[Editor’s Comment: Today we have a republished post from Physician on FIRE, a member of The White Coat Investor Network. The original post ran here, but if you missed it the first time, it’s new to you! Physician on FIRE is all about achieving financial independence and retiring early. In this post, he asks what is Enough. I have Enough but I haven’t stopped working hard or wanting more. I wrote a post about having Beyond Enough which explains how I’ve had to change my goals to include more giving, more savings, more helping my kids and more expenses for things we enjoy. I’m still figuring out my Beyond Enough but like PoF I agree that we all need to first figure out how much is Enough.]
Enough.
It’s a word that factors heavily in so many calculations and decisions we make every day.
How much propofol do I push on induction? Enough.
How much dinner do my boys need to finish and still get a treat? Enough.
How much money should you set aside each month? Enough.
How much do you need to retire? Enough.
How much time do you have to do all the things you want to do? Not nearly enough.
How Much is Enough?
Enough is an amount or number that is highly individualized. Enough also happens to be the title of a library book I just finished by John C. Bogle of Vanguard fame. From the Introduction:
“At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have… enough.”
Like Mr. Bogle, I found this anecdote to be quite compelling. Knowing what Enough means for you and being content when you have Enough is powerful stuff. The hedge fund manager on the hedonic treadmill may never get to Enough. Or, if one day he realizes has Enough money, he may not have Enough of other things that matter in life, like friendship, time, love, and happiness.
I’d like to return to a few of the questions first posed. Exactly how much is Enough? Propofol? About 2 to 2.5 mg/kg usually does the trick.Dinner? We like the boys to finish the things we know they eat and at least try the foods that are new.
The money questions are a focus here on this site. How much is Enough to set aside each month? It depends on your goals, but I’m going to assume that Financial Independence is among them. To get on a reasonably fast track, do your best to live on half and FI should be yours within two decades.
How Much to Retire?
How much is Enough to retire? At least 25 times your annual spending, which allows you to use a 4% withdrawal rate and expect it to last 30 years. If you are like me and expect to have a longer lasting retirement, you might be more comfortable with a 3% initial withdrawal rate, and will need a minimum of 33.3 years worth of expenses in your nest egg to have Enough.
Your spending dictates your needs. You have probably figured out that you don’t actually need to replace a percentage of your income in retirement as many experts will have you believe. That works if you are spending the vast majority of your earnings each year, but that’s not going to be the case for you or me. The less you spend, the less you need to retire. Income shouldn’t factor into this calculation.
Of course, you need to know how much you spend, and that can be difficult, particularly early in your career. You are working on paying down student loans, saving up for a down payment on a home, perhaps starting a family or moving for a new job when the first one doesn’t pan out.
When life becomes stable, you can better look at how you spend your money. The concept of Enough enters the picture again. Are you spending wisely, or spending to add to an ever-growing pile of stuff? My wife, who reads much more and looks much better than me, just finished the über-popular book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing.
The premise of the book is that we have way too much stuff, and the author proposes a radical way of helping you offload that burden. We do own too many things, not just my family, but most everyone I know. Yet another book that I borrowed from the library, “Work Less, Live More” by Bob Clyatt tells me that per capita consumption has doubled over the past 30 years. A peek into your neighbor’s garage or mine will confirm the stat.
Recognizing that we have more than Enough stuff is a good start. The next step will be to take bigger steps towards reducing inventory, but that takes time. How much time do I have? Not nearly enough.
Will You Have Enough Time?
How can I “buy some time”? I have written before about how money buys time and the best way to buy time is by working less (as in part time) or not working at all in an early retirement. How can we make these lifestyles a reality? We come full circle and start setting aside a good amount of money each month. How much? Have you been paying any attention???
Star wide receiver Calvin Johnson of the Detroit Lions seems to understand the concept of Enough. He walked away from $67 million when he retired early this off-season with plenty left in the tank. Fellow blogger Mr. Firestation is another man who is on to the concept of Enough. He left his Megacorp job (and the opportunity for further career advancement) Apri 1, 2016, just a couple weeks shy of his 50th birthday. He’s got Enough and he knows it.John Bogle and Joseph Heller are two more people who have clearly mastered the concept of Enough. Mr. Bogle is proud to share with us the fact that his net worth is less than $100 million, when there are hedge funders bringing in over a billion a year. His estimated $80 million could be much higher, but he already has more than Enough.
