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Can I Retire Yet? (Part II)
Welcome back to the Retirement Hangout! If you haven’t read Part I of Can I Retire Yet?, I recommend that you go back and read that first. In Part I, you estimated the annual income stream you will need in retirement, and what portion of that needs to come from savings. But what size retirement savings stash will provide that income – for the rest of your life? Drawing Income from a Nest Egg — the 4% Rule Perhaps you’ve heard of the 4% Rule. This is the amount many financial planners suggest you can withdraw from a retirement portfolio and be confident your savings won’t run out. If…
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Can I Retire Yet? (Part I)
“How much money do I need to retire?” Just about everyone anywhere near retirement asks themselves this question – as do younger people planning ahead and, sadly, too many folks who are already retired but have some nagging doubts. Perhaps you’ve been faithfully saving and investing via your 401(k) plan or IRA and have accumulated a nice nest egg — maybe $250,000 or $500,000 or even more. Seems like a lot of money. But is it enough? How can you know? Countless places — easily accessible on the Internet — are all too willing to provide the answer. Unfortunately, many of them are also eager to sell you financial products or…
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First Post!
Welcome to my blog! I retired in 2014, after working 30-plus years for natural resource agencies as a policy analyst and planner, including work on strategic planning, capital program budgeting, cost-benefit analysis, and watershed planning. In this blog, I would like to share some of what I’ve learned as I’ve made the shift into life after work. I will write several posts on the big question facing anyone contemplating retirement,“Can I afford it?” Having obsessed over this question myself for some time, and waded through a morass of conflicting and self-serving financial advice, I’ve come to the realization that understanding where you stand financially is surprisingly simple – if you…