Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
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Sometimes you just gotta laugh. Sequence of returns risk.
Finally retired on Oct. 1. With the markets near their all time high I understood the concept of sequence of returns risk.. I just didn't think my timing would be just so exactly perfectly wrong . Sometimes you just gotta laugh. .
@larryB, thought about it this year myself and put it off until next summer... maybe. I kind of think this is a correction, not a recession, I hope. You'll be ok.
Thanks for the good wishes guys.. actually I have been at 30% equity for quite a while. My wife and I exchanged Apple watches as retirement gifts and it's all good. It will be weird not being a saver,,,,
If you’re at 30% stocks, it should be nothing to worry about. Just hang tight and don’t sell at market lows. I retired about 2 years ago with stocks about 60%, but scaled back to 50% over the summer — mainly due to concerns about tariffs. Bonds have been a bigger worry for me because their returns have sucked for several years, but I’ve got enough in CDs, money markets and stable value that I’ve got no worries.
Congrats on retirement. Of course, numerous considerations (like age / other sources of income) affect your investment decisions. It’s a highly personal choice. I thought the markets seemed very high when I retired 20+ years ago. The DJ was hovering around the than “breathtaking” level of 10,000. (10 years later it dipped below 7,000 - but who could have foreseen?)
I don’t like the markets now. Have stated that before (and been repeatedly proven wrong). After 70, I started exiting plain-vanilla equity funds. Now rely on a few good balanced funds for the growth portion of my IRAs.
Another thought - a younger retiree (in their 60s) might want to keep some “dry powder” on hand for doing Roth conversions (covering the up-front tax hit) in event a seriously depressed market comes along. Even should one of your growth funds drop by 25-30% or more, provided you hung on to it and did a conversion near the lows, you’d be quite happy later on. We can’t forsee the future. Keeping options open ain’t a bad idea.
Same damned thing happened to me in 2007, but we managed to survive. Look, something (who knows what or when, but most likely within the next year or so) is going to take this market down bigtime. If you can survive on income other than market appreciation, batten down the hatches and you'll be fine. Not going to stay down forever... it's just the nature of the beast. In the meantime income from things like CDs seems to be improving. Never great, but better than it's been for some ten years.
Best of luck to both of you. Enjoy your retirement- you earned it.
... something (who knows what or when, but most likely within the next year or so) is going to take this market down bigtime ... batten down the hatches.
Hey - Stop stealing my lines!
(While our sentiments on this point are similar, @Old_Joe has worded it better than I could.)
Comments
I don’t like the markets now. Have stated that before (and been repeatedly proven wrong). After 70, I started exiting plain-vanilla equity funds. Now rely on a few good balanced funds for the growth portion of my IRAs.
Another thought - a younger retiree (in their 60s) might want to keep some “dry powder” on hand for doing Roth conversions (covering the up-front tax hit) in event a seriously depressed market comes along. Even should one of your growth funds drop by 25-30% or more, provided you hung on to it and did a conversion near the lows, you’d be quite happy later on. We can’t forsee the future. Keeping options open ain’t a bad idea.
Best of luck to both of you. Enjoy your retirement- you earned it.
(While our sentiments on this point are similar, @Old_Joe has worded it better than I could.)