Question, low annual return
Out of curiosity I tried to push the return on investment down below the withdrawal rate and it allowed me to 'retire' even though my principle would be eaten into. I think there should definitely be some timeline adjustment possible (# of years planned to live on retirement income). Depending on how long you plan to live and what kind of decreasing balance you would be comfortable with may be interesting to play with.
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Adminkablamo (Admin, Networthify) commented
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Adminkablamo (Admin, Networthify) commented
Thanks Steven. I'm working on a longer explanation of this as a blog post. The short answer is I don't really agree with doing retirement planning this way.
In the olden days you were retired for 5 years and then died. I think predicting how long you are going to live is not really possible and nowadays its not uncommon for people to spend 20 or 30 years in retirement. Being retired for that long is a lot more like early retirement. I think a better solution is to get to a place financially where your daily expenses are covered by your investment returns.
Its better to think of yourself as a poor frugal version of Justin Bieber or your favorite sports hero. If you retire at 50 and live to 100 you need to have money for 50 years of expenses. To survive that you need to have the same mind set as people who are doing early retirement. You're situation is not really that different from people who retire "early".
And planning to spend your nest egg down to zero and time it to coincide exactly with your death is impossible.