How do you define Enough? Do you know it when you see it? Will you have Enough money when you are ready to retire? Is $1 million or $2 million enough? $4 million? $10 million?!?
How much is enough? Who knows!
How did this make it through moderation ???
I love your faith in the moderation tools available to bloggers. It’s very cute. 🙂 Every day spams makes it through the filters and every day real comments get held.
As usual, a great read! Thanks!!
I have a question, you mentioned that the 25x annual spending is the number to retire. Could this rule be applied to any age group? eg. Can someone retire in his 30’s if he has 25x? Or how it works?
Thanks again!
Michael, the 4% rule (25x spending saved) shows that withdraws at that rate would leave you with a VERY HIGH chance that your money would last at least 30 years. In fact, more than half of people it would last way longer. But conservative early-retirement people (like myself) tend to go with a lower 3-3.5% withdraw rate to increase the odds. For myself I’m looking at a 90%+ chance of success withdrawing 3.5% for 50 years. Being in your 30s you might want to go a bit more conservative at 3%, so 33.3x your annual spending saved (invested). Hope that helps!
So is there is any kind of formula or calculator that includes possible age of retirement along with how many x’s needed?
Eg. I put the age to retire to see how many times spending is needed to retire at that particular age
Michael, there are lots of calculators out there, I’d recommend Darrow Kirkpatricks website to get a good starting point – https://www.caniretireyet.com/
There’s also FireCalc which if you just plug in a few simple numbers will tell you the chances your net worth will survive at a 4% withdrawal rate during any point since 1871.
https://www.firecalc.com/
Not really.
Some reasons:
1) In reality it depends more on how long you have left to live than your age. I use 50 years for my own planning (I’m almost 48). If your life expectancy is even 5-10 years different from some elses’, the results could be quite different.
2) It depends on your portfolio mix. Plug numbers into a Monte Carlo simulator and you’ll see different portfolio allocations give very different results.
So there isn’t a solid magic number chart that would work for everyone. You can do the work yourself though for your specific situation.
Figure your life expectancy. Plug your portfolio into a Monte Carlo simulator. Start with a starting balance of 25x current spending and then adjust upward to reach the confidence level desired (90%+ is generally very high). And/or adjust the portfolio to move the confidence estimate.
One thing to bear in mind, 100% stocks does not always give the highest confidence level.
Of course you could also work with a financial planner to help figure this all out – with the inclusion of a ton of life specifics that could come into play. I’m biased though, being in the field. 🙂
The math might be that precise, but assuming reality can be that precise is a big mistake. You really need to be comfortable with some uncertainty, because there is a great deal of uncertainty with this topic. Even the 4% rule is based on what amounts to really just four independent 30 year periods.
So yes, people have made those sorts of formulas and calculators, but it’s a garbage in/garbage out process. If you don’t agree with the assumptions, you shouldn’t trust the conclusions.
You can reduce the uncertainty with products like Single Premium Immediate Annuities.
https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/spia-the-good-annuity/
But there’s a good chance you’ll be giving up some return/additional spending/additional giving to heirs in exchange for reducing the uncertainty.
If you use Personal Capital, their retirement planner allows you to play around with various numbers and scenarios. You can even put in specific income events or expenses and it will give you a probability of success.
It’s a rule of thumb, but obviously the longer you need a portfolio to support you, the lower that number probably should be. But how much lower there is a great deal of debate. It’s important to understand where the 4% rule comes from, then you can apply it to your situation and your sequence of returns risk tolerance.
https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/the-4-rule-safe-withdrawal-rates/
“Enough” for us was $2.5million with no debt (no mortgage or otherwise). Once we hit that we knew anything else would just allow us to give more generously. So that’s what we do. Our current standard of living (which includes vacations, etc) is covered (90%+ chance) for the next 50 years. Income from my blog and financial planning largely go to blessing other people now. It’s an awesome position to be in – and worth non-FIRE people striving toward.
Enough for us is going to be 3.5 million right now, though we could certainly get by with less. Shoot for the stars and land on the moon!
I think once we are completely debt free this number might come down. I’ll likley aim for $2.5 million before going part time and to do 100% of what I love at my job. Hopefully that’ll happen mid 40s or earlier.
