Retirement Spend Down Discussion

bee

A good article on the challenges of managing money in retirement.

better-get-a-spending-strategy

The problem with spend down rules is that they assume that the objective of spending in retirement is simply not running out of money. Actually, the objective is… well, spending—and having some predictability around one’s income. Not running out of money is the constraint, not the objective.

JD_co

Remember reading "Die Broke" by Stephen Pollan and thinking they might have it right.

Junkster

JD_co said:

Remember reading "Die Broke" by Stephen Pollan and thinking they might have it right.

Even better is a new book titled Die With Zero by Bill Perkins. Many of us with no wives or children/heirs have done a terrible job of spending down our nest egg in old age.

bee

@Junkster...it only takes one wife or younger girl friend.

A steady diet of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches hasn't helped either.

Derf

bee +1

Junkster

bee said:

@Junkster...it only takes one wife or younger girl friend.
.

Been there done that.

I have often wondered how many of us here that are in our mid seventies and beyond are single and with no heirs.

bee

Thanks @Junkster,

Interesting discussion on his website through many of his video interviews...here's one:

His site:
https://diewithzerobook.com/welcome

Junkster

bee said:

Thanks @Junkster,

Interesting discussion on his website through many of his video interviews...here's one:

His site:
https://diewithzerobook.com/welcome

Thanks bee, actually listened to it. On a somewhat related note, one topic I never see discussed is the cruelty of the constant compounding of our capital over time. Meaning, because of the compound effect the older we get the more money we have. At some point that increasing wealth gets meaningless as we are less likely and able to enjoy our nest egg, That has never been apropos than since 2008 as the markets have steadily marched higher and higher.

yogibearbull

The extra money can go to charitable causes via T-IRA QCDs, DAFs, etc.

bee

It seems so much good could come from all of this excess wealth, yet if such good exists, it appears under reported.

A little off topic from this thread, but on the topic of what to do with excess wealth...

150 years ago, the park system in our local town was bestowed to the city and its residence by the wealthy industrialists whose success was due in large part to its local workforce.

https://connecticuthistory.org/mr-mrs-rockwells-park/

I'm sure this happened throughout the country at the time.

A generation later the factory work went overseas, the three family homes that once housed factory workers now are filled with section 8 housing recipients.Those less fortunate dwell in these same parks.

We really have lost our way.

Observant1

bee said:

150 years ago, the park system in our local town was bestowed to the city and its residence by the wealthy industrialists whose success was due in large part to its local workforce.

https://connecticuthistory.org/mr-mrs-rockwells-park/

Small world.
I'm originally from Central CT and lived near Bristol.

BenWP

I’m also a CT native who remembers well « The Bristol Stomp. »

davidrmoran

Not CT, PA, but every state with a Bristol thinks the hit was about them.

My wife is from Bristol and my late father-in-law (and maybe his own father or fil) worked decades for Associated Spring and Barnes Group (partly descended from New Departure), so there were sundry springs and ballbearings displayed around the house. I never heard about the Rockwells. The history goes way back --- the B stock symbol is for Barnes.

bee

@davidmoran, I find it interesting that "B" is still a small cap value company. A little history:

Wallace Barnes began working for both his father Alphonso and grandfather Thomas in the family hotel and general store. The general store specialized in clocks, but it also sold drugs and general merchandise. Wallace eventually became skilled as a druggist. Partly because he and his father did not get along, however, he left to start his own druggist shop in a nearby town. Lackluster returns from that venture prompted him to try his hand at a new business, clockmaking. Wallace started out contracting to supply cut glass, doors, and parts to different clockmakers who were part of the bustling clock trade that had developed in Bristol; in fact, Bristol was known as the clockmaking capital of the United States at the time. Unfortunately, the local clock industry fell on hard times when the Panic of 1857 caused a severe depression.

At the time of the Panic, Wallace was working for clockmaker A.S. Platt. Platt, for whom Wallace had been working at the rate of $1.25 per day, became unable to pay him for his services. Instead of cash, Barnes accepted some hoop-skirt wire as compensation. In a move that demonstrated his dealmaking savvy, Wallace hauled the wire in a wagon to nearby Albany. There, he traded the wire for a financially troubled haberdashery store. Rather than stay to run the store himself, Wallace turned around and traded it for a Missouri farm that he had never seen. Upon returning to Bristol, he managed to trade the farm for a blacksmith shop, which he sold for the handsome sum of $1,600. Incredibly, Wallace used the money to purchase the troubled A.S. Platt, the company that had given him the wire in the first place.

https://company-histories.com/Barnes-Group-Inc-Company-History.html

davidrmoran

Yup, fascinating, and typical American industrial history.

I think I have met, at my in-laws' house (and their funerals probably), more than one Wallace Barnes, each of course successively descended from the original ancestor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Barnes

My kids had part of their college educations paid for from sales of B over the years.

Mitchelg

With the public schools so messed up I am putting aside money for private school for the grandkids.

carew388

If I was independently wealthy, I can think of a plethora of worthy donees. First, your high school or college may benefit-in my case my Alma Mater has Touchdown Jesus library and an endowment of 10 billion dollars, so they wouldn't need it. HBCU's are a possibility, just to rile up the voters from a particular party-Howard University must need some help with their dilapidated housing! Or a particular medical project could benefit;in my case, since I have early CKD, the Artificial Kidney Project, a joint collaboration between UCSF and Vanderbilt has piqued my interest. $20 million, not a staggering sum would fully fund the project and greatly reduce the need for dialysis services provided by Davita and Fresenius. Obviously, if I won a hundred million dollar lottery, I would fully fund this project, although government funding could end the shortfall in an instant!

Crash

Mitchelg said:

With the public schools so messed up I am putting aside money for private school for the grandkids.

+1. Actually a good idea.

davidrmoran

Mitchelg said:

With the public schools so messed up I am putting aside money for private school for the grandkids.

where is this?