It was almost 16 years ago I started this thread, and for anyone bothering to read it - who wants to know what happened - here is the update. (someone asked me for financial advice recently and I pointed them to this forum).
We took Rick Ferri's advice. In fact, we signed up with his company and they managed our simple portfolio (mostly VTI and similar stuff) for a while, then when he changed companies, we did as well. Our rate of withdrawal has been about 7.5% annually. Even with 7.5% withdrawals, our nest egg is still floating around the same level as when we started. Of note, when the market crashed during COVID, we found it was easy to reduce our withdrawals to less than 5%. We made no changes to our portfolio despite breathtaking losses, but the market has come back in spades, so "holding course" was clearly a good strategy.
It is also worth noting that though we spend a lot more money than we used to, we still look at saving a few cents at the gas pump, buy used cars, and fly economy on domestic flights (we do treat ourselves to discounted flatbeds on international travel). Warnings we received about dramatically changing lifestyle to "match" our wealth were unnecessary for us, but we obviously didn't fall into that trap.
We obtained a Pledged Asset Line with Schwab and it provides enormous flexibility as we can borrow against our nest egg without selling (we use it judiciously for real estate purchases and for bridging). I strongly recommend it.
ONE THING TO KNOW: When you "retire" (even if you are still doing stuff but have no W2 income) you will find it IMPOSSIBLE to get a home loan. DO NOT PAY OFF YOUR MORTGAGE without thinking through the options. We did it and it's taken years to figure out how to re-establish those loans. Banks do not seem to think having cash assets 4 or 5 times the loan value is important.
Thanks again to the people who provided help back then.
Note - I played a lot with Firecalc (https://firecalc.com/), which I strongly recommend. After a lot of playing around I discovered that the important thing is not that you invest at the bottom of the market, but that you NOT invest at the top of a bubble. 1 million invested at the top of the dot-com bubble would have immediately been reduced to $600k. But assume you avoid that (easy to say, of course) you will find most investment "strategies" (to use the firecalc term) succeed. (there have been 4 big bubbles since the start of the stock market and these cycles always fail first as you increase withdrawal rates.)
We took Rick Ferri's advice. In fact, we signed up with his company and they managed our simple portfolio (mostly VTI and similar stuff) for a while, then when he changed companies, we did as well. Our rate of withdrawal has been about 7.5% annually. Even with 7.5% withdrawals, our nest egg is still floating around the same level as when we started. Of note, when the market crashed during COVID, we found it was easy to reduce our withdrawals to less than 5%. We made no changes to our portfolio despite breathtaking losses, but the market has come back in spades, so "holding course" was clearly a good strategy.
It is also worth noting that though we spend a lot more money than we used to, we still look at saving a few cents at the gas pump, buy used cars, and fly economy on domestic flights (we do treat ourselves to discounted flatbeds on international travel). Warnings we received about dramatically changing lifestyle to "match" our wealth were unnecessary for us, but we obviously didn't fall into that trap.
We obtained a Pledged Asset Line with Schwab and it provides enormous flexibility as we can borrow against our nest egg without selling (we use it judiciously for real estate purchases and for bridging). I strongly recommend it.
ONE THING TO KNOW: When you "retire" (even if you are still doing stuff but have no W2 income) you will find it IMPOSSIBLE to get a home loan. DO NOT PAY OFF YOUR MORTGAGE without thinking through the options. We did it and it's taken years to figure out how to re-establish those loans. Banks do not seem to think having cash assets 4 or 5 times the loan value is important.
Thanks again to the people who provided help back then.
Note - I played a lot with Firecalc (https://firecalc.com/), which I strongly recommend. After a lot of playing around I discovered that the important thing is not that you invest at the bottom of the market, but that you NOT invest at the top of a bubble. 1 million invested at the top of the dot-com bubble would have immediately been reduced to $600k. But assume you avoid that (easy to say, of course) you will find most investment "strategies" (to use the firecalc term) succeed. (there have been 4 big bubbles since the start of the stock market and these cycles always fail first as you increase withdrawal rates.)
Statistics: Posted by GeorgePlaten — Sun Jan 11, 2026 9:28 am — Replies 69 — Views 4814