Honestly, though I have a family I love and a job I really enjoy. That is enough for me even now.
I guess what I meant above is my number is 2.5 million to start part time work and 3.5 to 4 million to retire.
Those are probably our numbers to hit the “re-evaluate life situation” pause button as well. We’re in our early 40’s.
With our current investment amounts, contributing the same current yearly amount and assuming a 5% CAGR, we hit $2.5M in about 7 years. If we contributed nothing after that and it grew at a 5% CAGR, we’d be at $3.5M in 7 years or $4M in 10. So, potentially we could pare back to income that only supports our living expenses (and provides health insurance) at that $2.5M mark.
But…at our current mortgage payoff rate, we still have 20 years left (hope to lop off a few years with additional payments). And, we are the parents of a preschooler and a toddler, so who knows what our college expense obligations are going to look like down the road (even with our funding 529s). $2.5M is definitely a decision point in the road, not a destination.
I like the concept of a “re-evaluate life situation” number.
Defining enough is very difficult for each person and it will probably change for each person over time. For instance, if you are happy with your life right now, and that happiness goes on for a couple years and continues, you might have enough. It’s another way of saying why fix something if it isn’t broken?
But inevitably something will pop up that you will want, and you will convince yourself that you are not quite as happy unless you have that thing. That may be months or years down the road. It may be because you are in a different stage in life. But I think the concept of enough is not a one-time thing, or getting to a one-time net worth. I think it will change for people over time and I think the goal is to try as much as possible to always be close to that “enough number” at whatever stage of your life that you’re in.
20% equities minimal-3-4% SWR-almost 100% portfolio will not be depleted after 30yrs
I planned on 4 million and 5-6% fixed return with cds and bond funds but the second part failed us big time
SEQUENCE OF RETURNS is paramount prior to retiring
When you reach that GOAL CASH IN YOUR CHIPS
For us it’s a difficult number to accurately calculate at this point in our lives because, as you said, we’re young and don’t expect to spend like we do now in retirement. However, we do eventually plan to downsize our expenses dramatically and so I expect to not need much more than 2 mil.
The VERY BIG question that I don’t think anyone can accurately answer though is how much health care will cost. This is especially true for anyone retiring early.
True, Jason. Another thing that makes it tough if you’re a long ways from having enough. If your Number is $2.5 Million or $3.5 Million in today’s dollars, you may need $5 Million in 15 or 20 years to have the same lifestyle you could buy today.
Hopefully, the health care situation will become less uncertain over time. Right now, it’s a bit of a mess.
Best,
-PoF
For a greater than 30 year retirement you need increased percentage in equities.
How much do you need in equities?
And I wonder if this changes if one believes Bernstein’s prediction (Four Pillars, via Gordon equation) that stocks are pretty overvalued right now and can be expected to return more similarly to bonds over the next few decades.
If your retirement horizon is > 30 years you need >50% equities. Early Retirement Now (ERN) has a whole series of well thought out spreadsheets and blog posts about this. POF frequently quotes his work also. Vagabond reads his blog, POF reads his blog. So should you. Basically the earlier you retire the higher percentile of equities and lower SWR will keep you from depleting your portfolio.
I think it’s important to point out where your recommendation comes from – past data. In the past, one needed > 50% equities to maintain higher withdrawal rates. Will the future be like that? I’d probably bet that way, but there is no guarantee. Be very humble when it comes to extrapolating the past into the future.
The best thing to do is adjust as you go. If you find 5 years into your retirement that your nest egg has doubled, you can probably spend a little more. If you find out you retired into a 4 year bear market, you probably need to dial back a little. Being flexible about what you spend provides an immense amount of safety, far more than anything else you can do including setting your initial withdrawal rate and your asset allocation.
I agree with you. If you retire early I think something less than 4% is wise then adjust as you go. Be flexible not panicky.
Exactly. 4%ish is the starting point, nothing more.
Ah a philosophy post today…nice. This is a very true and important piece of the happiness pie. Understanding your enough gets you to the goal of Financial Independence. For me, I am not quite sure yet. I feel like I will know when it gets here but for now moderation in all things.
