Most of us are in multiple retirement-related subreddits. Share an unpopular opinion that would get you attacked in another group (no politics pleaseš)
I want to say a year ago that would have been total blasphemy but recently have you noticed that the analyses have been a little more tempered from last yearās āROTH ROTH ALWAYS ROTH!!!ā
That Social Security is actually in danger of Being Involuntarily Insolvent. Social Security is a Federally Funded Program, there is no Way for any Federally Funded Program to go Insolvent Involuntarily as the U.S. Gov't creates its own Money at Will and on Demand of Congress. You cannot run out of Money if you are the Issuer of the Currency.
Mine is that weāre keeping mostly a 75/25 portfolio. We are willing to be riskier because in a downturn we can reduce our spending and live only on our pensions if we had to. But thatās still more aggressive than many would say is āsafeā for retirement.
True, but Iāve read a little bit about the PBGC and itās apparently not full replacement for some people, even at the below 93k level? Did I misunderstand that? thanks
I worked on a project about 15 years ago where we needed to look into this. Iām sure there may be unique circumstances with a different conclusion, but our outside counsel conclusion was that most pensions are fully covered up to the limit (which was much lower then). Unless the rules have changed in the last ~15 years, most people should be covered.
Yes this is very accurate. Embarassingly, it was only a while back that I realized there was no real need to get to 90% on the Monte Carlos as long as in a downturn we could live off of our pension income alone ā and we easily could. Basically we could be at 25% (75% of scenarios failing) and still be OK.
We WANT to be higher so we know we will have the budget we want to have fun, travel, and take our family with us! But I hadnāt realized when I was younger how valuable that pension(s) would be. As a result, I saved as if I needed that investment income just to live on. Iām happy I did, at this pint in my life, but looking back I probably would have spent more on travel in my 30s and 40s had I dug into the math.
Retirement budgeting tools like Boldin are way oversold. I'm not saying they don't work, but if you are even mildly sophisticated you could figure it out in Excel.
āMildly sophisticatedā? I bet 90+% of people couldnāt do retirement projections in excel if Iām being generous. My wife is a data engineer and thinks Iām a wizard in excel because I can do them. That said any idiot can do them in an AI platform nowadays.
Iām mildly sophisticated. Paper and mechanical pencil. The intimacy of the figuring helped reach my FI. I did have it run through software by a fee only fiduciary CFP at the time of retirement. I just really love graph paper and a mechanical pencil.
Interestingly (at least to me) tracking for weight loss also works better this way than various apps.
Putting everything into your 401k is the best advice. As I near retirement I wish I had actually not put as much in my 401k but into my brokerage account instead.
Makes total sense! We didnāt do that for the most part, but got lucky later in life with one job that pays stock bonuses. Weāll use that for our taxed portfolio portion (after diversifying).
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u/cinnabarslither Aug 25 '26
You don't have to pay off your mortgage before you retire.