Everything that happens has a earthly reason. Even illnesses and accidents. One may have a preventive lifestyle or a provocative lifestyle. It’s a choice.

I did use Fidelity’s Retirement Planner and met with their reps (I am a Fido investor) just to make sure I had not left anything out. My SWR rate, BTW, is about 2.4% and the ratio of investments (taxable and IRA) to expenses is about 45:1.

Just because MD has Sales, State Income, Piggybacked Local Income, Personal Property, and Real Estate Property taxes? I left MD back in ’78 and never looked back!

I am a lot older then most on this forum at 56. I have retired this year, but my DW is still working. We won’t have to go the extreme route, but I find this blog a wonderful storehouse of great ideas to save money.

We have a paid off house worth around 300k and retirement accounts of about a million. We have retirement medical insurance from previous employer. It cost us $80 per month with a combined $3000 deductible. It includes $20 3 month prescriptions and dental. I still get income from commissions on my long time accounts about $25k per year and my DW earns about 38k. We hope to move out of tax hell (Maryland) in a few years.

However without our retirement medical insurance, it would be very hard to do this extreme early retirement as you age IMHO. I think you can be proactive and live a very healthy lifestyle, but some illnesses and accidents are in Gods hands.

Build a big nest egg
retire from rat race
free lance (or whatever) and bring in some cash
minimize withdrawal until 60s

Jacob, where do live now?

Personally, I recently retired at 41 with $700,000. Everyone thinks I’m crazy but I think I can make a go of it as a single man with no kids.

Then you are good.

Note: I use the case of McDonald’s because it’s an example of a type of job that requires zero experience. So even if you’ve been out of the “rat race” for 10 years and no longer have marketable skills, you’ll still have a potential source of income…

@Canadian Dream – I meant to include the war, pestilence, famine, and that last one as well but in all the excitement of the writing, I forgot. Another consideration is the bus scenario. I might get hit by a bus tomorrow or I might get terminal cancer in 5 years. We can calculate expectation values forever and ever. What I suggest is to live every day as if one is going to live forever. I do not think that retirement is a financial point. It is just a state of mind. I don’t plan to change anything fundamental when I “retire”. I don’t see my life as having two stages other than preretirement means that a job is demanded rather than chosen. Lots of people are mentally trapped by jobs and notions of “safety”. I used to be the same way, so I can see the difference now. Nothing is ever 100% safe.

@thebaglady – Yes, but you could also get hit by the bus-scenario above making the quest and effort that has gone into extra safety meaningless. Incidentally, whenever I give my numbers they are for a single person living together with another person. If you want household numbers, double everything I say. I will not make that assumption when I talk about limits though. For instance, if I say it is possible to live on X dollars, I mean that that is possible for a single person. The fact that I live with DW means that I get a few extra benefits due to scaling.

So with a 70 year timeline (or 55 in my case) the reality becomes we can’t predict anything that far in advance so we have to accept the earlier you retire the more unknown your future will be. Accept the fact and adapt as you go. At least that is my plan when I pull the plug in another 15 years.

Good post,
Tim

That is a very interesting perspective. I’m suddenly trying to think of ways to become completely independent from the financial system for various budget categories.

* food – have enough seeds and dirt and perhaps animal stock to replenish your own food.
* housing – buying a house, trailer, or boat makes one more independent, but there are still taxes to consider. Also maintenance, repairs, and/or insurance.
* clothing – I can actually imagine buying so many clothes that you never need to buy more. Or you can have cotton, wool, spinning machine, sewing machine, etc. However, I sure like a lot of the fabrics that have come out in the last 20 years and would be sad to miss them.

It also strikes me that you could trade financial dependence for dependence on other things such as your social structure, your health, etc. It’s probably good to diversify here as well as everywhere else. Have money you can fall back on, skills you can fall back on, friends, church, government programs, land, solar panels, etc.

**

My current plan is to withdraw 4% of the current amount each year [probably (4/12)% of the current amount each month]. If my investments are doing very well, I’ll put the extra into savings (and stop counting that money in my “total”). If they are doing poorly, I’ll try to live on less, but if I have some savings, I can use that. This way I absorb the volatility. I may have trouble some years, but I won’t get into a situation where I am out of money forever.

Another strategy is to not retire the second I barely have enough, at least not if I have so much because the market is awesome right then.

Also, I will generally make my withdrawals from whatever sector is doing best to help keep my portfolio balanced.

Yes, I’m shy about my numbers. You should be able to piece together the clues in my posts to get a good idea about it though. Hint: It’s far from the million dollars that all the other pf bloggers seem to want.
It seems that pf bloggers either keep their name or their numbers a secret. I plan to eventually reveal my name and make the blog a part of my freelance/author “empire”. If anyone has some good arguments for posting my networth, I’ll be happy to listen. My worries is that someone starts using it against me, frivolously suing me, breaking into my home, cross referencing my name to account numbers, etc. Maybe I’m too paranoid. I am currently reallocating my assets for income/yield, that is to say, whenever I have cash, I invest for yield and whenever I sell a position, the monies go to a yield position. I have about half of my living expenses (after we move out of this expensive rental) covered by now. The reason that I don’t do a complete reallocation now is because I can save a lot more on taxes if I wait until I don’t have a day job income.

Also Jacob you are a bit shy with your numbers – how much of a retirement nest egg do you have? Do you currently use any of this for living expenses?

Good post though.