Great article in light of the recent Peds/Ortho/Dental salary discussion
I’ve had enough! Just kidding. But seriously, enough is enough. A great post on a great subject. …Enough for me might not be the same enough for someone else. Enough is absolutely subjective. I actually really like this post because it puts the ball in each of our own courts, individually. To search and seek to find our own enough. Okay, enough for now…
I agree with Ken unless by “cash in your chips” he means to go to only safety and stay there forever. I made my portfolio more “conservative” (lower volatility) after reaching FI, because I didn’t want to go back to being “Non-FI” – even briefly.
On the other hand, I will always be invested in some degree of equities since growth is mandatory.
Afterall, our “Enough” often increases over time either due to changing market conditions, inflation, or lifestyle creep.
Yes, according to Big ERN’s analysis, you need at least 50% equities or so for your money to have a good chance of lasting 60 years. https://earlyretirementnow.com/2016/12/07/the-ultimate-guide-to-safe-withdrawal-rates-part-1-intro/
You mean “needed” not “need.” Neither you, BIG ERN, or I know what Wealthy doc will need going forward.
Great post POF! And I especially like it because it is based on one of my favorite books. There’s a lot of good information here, including the comment about dropping the percentage for SWR if you want to get to 50+ year retirement fund.
Enough for me would be doing the things I love to do (live, travel, give back, etc) without the fear of running out of money. I’m estimating that number to be between $2-3 million once liabilities disappear. It would be nice to add some passive income as a hedge to this number. This is of course scaling back slowly to 3/4 time, 1/2 time and taking the toe dip into retirement before pulling the plug on your career.
But, first things first…let me get to worthless before the FI pursuit! 🙂
Excellent article PoF. For most of us on a site like this it is some variation of accumulating enough, determining future spending, and predicting the likelihood of your portfolio lasting as long as you need it to. I have done the same but I have an additional recommendaton. Make sure you know how you would respond in the event of a prolonged economic downturn like the 2008 great recession or the dot-com bust in the early 2000s. You might need a bigger FI number, a smaller house or maybe do nothing, you’ll be just fine. In the immortal words of Mike Tyson, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
I agree. Your written financial plan should include instructions of what you will do in a bear market.
Listening to Malkiel today he feels double digit returns are not in the future
He thinks 6% and likes dividend paying stock funds instead of total bond for retirement income
Wade Pfau and others say to DERISK your portfolio early in retirement as a bad sequence of returns can ruin your plan big time THINK ABOUT IT
20% is the minimum 100% bonds can FAIL(depletion of portfolio)
look at trinity study
I think unless you have a defined benefit pension or a terminal illness you need some stock exposure.
Enough is always a challenging and individual call as everyone here has alluded to in their posts.
I will add that 25x or 30x is not just about your investable assets. Social Security and for those lucky enough to have a pension likely do not need investments totaling 25x or 30x.
As you get close, you really need a detailed cash flow analysis. ????
Goal was to have enough passive dividend income from our stocks/pension without needing to sell/divest anything. We are there already so working is just adding additional tax burden and income/savings. Not sure we will ever have to divest our retirement accounts, but will be forced to with the accounts we have which are subject to mandatory distributions at age 70.
No you don’t. You just move the money from a tax-deferred account to a taxable account and reinvest it (paying the taxes of course.) Nobody is making you spend it. That said, if you never spend any principle, you’re likely to be the richest guy in the graveyard, so make sure that’s what you want. You might be happier spending it or giving it to charity or heirs before your death.
Not sure that will be ideal from a tax standpoint. Maybe move some of those accounts over time. That’s the project for my CPA to minimize tax burden. I’m in my 40s so who knows by the time I’m 70 what taxes /IRS rules will look like.
You probably ought to give some serious consideration to Roth conversions at some point.
that is in the plan too. That assumes Roth tax laws are same down the road. Remember Obama had mandatory Roth distributions on the books but it never passed because it was stuck in some other bill that didn’t pass. The only guarantee is death and taxes…nothing else is guaranteed.
Yes. All laws can change.
What is enough financially keeps changing for me. I thought that I had “enough” even when I had just graduated and had a fraction of what we do now. We seemed rich compared to what we had as students. I could retire tomorrow on what we have saved 12 years later and that would be enough for us to live comfortably. However, I also still enjoy working and putting more away would allow me to do more things for myself and my family and others when I do stop working down the road. I still want more and it is a moving target. I think one of the keys to resilience and happiness is being able to adjust what is “enough” to whatever it is that you actually have or can achieve without compromising other aspects of your life. Planning/goal setting is important, and honestly part of the fun, but the more adaptable you are, the better.
