How Much Do You think You Need to Retire? What Age Will You/Spouse Retire? Investment and General Retirement Issues (Part 3)

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Thanks for the link. I had missed that.

The only thing I did after Liberation Day is to up my stock allocation, most of that intl stocks. It’s worked well as I caught that Monday rebound. My FA had to get an override to let me be as much in stocks as I wanted. Admittedly, I am now wondering whether I should go back to a lower percentage, but I’m holding firm for now as otherwise I feel like it’s timing the market, and, as the column points out, that seldom works. We meet with FA in October; we’ll see whether I can sit tight that long. We both have pensions and SS and haven’t turned on three of those income streams so I feel like we have some wiggle room.

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@Data10, I generally agree with you. Years ago, I helped start a quantitative hedge fund that did time the market (but for very short periods). I know how hard it was to make money timing the market even if you have a bunch of smart technical folks doing the work for you.

I mostly only think about major long-term trends and will make adjustments to allocations. In my youth, I would identify trends that implied good investments and made them. More often than not, I was right but I was too busy to exit – I was too busy with other stuff. Now I generally think about long-term trends.

One of my FA’s allocations always lean a little heavier towards foreign than the other. The US was always the better market because of its dynamism, a functional legal system enforcing clear property rights, rich and deep capital markets starting at pre-seed VC to mezzanine and growth financing to public markets and rewards for success. I wonder if that dynamism differential is fading. Immigration policy uncertainties are keeping out grad students who might otherwise stay and may cause experienced professionals to leave. The Supreme Court (in Snyder v. United States) has weakened property rights and there has been a general weakening of the norm that folks in office shouldn’t be profiting from their positions. Studies show that long-run wealth is created in markets where corruption is low and property rights are clearly enforced by courts. Long-term I think this decision will matter, but short-term there will be little effect.

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Retirement investment should be long term, regardless of your age, since you are supposed to live off it for many years. This is what the market does, it fluctuates. Earlier in the year when it was way down, people on this thread are talking about reallocating their investments. Now, it is way up, people on this thread are talking about reallocating their investments. When you invest for long term purposes, you need to stay calm during fluctuations (the market is always fluctuating), and feel comfortable that in the long run the market has always historically gone up.

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I think some of the problem is that certain people feel that there is some mercurial and unreasonable influence on the markets. That makes them nervous.

I think for some people trust in our government to make unbiased choices has eroded.

We decided because the markets makes us nervous, the trust that the government will make choices that are in our best interests has shook us us, we balanced our accounts to something more stable.

I sleep very well knowing that we are right now in a position to keep our investments in a more stable environment.

This is the time we are living off our savings and investments. We haven’t yet applied for social security so our income is our investments.

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I have reviewed my accounts again, and a few things are not performing very well. IDK if one fund has had different management and internal investment choices, and wanted to see if it has improved, and it has not. I am preparing to be away for a block of time and need to make some decisions when I return. I want to have clear thoughts with these decisions based on long-term results, go over them with DH and move forward together on it.

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I agree. I meant that to get to my desired allocation of 50/30/20 in our collective portfolio, I could change my OWN portfolio allocation (which is currently 50/30/20) to be heavy with int’l and bonds to compensate for my spouse’s larger portfolio being too heavy with US stocks (70/20/10). The alternative is messing with my spouse’s account from a former employer which would be more annoying logistically.

So I’m not planning to change my intended allocation, just realizing that we’re far enough off of that allocation as a couple that I should stop procrastinating a rebalance. I’ve been fine with being too heavy in the direction of US stocks but now it’s making me anxious.

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That doesn’t make sense to me. If you’re not happy with the management of your Roth IRA but don’t want to change management, can’t you just convert some of your 401K account into a different Roth IRA, not managed by that advisor?

If you are going to take funds out of your 401K and not use them for five years, converting to Roth to make the funds tax free is much more logical than taking it out to put in a brokerage fund. But only if you don’t plan on using them.

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We have annuities and Roth IRA’s with our FA. We have had a relationship and trust with them (over a dozen years, but only 3 years with this newer FA). We have educational updates twice a year and meet with our FA twice a year. Currently focusing on more details with FA - and having our FA provide the data we want. Their information system changed, and we can’t pull up what FA can pull up in our meeting (he assumed we could) - and so he had to email us spreadsheets and answer more specific questions after our last meeting.

We are going to face RMD in a few years. Paying the taxes on money going to Roth IRAs is not going to change the picture we have - and ‘the goal’ is not to touch the Roth IRA funds but spend down other funds (no penalty withdrawals from annuities, and anything else from 401k). Several of our annuities are doing fine - one is not performing as expected. We are monitoring more and fine tuning more.

We like our 401k choices and have managed those funds ourselves through all the transitions DH’s employer had on who is overseeing it (currently Empower). DH’s former employer pays the overall fees. Each fund in the 401k has small fees, and we have a $50 administrative fee every time we process funds out. One of those funds has done super well in the past, but is struggling - when I return from a month away, I will assess what we need to do about that. I also now know how much we want to move from 401k into our personal stock account but need to again study where we want to direct those funds and also rebalance that stock account.

