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The facts never got in the way for us. Life's predictable unpredictability happens to everyone.
Two of the smartest people I know - both early-on computer (and other) geniuses, one with an MBA and the other a robotics pioneer....lost most ALL of their retirement money. Some of it was even insult added to injury.....
Example - one is a top programmer who was invested in a lot of tech....yep, when the dot-com crashed happened in about 1999-2000, he lost 40% or more (I think it was a million). He used to come into my workplace before that and laugh at me "ha ha, you are still working and I'm going to the country club".
Guess what? He's still working...and I haven't been for 20 years!
The other was moving up the ladder of skills inside Lucent. He had participated in their stock buying program and amassed a nice retirement sum - AND, they also had a pension and lifetime health care, etc
Well, they went broke....his stock lost 95% of the value, they manipulated the health care so it wasn't even worthwhile to take it (compared to ACA or market rates)....he does get a small pension.
Neither of these people had families...luckily. Neither of them bought new cars or anything fancy either, so they were quite conservative in their lifestyles.
The "norm" is not really the norm, rather there is a curve like anything else...
I even have a friend who was a postal delivery guy....retired and figured he would just make it on his gubment pension. Well, his dad took sick and he was made POA and....lo and behold, Dad had a few million he has saved up!
My buddy took perfect care of Dad until the end...but now he has a Florida house on the water, a leased new car and goes out to eat a lot!
You never know. karma is involved despite our desire for planning...
Doom, gloom, and schadenfreude are the meat & potatoes of C-D. It doesn't matter what someone posts they're doing or did, it will always be substandard to what they could have done or should be doing.
It's the game that goes round 'n round with no end, there is never a right answer there's just if only and that was the wrong thing to do.
Somehow, despite all the not optimal things people do, despite not getting every penny they could have because they were in this stock vs that stock, this fund vs that fund, many people do manage to retire and of those a good portion of them even have substantial assets and/or safety nets when they do.
Sometimes it just plain dumb luck, sometimes it's hard work, sometimes it's because over a long period of time it worked out, sometimes it's savvy moves; there are many paths to get to a comfortable spot and life is a journey. You don't have to be perfect you just have to participate fairly consistently and do reasonable things most of the time for a bunch of years.
Location: Was Midvalley Oregon; Now Eastside Seattle area
13,073 posts, read 7,511,991 times
Reputation: 9798
Quote:
Originally Posted by usual points
Most everyone I know has most of their retirement money in target funds or balanced mutual funds. A significant amount of these investments is in the stock market. They withdraw their money once a year.
What should they do if the stock market crashes in the months before their annual withdrawal?
Do you have enough cash, money market or bond fund money set aside in separate accounts to cover your expenses in retirement while you wait for the stock market to recover? How much would the stock market have to fall before you access your bonds or money market funds instead of your mutual funds/ETF's that have stock market exposure?
usual points, All of the replies here are correct, but they are not answering your question very well. From my reading of what posters have revealed about themselves, quite a few of them have other retirement assets or assets that were converted into something else that enhances their retirement. It is easy to say, optimized your retirement, by fully invested all the time, in the SP5 or like, dollar-cost-average, forever; It is also easy to say, a 3.5%-4% decumulation from your SP5 or like, will give you near 100% success for 30 years in retirement. All statistically.
I have already stated on this thread, what and how our retirement assets are allocated. I have also stated how our Retirement Income is derived. They are Not the same. The 10% of our assets that is directly exposed to the Markets is because stuff happened: 1) Asset values of the deferred GLWB annuities increased tracking the SP; 2) The value of the Rentals have increased (Seattle); 3) I liquidated much of the Indexed IRA/Roth/nonqualified money, to purchase our retirement home (Seattle area) prior to sale of our Oregon home. We are retired and we had to show $$, be qualified for a loan, and to be able to outbid 14 others. So the 10% remaining Market exposed, is what I feel comfortable to act as an emergency fund, fun funds, trading and funds for the LTC of 6 months deductible. Hopefully I have crafted our Retirement Income to be secure and inflation proof. Only time and our health will tell.
JMO: Have the knowledge for a Plan B. Don't believe everything you hear/told.
Last edited by leastprime; 07-01-2019 at 01:07 AM..
Two of the smartest people I know - both early-on computer (and other) geniuses, one with an MBA and the other a robotics pioneer....lost most ALL of their retirement money. Some of it was even insult added to injury.....
Example - one is a top programmer who was invested in a lot of tech....yep, when the dot-com crashed happened in about 1999-2000, he lost 40% or more (I think it was a million). He used to come into my workplace before that and laugh at me "ha ha, you are still working and I'm going to the country club".
Guess what? He's still working...and I haven't been for 20 years!
