The summer is quickly drawing to a close. Here most grade schools and high schools start on August 28th, the week before labor day, so just about two weeks left to go.
This week my belief regarding the 4% withdrawal rate was put in jeopardy by Rob Bennett’s Retirement Warning: The Safe Withdrawal Rate is NOT a Fixed Number. As Rob points out, the starting point for those withdrawals makes quite a difference. You might imagine, if you started in the early 80’s when the market was about to return 18% per year on average for the next 20 years you’d have quite a different experience than if you started in 2000, when the subsequent 10 years were negative. Rob explains how you might get a better feel what the market is likely to return over the next decades.
At Financial Highway, Miranda asked Focus on the Latte Factor? Or Sweat the Big Stuff? Spending is a trade-off. I’ve told my own child,”We can afford anything, we just can’t afford everything.” It’s more a matter of picking and choosing what brings you the most happiness for a given dollar.
On the subject of savings, a nice article at Mamiverse, 10 Ways to Save $2K a Year on Groceries. When the budget is just tight enough that there’s little or no money at the end of the month, it’s great to find just a few ways to save a bit, to pull you from the red into the black. This article aims to help you do just that.
Stocks should return 7.5% annually over next decade, Bogle’s new book says. John Bogle is better known as the founder of the Vanguard Group, and commonly referred to as the father of the index fund. His creation of the Vanguard S&P 500 index fund revolutionized an industry and help make investing less expensive for the small investor. I had my eye on an 8% return over the nest decade, but who am I to quibble with a legend. 7.5% it is.
We’ll wrap this up up with Retire by 40 discussing How early retirement will impact my Social Security Benefit. The rules regarding one’s social security benefit are not so well understood. This article will give you a great start to understanding this calculation, and what you can expect when you decide to retire and starting collecting Social Security.