February 6, 2023 – Welcome to another installment of my Safe Withdrawal Rate Series. See the landing page of this series here for an intro and a summary of all the posts I’ve written so far. On the menu today is an issue that will impact most retirees: we all likely receive supplemental cash flows … Continue reading Evaluating Annuities, Pensions, and Social Security – SWR Series Part 56| Early Retirement Now
Small-cap value (SCV) stocks got a lot of publicity in the FI/FIRE community. Don't buy the hype! SCV's recent performance has been atrocious!| Early Retirement Now
Welcome! You probably landed on this page because you clicked someone’s link to my Safe Withdrawal Rate Series. Thanks for stopping by! This series has now grown to 30+ parts and if you are looking for a less technical summary before jumping into the nitty-gritty details, I recommend you check out the new “landing page” to my … Continue reading The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 1: Introduction| Early Retirement Now
Update 11/22/2019: After I published a shorter version of this piece on MarketWatch and the story was picked up by YahooFinance as well I got a lot more readers! Thanks and welcome to my blog! Make sure you subscribe to be notified of future blog posts! Both on Yahoo and MarketWatch I saw the expected … Continue reading How much can we earn in retirement without paying federal income taxes?| Early Retirement Now
What? A new case study? I know, I had promised myself to wind down the Case Study Series I ran in 2017/18 after “only” 10 installments. It was a lot of work and a lot of back and forth via email. It takes forever! I mean F-O-R-E-V-E-R! But then again, there’s always a reason to make an … Continue reading A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for Becky and Stephen| Early Retirement Now
March 27, 2019. Back in 2016, I wrote a few posts on trading derivatives, especially options, to generate (mostly) passive income. See the options trading landing page for more info. I’m still running that same strategy but it definitely evolved quite a bit over time. This might be a good time to write a quick … Continue reading Passive income through option writing: Part 3| Early Retirement Now
Since I first published Part 7 of the SWR Series with the accompanying Google Sheet in early 2017, I’ve made several changes and enhancements. Sometimes without much explanation or documentation. So, it would be nice to do a quick update and itemize the changes since then. Whether this is the first time using the toolbox … Continue reading An Updated Google Sheet DIY Withdrawal Rate Toolbox (SWR Series Part 28)| Early Retirement Now
Welcome back to the 20th installment of the Safe Withdrawal Rate series. Check out Part 1 to jump to the beginning of the series and for links to the other parts! This is a follow-up from last week’s post on equity glidepaths to address a few more open questions: Some more details on the mechanics of … Continue reading The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 20: More Thoughts on Equity Glidepaths| Early Retirement Now
One of the most requested topics for our Safe Withdrawal Rate Series (see here to start at Part 1 of our series) has been how to optimally model a dynamic stock/bond allocation in retirement. Of course, as a mostly passive investor, I prefer to not get too much into actively and tactically timing the equity … Continue reading The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 19: Equity Glidepaths in Retirement| Early Retirement Now
This is a long overdue post considering how much we’ve written about safe withdrawal rates already. Sequence of Return Risk, sometimes also called Sequence Risk, is the scourge of early retirement. Or any retirement for that matter. So, here we go, finally, we have a designated post on this topic for our Safe Withdrawal Rate series (check here to … Continue reading The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 14: Sequence of Return Risk| Early Retirement Now
One of the most important topics in financial planning is how to transform an initial portfolio into a safe and sustainable retirement income stream. I’ve put a lot of thought into this topic and published 50+ posts on my blog. To make my research more accessible, I created this “landing page” for everyone interested in … Continue reading The Safe Withdrawal Rate Series| Early Retirement Now
April 14, 2023 – Welcome to a new installment of the Safe Withdrawal Rate Series. Please check out the SWR landing page for a summary of and a link to the other posts. Today’s topic is homeownership. I’ve already made the case that not just rental properties but even homeownership can be a great tool … Continue reading Accounting for Homeownership in (Early) Retirement – SWR Series Part 57| Early Retirement Now
Remember the blog post from a few months ago, How To “Lie” With Personal Finance? I got a fresh set of four new “lies” today! Again, just for the record, that other post and today’s post should be understood as a way to spot the lies and misunderstandings in the personal finance world, not a manual … Continue reading How To “Lie” With Personal Finance – Part 2 (Homeownership Edition)| Early Retirement Now
Sometimes folks ask me what has been my best investment ever. I normally answer that this is not the right question to ask. We didn’t have one lucky break that made us rich overnight. We never owned the FAANG stocks (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google/Alphabet) outright, only through index funds. No lottery winnings, neither literally … Continue reading My best investment ever: Homeownership?!| Early Retirement Now
Few topics in personal finance and in the early retirement community stir up emotions as nicely as the pros and cons of homeownership. Some folks in the FIRE community are renters and swear by it and others are very happy homeowners and/or real estate investors. Neither side is wrong. Those with more nomadic lifestyles probably … Continue reading See that house over there? It’s an investment!| Early Retirement Now
The Safety First retirement approach can be useful for traditional retirees. It's not viable for early retirees, due to low interest rates.| Early Retirement Now
Box Spreads can provide a high-yield and tax-advantaged alternative to CDs and money market accounts. Here's a step-by-step guide.| Early Retirement Now
A recent paper claims that a portfolio with 100% stocks (50% domestic, 50% international) is optimal. I point out the flaws in that analysis.| Early Retirement Now
Looking at 100+ years of return data, stocks offered an attractive investment for the long run, both in absolute terms and relative to bonds.| Early Retirement Now
Welcome back to another installment of the Safe Withdrawal Rate Series. This one is about taxes. Amazing, how after 30+ installments in the series, I have written conspicuously little about taxes. Sure, I’ve done some Case Studies where, among many other issues, I delved into the tax planning, most recently in the Case Study for … Continue reading Asset Location: Do Bonds Really Belong in Retirement Accounts? – SWR Series Part 35| Early Retirement Now
I like Die With Zero idea, but the numerical recommendations are nonsensical. There are better ways to deal with the overaccumulation risk.| Early Retirement Now
June 16, 2023 – I wonder if I’ll ever run out of material for the Safe Withdrawal Series. Fifty-eight parts now, and the new ideas come faster than I can write posts these days. This month, I initially planned to write about the effects of timing Social Security in the context of safe withdrawal simulations. … Continue reading Flexibility is Overrated – SWR Series Part 58| Early Retirement Now
How does Sequence Risk interact with Social Security timing? Should you claim Social Security early to prevent withdrawing too much from your equity portfolio during a downturn early in retirement?| Early Retirement Now