The other was moving up the ladder of skills inside Lucent. He had participated in their stock buying program and amassed a nice retirement sum - AND, they also had a pension and lifetime health care, etc
Well, they went broke....his stock lost 95% of the value, they manipulated the health care so it wasn't even worthwhile to take it (compared to ACA or market rates)....he does get a small pension.
Neither of these people had families...luckily. Neither of them bought new cars or anything fancy either, so they were quite conservative in their lifestyles.
The "norm" is not really the norm, rather there is a curve like anything else...
I even have a friend who was a postal delivery guy....retired and figured he would just make it on his gubment pension. Well, his dad took sick and he was made POA and....lo and behold, Dad had a few million he has saved up!
My buddy took perfect care of Dad until the end...but now he has a Florida house on the water, a leased new car and goes out to eat a lot!
You never know. karma is involved despite our desire for planning...
my buddy loaded up on lucent stock too. i tried to convince him he is NOT INVESTING , he is speculating by betting on the whims and outcome of one company .
but because he was in the phone installation business he saw great things in them ...
however he saw things no one cared about in the rest of the world , so once again it wasn't markets but poor investor behavior that did him in with lucent ..
most of these lost it all stories are not about investing , they are about speculating in the whims of individual companies that went bad.
this is why i never invested in my own industry too... you see things the rest of the world does not care about ..
Even retirement money at age 62-65 has money that likely won’t be used to eat for 25-30 years . That money for most should be and needs to be in equities.......diversified or index funds are fine ...just rebalance when things get to far out of whack or cash needs to be refilled
One of the interesting things that I believe correlates with your post is the change in how people are paying for CCRC costs now and down the road as they plan. Many newer top tier facilities are going to a monthly pay system as opposed to a lump sum buy in. As one rep just recently said to me people don't want to give us their money. They will give us their income. We have affiliated with a pay as you go facility and are looking at a new facility that is also pay as you go.
The target audience is people often couples with pension and SS income and or large portfolios who can deploy those for the monthly costs and keep their portfolio in place for the long term which they see as being into their nineties.
One of the interesting things that I believe correlates with your post is the change in how people are paying for CCRC costs now and down the road as they plan. Many newer top tier facilities are going to a monthly pay system as opposed to a lump sum buy in. As one rep just recently said to me people don't want to give us their money. They will give us their income. We have affiliated with a pay as you go facility and are looking at a new facility that is also pay as you go.
The target audience is people often couples with pension and SS income and or large portfolios who can deploy those for the monthly costs and keep their portfolio in place for the long term which they see as being into their nineties.
This makes a lot of sense, I’m glad they are moving that way.
Two of the smartest people I know - both early-on computer (and other) geniuses, one with an MBA and the other a robotics pioneer....lost most ALL of their retirement money. Some of it was even insult added to injury.....
Example - one is a top programmer who was invested in a lot of tech....yep, when the dot-com crashed happened in about 1999-2000, he lost 40% or more (I think it was a million). He used to come into my workplace before that and laugh at me "ha ha, you are still working and I'm going to the country club".
Guess what? He's still working...and I haven't been for 20 years!
The other was moving up the ladder of skills inside Lucent. He had participated in their stock buying program and amassed a nice retirement sum - AND, they also had a pension and lifetime health care, etc
Well, they went broke....his stock lost 95% of the value, they manipulated the health care so it wasn't even worthwhile to take it (compared to ACA or market rates)....he does get a small pension.
Neither of these people had families...luckily. Neither of them bought new cars or anything fancy either, so they were quite conservative in their lifestyles.
The "norm" is not really the norm, rather there is a curve like anything else...
I even have a friend who was a postal delivery guy....retired and figured he would just make it on his gubment pension. Well, his dad took sick and he was made POA and....lo and behold, Dad had a few million he has saved up!
My buddy took perfect care of Dad until the end...but now he has a Florida house on the water, a leased new car and goes out to eat a lot!
You never know. karma is involved despite our desire for planning...
Investing requires a certain personality, not just knowledge. I work in tech and a lot of guys are terrible investors. Most techies are too emotional with the stocks they buy, you shouldn't be too emotional with the stocks you buy. Go with analytics and look at the future growth prospects. Just because you hate a certain company doesn't mean you can't buy the stock.
The guy was smart but not smart enough to realize that Lucent was at the tail end of old tech. We're in Economy 2.0 right now and majority of the population still doesn't get it. I still hear people who must have cable TV, home phone line, and standing on line to order stuff when there's a different and better way to do everything today using current technologies.
People who still think analog are the ones that are losing out on the current stock market rise.
Two of the smartest people I know - both early-on computer (and other) geniuses, one with an MBA and the other a robotics pioneer....lost most ALL of their retirement money. Some of it was even insult added to injury.....
......
Those were the smartest people you know? Wow you need better friends and acquaintances. They were just blinded by greed.
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