Enough for us will be $2 million.
My wife is the physician. I’m a teacher. At our projected retirement date I will have accrued 3 different pensions (10 years of Federal employment plus teaching in 2 separate states) that will add up to about $42,000/year of which $32,000 will be COLA’d. Without the pensions our number would probably be closer to $2.5 – $3 million.
Pensions certainly make it easier to lower your target. Of course, you can just look at that as a sort of delayed compensation. Those of us who don’t have pensions were compensated in other ways, and hopefully saved a portion of that compensation to provide retirement income.
It appears you’re expecting the pension to cover about 1/3 of your expenses. You should be able to live very well with that pension plus $60,000 to $80,000 additional spending money per year (assuming a 3% to 4% withdrawal rate).
Best,
-PoF
I guess that there are three questions that I would like to ask anyone who was looking to retire in the next six months or so before assessing whether you have adequate resources to retire.
1) What is your actual spending right now? What adjustments (plus and minus) need to be made in your current level of spending that will be different once you retire?
2) What is the value of any pension payments and any other post-retirement benefit that you will receive? For example, if your pension is $70k per year with a COLA and your health insurance is fully paid and your annual needs are $40k, your needs for a large nest egg is sufficiently reduced.
3) What are you going to do about health insurance? I have to be honest with you. I estimated that medical costs from age 54-65 would be approximately $275k when I retired in 2013. My current estimate is closer to 4400k.
Surely you meant 400k or 440k?
Not going to be retiring early anyway, so I don’t really have to worry about that aspect of things, but I do think I’ll be able to retire at age 64-65. A few thoughts on that:
1. I think that health insurance outside of employer-provided will be prohibitively expensive. Can probably retire at 65 years minus whatever the COBRA duration is at that point, but not before it because I doubt I’ll ever be able to afford privately bought insurance for myself and spouse before we get to the medicare age.
2. I don’t understand when people say their spending will decrease in retirement years. I don’t spend a lot of money because I work a lot of hours. If I was not working, I can see how I’d have time to spend a hell of a lot more, not less money. Anyway the money I spend now is for food and utilities. I don’t travel much at all. My hobby is hiking and that’s free except for gasoline and boots. So in retirement I don’t see a drop in spending.
3. I don’t understand downsizing either. I like the independence of a house with my own property/yard, my generator for emergencies, etc. Would not be comfortable going into an apartment or condo situation. Plus, my spouse and I use the space in our ~3,000 sq foot home and do not really want less space. House is paid off completely, so “downsizing” would not get us anything except less space and I guess less annual maintenance costs. But you got to live somewhere and I don’t see getting a home as suitable for us as we have now for less money than we can sell this house for, so moving would not be a money-saving or money-releasing opportunity for us. I guess if you have a passel of kids and live in a 7 bedroom house with a guest quarters, maid’s quarters etc, you could downsize when the kids all move out. That does not fit my situation.
4. My parents are retired about 7-8 years and could not downsize. They have 5 BR house with two rooms used for storage and they use every square inch of the rest of their house, yard, greenhouse, shed. Could not see them in any situation of smaller house. Also, their spending has got to be significantly higher than when father was still working full time. My point is that I don’t see the big “downsizing” of home or spending situations that is supposed to happen when one retires. Spouse’s father recently passed away at age 87. He never downsized house, but as his health failed he spent a heck of a lot less money because he could not go and do stuff like he did before health started failing. That decline gradually started happening for him at about age 78 and probably spent a lot less money between 82 and 87 due to infirmity.
5. For a lot of people, it is not about having enough money, it is about deciding when you just can’t stand to go to work anymore. Spouse is a teacher and I don’t see how spouse can teach classes beyond about age 62. The kids are insolent and don’t want to be there, the parents are difficult, the administration is moronic. Don’t see how teaching beyond 62 would be possible without a lot of mental stress. For me, pediatric specialty, all the same issues as the teacher spouse, but of course the price they pay me to endure the idiocy makes it tolerable enough to probably get to 65. Hopefully at that time we have enough money, but does the dollar figure matter that much? I guess if a $10 million diamond accidentally falls out of an airplane into my backyard I will live it up in retirement, but otherwise, we’ll make a budget and a spending plan based on whatever money we’ve got when the “can’t stand working” things happen and then live out the rest of our lives according to the budget, updated as circumstances permit or demand. I think we’ll be fine without the diamond falling into the backyard, but hey that would be pretty cool. Of course, with my luck, the dog would find it first and eat it.
