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Happiness and satisfaction cannot always be measured, in fact SHOULD NOT be measured. Because once you do that you are no longer happy or content, you start measuring again.
In any case what is the point of a post that merely seems to gloat in how efficiently one measured one's life. Measurements can fail if the market went the other way; if one loses his job and is unable to find another one because one is too old, too advanced in his career, many reasons; if one gets disabled or gets sick.
A little humility is a nice thing when luck was merely nice to us. It makes us understand how precarious joy is.
This thread is about being data driven. How is that gloating?
Many of us will continue to measure our retirement and the success of our PLANNING by our previously stated and planned for goals and objectives. Others not with a ten foot pole.
Thoughts?
I'm a former physicist so I am very data/research oriented and did literally 100's of hours of planning before retiring. But I have a lot of faith in our financial plan so don't do much performance tracking now. We have a maximum average spend rate and that's what we stick to. Sometimes we spend way more, sometimes way less, but if it averages out to our planned amount, that is fine.
Our only "goals" are some traveling we want to get done, and other than that, have fun. It's all working.
That makes perfect sense. I had read that withdrawing 4% a year was a standard amount. Is that still considered a SWR?
There is no "standard amount". People are all over the map in how they approach retirement spending. Some will spend as much as they can get away with, others live by a budget.
SWR is a theoretical value, meant as a starting point for retirement planning. The 4% figure might not even apply to your situation. For instance, our current SWR is about 4.4%, but our actual withdrawal rate is less than 3% on average.
I am beginning to think that one of the major reasons for some of the varying opinions about retirement planning and success depends on how data driven we are or were required to be while employed.
Many in the forum had jobs that required them to develop measurable objectives with performance goals that could be measured. That for some either naturally or by habit transferred into their retirement planning and resulting evaluation of their retirement.
For others not at all and for some even if required for work they rejected for their personal lives.
We now in the forum find folks disagreeing and in some cases feeling put down by some of the viewpoints presented.
Many of us will continue to measure our retirement and the success of our PLANNING by our previously stated and planned for goals and objectives. Others not with a ten foot pole.
All is ok and all can be happy. Happiness is not as easy to quantify and measure as income and other things a numerical measurement can be attached to.
Even my wording of this thread starter is done in a performance measured language. It is hard to talk about and not use the language.
So hopefully we can all realize that we are wired differently and one persons stroke isn't a slap at another but just their way of measuring the success of their retirement planning. Just as with work having accomplished measurable goals doesn't mean you did or didn't enjoy the process.
Just because you didn't use measurable goals doesn't mean you didn't enjoy the process or outcomes.
It is in our individual hearts that we know our personal happiness with the outcomes whether they are measurable or not.
Thoughts?
I foresee the range of post pension-era retirees being something between the bounds of "working until you drop dead or suffer an injury and get on disability" and slightly delaying the former with a small sum of money no larger than about $100k. If you are the first generation in your family to retire on a self-directed investment portfolio, your parents' advice will be of limited value. You cannot conceptualize what is necessary to retire with a $5 M portfolio. 401(k) calculators are a good start, but you need to think differently, remove ANY excuse to skip contributions, withdraw, or take loans from your nest egg.
Your 401(k) balance is protected, even in bankruptcy (divorce is a different subject entirely). Use this to your advantage if you are ever faced with this hardship. Whether you suffered an illness or outright mismanaged your money, income is a lot harder to come by in your old age. If you don't have the money in a checking or savings account, you don't have the money. Let the bills go and fund your retirement if you're faced with the choice. Take care of yourself.
I am beginning to think that one of the major reasons for some of the varying opinions about retirement planning and success depends on how data driven we are or were required to be while employed.....
Just because you didn't use measurable goals doesn't mean you didn't enjoy the process or outcomes.
It is in our individual hearts that we know our personal happiness with the outcomes whether they are measurable or not.
Thoughts?
If I am recalling her comment correctly Topsy in Uncle Tom's Cabin made this observation about herself: "I s'pect I just growed. Don't think nobody never made me." I could purloin this and it would fit my retirement planning.
