (The other way to increase Read more
Hope everyone is having a happy holiday season. We are in our winter location for this year, San Diego, enjoying the relatively warm weather, the surfing, hiking, catching up with friends, and just having an overall relaxing time. Today I wanted to follow up on my last post on investing Read more
One thing that has always bugged me about retirement calculations is the lack of detail in most of the retirement data and recommendations. Take for example, the 4% safe withdrawal rate that I’ve discussed here many times in the past. The 4% rule says that 4% is the maximum amount Read more
Time out in the boonies, in our case the wonderful eastern Sierras, almost forces you into a reflective mood. Yesterday was one of those days where the amazing beauty of a spectacular hike (see my wife’s post and pics here) got me thinking about what is needed for a happy Read more
We are living through the greatest test of the 4% safe withdrawal rate in history. Sounds like a big overarching statement but that’s what the data tells me. A little over a year ago I questioned whether or not the year 2000 retiree would be the first to destroy the Read more
Over the past year or so I’ve received many comments from readers that it is a bit difficult to find items on the blog, especially for new readers. The search function, categories, and tags are meant to help this but they don’t do a good job of providing an overview Read more
Its been a while since my last post. Several weeks back I had a pretty serious family medical emergency. My mother was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease and I flew back to my hometown of Miami, FL to take care of things so to speak. Well, several weeks later the Read more