I agree. People have an amazing ability to adjust to their circumstances and still be happy. The retirement of many is not determined by reaching enough, but on other things like health, job loss etc. Then they HAVE to adjust their spending accordingly. This whole discussion is a first world problem batted around by a bunch of wealthy folks.
The Holy Grail of FI….For us, we want enough to live on 100-120K pretax and never run out. I use the 4% rule but project returns at 5% and inflation at 2% so we’re fairly conservative.
The catch-22 is that the longer we work to secure the “never run out”, the less We need that extra money because Were closer to death. Wealth has zero utility at the far margin of life (ignoring estate planning). So I stop working now and risk running out or keep working and risk not needing it? Help me Joseph Heller!
The hardest part of enough for us was understanding that wealth is relative. This is well documented in the happiness literature. If we surround ourselves with those having the outward signs of more money than we have, we tend to be less happy. It’s possible then we see our “enough” as what our neighbors have. (Google neighbors as negatives).
That’s why we choose stealth wealth friends or if they are good people but ostentatious, just roll with it as a foible (we all have our own).
$1.2 million would be enough to fund both our necessities and desired discretionary expenses, with the big exception being health insurance. Unless the situation improves significantly, I anticipate needing an additional $300k to cover that, so a nice semi-round $1.5 million should do it.
It’s worth noting that the ‘4% rule’ is based on a buy-and-hold approach, which is the mantra of the day. However, academic research has indicated that a simple, rules-based, trend following approach would have, historically, significantly increased the safe-withdrawal rate above 4%.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2764933
Using a similar approach to that studied by that paper, I plan to use a 5-6% percentage-of-portfolio withdrawal rate. The future could always look different from the past, but flexible withdrawal rates like this prevent you from ever running out of money, though withdrawals could get potentially get small. However, I have not factored SS into my projections, and even a 30% reduction in our estimated benefits would still be enough to cover our necessary expenses.
So are you investing now using a trend following technique, and if not, why not? I mean, if it works during the distribution phase it should work during the accumulation phase, no?
You bet! Trend following methods tend to lag behind buy-and-hold during bull markets such as have existed in U.S. equities since 2009, for instance, but they really shine in bear markets like 2008. Over the long-term, trend following has tended to have returns similar to buy-and-hold but with far less volatility. Consequently, it has helped investors avoid some of the big problems caused by sequence of returns risk (SRR), both in the accumulation and decumulation phases. I find it unfortunate that SRR is nearly always discussed in light of retirees, but it is very real for accumulators as well. This is especially true for those of us who are trying to become FI early and have a relatively short accumulation period, which amplifies SRR.
However, the ‘problem’ with any kind of timing approach is that you will look different from the overall market much of the time. It’s difficult for a lot of people to experience +20% returns in one year, for instance, but their neighbor who is all in the S&P 500 had +30% returns that year and then have a similar situation play out for multiple years in a row. But the ‘problem’ with buy-and-hold, which is a perfectly viable strategy, is the deep drawdowns. So I think that investors need to ask themselves, among many other questions, which do they prefer: lagging behind the market in the good times (usually true of both market timing and balanced buy-and-hold portfolios) or seeing their equities drop 50% or more in a big downturn.
downsizing to florida , if possible but not happening-I would save a bundle and cut my fixed expenses by a 1/3 and add 450k to my pot but my wife says no
we will see many more moving south with the tax law affecting millions of hi earners in the northeast and California
whats your feeling on fixed income annuities in retirement
Yes, Ken SPIA can be a nice option for at least part of your nest egg. It can produce cash flow and longevity insurance.
I think a SPIA makes sense for lots of people, but maybe not you. Last we talked about it you were dead set against it as I recall and had a good argument not to do it.
For those of you that don’t know Ken is a legend on Dental Town, he is responsible for steering many of us dentist on to the righteous path ie. Index funding and staying the course and not chasing returns with active management. I salute you sir.
As a family who just started earning any paycheck at all, “enough” seems like such an ethereal place! All I can say for sure is that it’s more than we have right now 🙂