Posts tagged with "4-rule"
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Should We Go With 3% Rule?
I recently wrote a post about asset allocation in which a reader commented whether we should be using 3% safe withdrawal rate in Indian context instead of the 4% safe withdrawal rate that is generally accepted in the US (at least in the past). The commenter also provided a video supporting the 3% rule. I strongly encourage you to watch that first. It makes some good arguments. If you are interested, I’d also suggest you read the paper which contains all the details, assumptions, data and methodology used for the simulations. According to the research paper, it is recommended that one should go with a 3% safe withdrawal rate instead of the generally well known 4% rate.
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Is It The End Of 4% Rule Then?
I have written so many articles on 4% rule, that it feels like I can make a living by just writing about it. Yet we keep coming back to it because times have changed, or may be the 4% rule does not work in Indian context or because it may not work during recession and what not. The latest in this saga is this article I read a few days ago. Without going into too many details, the article suggests that a new research found that the 4% spending rule may be too high and we should probably go for a 1.9% rule instead. That sucks. I made my whole early retirement planning based on the 4% rule and it seems like I may be doomed.
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It Is All In The Mindset
Early retirement is not for everyone and I have written an article a long time ago about it. It is completely normal if you don’t want to retire early or even ever. Some enjoy working for many reasons, which I may not understand, just the way some don’t understand why anyone should retire early. And then there are some who are in between. Again there are many reasons for them to not be able to jump ship and join the early retirement bandwagon. Some reasons are very legit like not having big enough salary or having too many dependents and thus expenses, or family not in agreement etc. Then there is a minority who in spite of having enough are unable to retire early.
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How Is 4% Rule Working Out For Me?
I ended the previous post with a resounding “yes” for the question on whether 4% rule works in India or not. I also mentioned that given what we know about current inflation and return expectations in India, we can assume that the investment will last about 50 years assuming a conservative 30% asset allocation. In this article I want to show you how my portfolio was performing because I retired based on 4% rule with a bit of a buffer. So how is that working out for me? Given the market correction in the past few months and the increasing inflation, am I draining more money than I expected and am I at risk of out living my corpus? Lets find out.
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4% Rule In Indian Context
I have already written a few posts on 4% rule, but some readers were not sure if it really works in Indian context. We don’t have the equivalent of the Trinity study (which resulted in the 4% rule) done here in India. Or at least I am not aware of one. For those of you who don’t know the Trinity study, I will brief you on it. Basically the study found that if you withdraw 4% from your retirement account every year after accounting for inflation your retirement fund should last 30 years or more. But the study was done in the US using bond, inflation and equity market data from 1925 to 1995. It is really not a rule as much as a thumb rule. While I don’t have the luxury of such nice data for India, in this post, I will attempt to use some crude data loosely based on the same notion.
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My Thoughts On Early Retirement
This is a continuation of my previous post regarding email conversations I had with a reader of my blog. The reader wanted to know if they can retire early given that they have already achieved financial independence. I am republishing our conversation in the hopes that it will help some of you. It is not about my replies which are probably not as useful, but more about the reader’s dilemma and may be others have better advice which you can leave in the comments below. So without much ado, here is the conversation with some information redacted to protect the privacy of the reader.
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Real World Application of 4% Rule
I have not even completed 4 years into retirement, yet I wanted to check how the 4% rule is working for me. Please keep in mind that this is such a short time in retirement that we can’t make any conclusions about whether 4% rule really works in this day and age at all in India. We will only know its usefulness in a much longer duration like a decade or so. This exercise is to understand how a 4% rule will work with and without the 20% buffer I usually talk about. Lets get started.
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Trimming Expenses
In my last post I mentioned that I was confident of my approach to early retirement. In addition I wrote about a couple who have been retired for 30 years by just following the 4% rule. One of the learning from that post is that there could be a huge drop in market that may hit my investments badly. In that case my investments may not keep up with my expenses. For example if there is a prolonged market slump. And I need a plan. The plan starts with cutting down my expenses temporarily so that my investments can catch up.
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Thirty Years Into Retirement
It's been barely three years into my early retirement. So, no I am not talking about myself here. I recently came across this article about a couple who retired 30 years ago. And they were 38 then. What great clarity they must have had of their future to retire in 1991!
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How and When I Decided To Retire
A friend and reader of my blog asked me this question -- I don't know if you covered this in the blog, but could you write about how you arrived at a number for net worth where you felt comfortable retiring. I have written about my retirement journey which is scattered across many posts. So I thought I should consolidate and revisit the topic for the benefit of new readers.
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