I computed what our RMDs would potentially be (looked at it with the assumption that we turned 73 and calculated what our withdrawal would be). Instead of putting into Roth IRA, we are going to move 401k money into our personal stock account.

Our own stock account (Fidelity) - we choose the investments and can withdraw funds that we potentially will need beyond our current monthly cash flow. We actually see our Roth IRA funds managed by FA (as they are on Fidelity, so we see the balance and can look at details if we so choose to).

We are both 69 this year - and we didn’t have the resources to convert more 401k into Roth along the way, nor have proper management for Roth IRAs before hiring FA - we did consolidate other funds (Sar-sep and IRAs) and converted them to Roth IRAs and also have converted 6-figure funds from 401k to Roth IRA. Our Roth IRA returns from inception (with FA) do not get the returns our 401k does, but we needed to lower our risk from 401k alone. The returns we have been generating on 401k during some outstanding years has had us spin off into purchased annuities. Needed to do to lower our overall portfolio risk.

You always pay taxes, and I certainly understand the generated returns we are getting on 401k means the taxes on those additional returns - but I have the overall picture we have.

We also potentially will be moving in 2026 or 2027 to being near DD1/family in another state. Once they are truly permanently settled in their city and we move forward on a big move for us, we do need to have more fluid resources (like our personal stock account). It will be best for us to sell our home and have stuff in storage before purchasing in their location - which is extra work, but will also have us get rid of stuff and downsize on stuff.

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Okay, so reading through all that, it looks like you need to have access to the cash, so it’s better to have it liquid.

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The more investors traded, the less they made. (yeah, yeah, your FA consistently beats the market)

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We had said the same thing when everything started up. But the market is back at least for now. So a few weeks ago my wife and I went out and bought our 30th wedding anniversary gifts. Our 25th was during Covid so we didn’t go anywhere or buy much of anything.

In Nov’24 we decided to to a wedding vow renewal in Vegas. And to our surprise 24 friends and family are going to join us. It has almost turned into planning another wedding.

So the GPO family is doing their part to keep the economy going.

As a side note we booked the hotel in Jan’25. By May’25 the cost of the hotel had gone down by 28%. They gave us the new price. This is for Sept’25.

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I always thought Vegas was typically inexpensive - at least in my opinion, they want you to gamble so they make it easy to get their and east to eat - lots of really good buffets. I know that was one reason the companies scheduled conferences there, one of the least expensive places to go to. Congrats on your wedding anniversary!

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Lots of complaints that Vegas has become very expensive and the economy in Nevada is hurting by the lack of tourism. Down from last year.

I had a friend who was gambling in Reno this spring. Said it was empty, the employees confirmed that traffic was down.

Not surprised the hotel offered to lower the rate as they want people to come.

I also heard that private equity has bought many of the casinos.

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LV is no longer just a gambling town. It is full resort and entertainment. Sadly that comes at a cost. I have always felt you can make Vegas as cheap or expensive as you want it. There are deals. I went out there at the begging of August for some recon and settle a few things and flew out there for $154pp and stayed at Harrah’s(not a great hotel) for $275 for 3 night with one being a Saturday. It was a solo trip to meet some friends as my better half is getting settled with her new job. So I did most things on the cheap. I ate simple. Walked a little more than I would usually so less uber/taxi.

I think they are hurting some. Really I think it is the Canadians that are not coming like they have in the past.

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Wow so different than when I was working, we used to always have a conference in Vegas because it was less expensive than almost any place else in the country.

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DH just returned from a conference at a casino in Henderson. This organization always picked places they will give them a deal.

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I was in Vegas in June and noticed how empty it seemed. Uber driver confirmed int’l tourism is down with some conferences canceling. If there were cheap meals to be had I missed them.

I remember how fun the Vegas of my youth was. One thing I noticed is how so many of the games are electronic and solitary. Lots of craps at single seats on a computer rather than people gathered around a table (there were still some of those). Just not as fun.

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My brother in law works in a hotel. Few international travelers. We’ve become unwelcoming.

They now have no tax on tips.

But…they have no tips.

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I agree with gpo613 that Vegas can be expensive or inexpensive, depending on where you stay and what you do. Weekday rooms on strip at Luxor, Excalibur, or similar start at $50-$60 per night. Or you could easily spend $1000+/night on a luxury suite during weekend or otherwise busy times. There are countless free activities in town, or countless over the top expensive activities. For example, where else can you crush a car with a tank (costs $2500 at Crush A Car With a Tank in Las Vegas | Battlefield Vegas ) ?

YTD tourism stats are below, compared to 2024. Many are notable changes, but tourism is still quite active.

Total Visitors – Down 7%
International Airport Passengers – Down 4%
Convention Attendance – Up 2%
Hotel Occupancy – Down 2%
Average Hotel Rate – Down 5%
Auto Traffic – Up 2%
Total Gaming Revenue – Little Change

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Meeting with the FA moved up to this morning, and we had him run a scenario where we keep our house, buy a condo near a child, move into a pricey CCRC at 80 and leave the kids the amount of money we want. Our chances of success went from >99% to the 20s. Ouch.

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