Retirement

If you’ve found this blog you probably already know about the FIRE movement.  But if not, FIRE stands for Financial Independence/Retire Early.  The basic premise is to accumulate savings or investments as quickly as possible.  Once you’ve reached “your number” you then have the option to retire and live off 4 percent of your investments annually. The 4 percent rate is often referred to as the “safe withdrawal rate” as detailed in the controversial “Trinity Study” by three Trinity University professors in 1998 (and a 2009 update) who studied mixes of stocks and bonds based on published stock market data from 1925 to 1995.  Essentially, with a 4 percent withdrawal rate the theoretical retiree would not exhaust their funds during retirement through almost any market conditions.    [Read more…] about Playing with FIRE