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So glad you were able to turn it around Willamette. We do have a lot in common!
I think talking about my work above in the thread suddenly gave me a burst of retirement joy, and it spilled all over my post.
I appreciate your comments on your work and how it affected your retirement. We have a lot in common. I spent 35 years in fish culture working at hatcheries in Oregon. The work itself was joy and I also had to manage a $1,000,000/year budget. I spent a lot of time analyzing our work, prioritizing spending, preparing yearly budgets that had to be submitted to the Army Corps of Engineers, our funding source. Parts of the job were not that good, but overall it was a very rewarding career. I retired in 2011, but I still keep in touch with people I worked with and pay attention to What Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is doing with this marvelous resource. I also love to fish and live 100 yards from a world class river with rainbow trout up to 3 lbs. I love my retirement!
I agree. I'm in the planning stage so I'm all about the numbers. Once I do finally retire, I plan on changing my focus.
My work is unstable so I contingency plan for not working again. My current contract is up and I can’t point at my next thing. What I care about is knowing how much I can spend per year and not run out of money. Since I am career high income with a near-max Social Security check coming, I can ignore all the safe withdrawal rate stuff.
This is why I plan to delay taking SS at 70, I don’t have to worry about SWR. I know Bogglehead now has a thread that 3% is now the recommended rate and not 4% for SWR. Sound like a headache for me, I’m glad I’m not constraint by that. I just want a simple plan that will work.
This is why I plan to delay taking SS at 70, I don’t have to worry about SWR. I know Bogglehead now has a thread that 3% is now the recommended rate and not 4% for SWR. Sound like a headache for me, I’m glad I’m not constraint by that. I just want a simple plan that will work.
Swedroe makes some great points. Unfortunately if in a workplace portfolio account RMD’s and fees could wreck havoc with a 3% drawdown.
very nice music room! Mine is significantly smaller, about 14' X 16', but it's really well insulated with 16" walls crammed with sound deadening insulation and when I was playing in bands we would practice in there all the time. Never had any complaints from neighbors. In fact some evenings we would leave the door open and never heard a peep.
We had a drummer that I characterized as a "Cro-magnon" drummer. He was very loud! Sometimes we made him use brushes tied together. Rick was a big guy, about 6' 2" and 280. Unfortunately he developed pancreatic cancer and we lost him in 2015. I will always cherish his memory, although we had disagreements at times about songs to play. Our band was called Backfire. Our other guitar player ran a private fire fighting company, hence the name.
I'm reliving those memories right now!
I do have quite a bit of equipment in there. A 16 channel powered mixer, 2 400 watt PA speakers, an 8 track digital recorder, an organ, my wife's bass rig, my rig and so on. I'm not interested in forming a band right now, but maybe someday!
Sorry to hear about your drummer. Don't worry about the disagreements; that happens in every band.
I hate to hear about musicians passing. I know lots of people, but very few musicians anymore. When I was younger, they were everywhere, but now, except for those that want to learn an instrument, I don't know any. I had a good inkling about where we are slowly preparing our new barn to move into, though. In the ACE hardware store of my future small town, there was a large display of 'Slinky' strings. Whaaaa...t? When I asked about them, the store clerk said they were big sellers.
Looks promising...
Good morning Greg! I need to go down to the local hardware store and ask them when they are going to stock guitar strings. I have to drive 90 miles round trip to get strings. And I'm always tempted to try out different guitars and pedals. It's a Guitar Center so they are loaded with everything a musician could ever need. Here's a little joke for you. It's 28 F right now, the coldest day of the year. Whats been the coldest temp for you?
Worst standing temperature was -16F, with a wind-chill of somewhere around -27. It warmed up almost 64 degrees in 4 days....funny enough, it was warmer where we are going up north than it was here. Below us by 15 miles it was -47F (wind-chill).
Guitar Center is a disaster for me. My wife and I have a pact; if we go to one anymore, I have to be blindfolded, wearing noise cancelling headphones...AND I CAN'T TAKE A WALLET.
My work is unstable so I contingency plan for not working again. My current contract is up and I can’t point at my next thing. What I care about is knowing how much I can spend per year and not run out of money. Since I am career high income with a near-max Social Security check coming, I can ignore all the safe withdrawal rate stuff.
This is why I plan to delay taking SS at 70, I don’t have to worry about SWR. I know Boglehead now has a thread that 3% is now the recommended rate and not 4% for SWR. Sound like a headache for me, I’m glad I’m not constrained by that. I just want a simple plan that will work.
This is what drives me crazy. "They" tell you that 4% is a safe withdrawal rate and then when the market tanks they get conservative. During the financial meltdown, some gurus were pushing 2%. Umm, yeah, I'm 55 but I'll just ramp up my savings so I can cut my withdrawal rate in half...
One measure I read about here is to restrict your withdrawals in a year to a 70/30 weighted average of (withdrawal rate X assets at beginning of year) and (withdrawal rate X assets at retirement increase for inflation). I'm using 3.5% but my withdrawals are below that. I also monitor the growth in invested assets since I retired nearly 5 years ago; it averages 2.5%/year after withdrawals, which reassure me it's sustainable.
I think that people get into trouble when they MUST withdraw a certain $ amount every year to meet basic needs and in down markets it ends up being something greater than 4% of assets. A few years of that can sink your plans. I've got a lot of discretionary spending and giving that I could cut back if things got bad, and a steady income from SS and a couple of small non-COLA pensions to cover the necessities.
Dumb question. What does SWR mean other then standing wave ratio?
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