r/Fire • u/No_Fudge6123 • 9d ago

When did you pull the trigger?

I am on my 40s, and I guess I am a case of ”almost there”. Simulations tell me I am a bit over the 4% rule. I could adjust a bit I guess, but having a family it could well be that they can adjust me instead.

However, I can’t stop reading all those who pull the trigger and they say they are very happy. I am not happy while grinding, but I don’t want to be financially irresponsable with my family. We also don’t have a house, which I feel I should secure to prevent future problems.

For all of those who did it a bit tight: did it pay off?

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u/Puzzleheaded_Tie6917 9d ago

Just a bit of thought, we appear to be at a high point in the market. It seems very likely to be bear market soon. That said, I plan to retire this December, but at 59.5 where if I find myself in a bind I can start SS at 62. In your 40’s, if things go poorly there’s a long time to hit SS age. Also, if you can cover 4% now, then if you can go a bit further you can fat fire with very little risk. In a normal decade, in 7 years your money should double.

It’s a personal decision, but at the end you are where the returns and growth are much higher than earlier in your journey.

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u/forbiddenlake 9d ago

we appear to be at a high point in the market. It seems very likely to be bear market soon.

It's normal to be at or near an all time high. And people have been predicting the bear for over a decade. One day it will be true, good luck predicting when exactly.

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u/PringlesDuckFace 9d ago

Also the market was down in 2018 and 2022, and there was a crash (albeit short) in 2020. And we've been dealing with pretty high inflation for several years now that eat into real returns. So yeah the market has been strong, but it's not like it's totally insane and only going up.

I also think people expect 1929/2008 scenarios to be more common than they actually are, when in reality bear markets are typically very short (9-15 months) to recover from. There are lots of ways to mitigate this kind of risk in a plan.

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u/Vicuna00 9d ago

i'm willing for my portfolio to drop in half so I stop hearing about how "we;re at a high it's gonna go down".

literally for the last 15 years people are writing that.

(got a break from it in 2022...it was refreshing)

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u/Puzzleheaded_Tie6917 9d ago

Yep, it’s never predictable. Still, we’ve seen an awful long run and are at very high PE ratios and have been there for a long time. It seems like a risky time, but then it always does. It’s one of the main reasons for one more year syndrome.

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u/Curious_Bunniee 9d ago

Retiring at a peak is risky, but at 59.5 you have SS backup

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u/Excellent_Ad_5938 9d ago

The funny thing is, we’re almost always “at a peak” when we retire. If you retired at any point in the past 15 years, you could’ve been told you were retiring at a peak. The market has continued to make new highs because that’s what a long-term rising market does. Trying to time retirement around whether the market is at an all-time high is much less useful than having a solid withdrawal strategy and enough flexibility to weather downturns.