I had a series of low-paying jobs with no savings for the first fifteen years after college. Then latched onto a so-so job which provided participation in a pension plan (and made a good decision about it), and then twice had my small savings wiped out by poor insurance coverage of medical costs. So, twice I had to begin again with saving. And then my employer laid off a large number of people including me, and I was just over fifty.
My idea was that Social Security and your pension were supposed to do it, and then a small amount of savings. My family upbringing had been low-end working class in a small town, and this was what I had always heard. Now, of course, I could have paid attention, boned up on the changing social reality and approached the matter with more sophisticated thinking and focus, but I didn't.
My last job of twenty years was in support positions to a series of big wigs in the computing environment of a very large public entity. I was good at the admin stuff, yes; but I was an ace as a sincere con artist and very useful in kill-the-messenger roles for my bosses...I always survived these missions. They would have been humiliated and undermined. I was too easy-going and transparently duplicitous to be a worthy substitute victim, and almost always got the nasty thing "handled." The organization's Generalissima of Accounting and Finances would look up from her desk as I entered her office, where she was always surrounded by flunkies and suppliants, and say, "Oh Christ! No!", slap her forehead and scowl. But she would always fix it for me, whatever "it" was this time. However, this is not a retirement planning skill.
Social Security and a private pension were the base of my retirement via lay-off, but it was slowly engorged by serendipity and a couple of dashes of vestigial duplicity...the worst of which I admitted to with con artist straightforwardness and came up smelling like the proverbial rose. (A part of me did not quite get "retirement" I guess.)
I would not recommend this route to retirement, and might very well have something demeaning to say about anyone as lackadaisical - or was it just plain stupid - as I was about it. It seems obvious that it pays to plan.
But since stumbling into the big R I have happily lived in Madeira, Cyprus and Portugal, and owned a small home, built another and then moved into condominium apartments all overlooking the sea or within walking distance of it and I changed all of the US$ I had pulled together into euros, when the euro was at its lowest point, which turned out well...fortunately. But the best of retirement on a daily basis has been meeting many wonderful and interesting people - even the infrequent jerks; living in lovely places to walk in whether villages or cliffs and meadows and woods. And having all the time I want for whatever books and music I want, or the vagaries of totally pointless projects that interest me. I don't have expensive tastes or needs, so I have been able to contribute regularly to the local charities where I live. Most of the time I am happy, but even when I have been troubled, underneath there is still the support of what I guess is an essential contentment and/or acceptance.
If I had it to do all over again, I would probably do it the same way as I don't think I had the smarts to apply myself to a different way. The "best" part of me has always been the part that is not consistently well disciplined...again, not the royal road to retirement planning.
Its like anything else. Some people are unable to plan far enough ahead to keep their rent paid. Some people are so data driven that they make spreadsheets for their flower beds. Most people fall in between. Some people have a number, some people save and save and then look up one day and figure out if they can live comfortable on what they have or need to grind it out a few more years, some people don't.
I do think that an individuals instinct, whether its a tendency towards a natural saver or a natural spender, doesn't have much to do with their affinity to Data, or even planning. That's a differnt type of consciousness. I've known great savers/good investors that weren't data oriented, or even planning oriented, that simply made an effort early on to maximize retirement savings and invested them solidly in mutual funds, etc...I know the same with a Real Estate investor...she looks at the house as it is, has her hired man look at what it would take to refurbish, knows the rents...and goes with it. Her talent is at buying and managing her properties well.
and the sun rises in the east. i just don't get the sun bragging about it. it is the SUN.
not everybody have choices in life. they don't have the option to pay cash for cars or a retirement house.
they don't have a pension. people make do with what they have. and still find happiness, live a good life.
i don't get the bragging about "see how well I did and you can too, if you were smart like me."
No, everybody cannot and it has nothing to do with mere smartness or ability to measure, whatever that means. there are smart people who file bankruptcy. measuring one's worth by money alone, or by what it can buy, is a foolish thing.
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