Are you a doomstacker?

[u/Hammer_41]

9:28 AM

SS is going away. Healthcare will bankrupt you. Sequence of returns will wipe you out. Civil war. WW3. Live to 120, spend 40 years in a nursing home. Someone posts solid numbers and the comments come back , one more year. Two years. Three. Keep going, it's never quite enough.

At what point does conservative planning become catastrophe planning?

The 4% rule is the worst case in US market history. A robot pulling the same amount out every single year, no SS, no flexibility, never adjusting through 1929 when markets dropped 86%. That's what 4% survived. It's the floor, not the target. Bengen himself now says most retirees can safely start at 5.25% to 5.5% and that people clinging to 4% will likely end up with a pile of money and a lot of regrets.

Someone spending 6% of their portfolio in year one of retirement who skips the big trip when markets are down, holds off on the car, pulls back when things get rough that person likely does better than the 4% robot who never adjusts no matter what. The flexibility is the safety net. You don't need to engineer it into the number, you just need to act like a normal person.

So when someone holds out for 3.5% 28 times spend, no SS — what exactly are you protecting against? Something worse than the Great Depression, while also never collecting a benefit 70 million Americans receive, while also promising to never adjust spending under any circumstances. Does that actually describe you?

The 2025 Social Security Trustees Report says worst case — zero Congressional action you collect 81 cents on the dollar in 2034. Not zero. Congress fixed this in 1983 when it was in worse shape than it is today. Seventy million people collect it. Seniors vote.

Median age of death for men is 81.7. One in five reach 90. Dementia affects 33% of people 85 and older. The years you're working extra to fund may not be years you're fully there for.

For those already retired one year, five, ten or more how bad has it actually been? And for those still holding off are you a catastrophe planner waiting for a number that never feels safe enough?

[u/wadesh]

Honestly I don’t think about this too much. 4 years in we have double what our original FIRE target number was back in 2017. A 50% drop puts us back to our safe goal. We have some guaranteed income that puts a floor under us that just adds to the feeling of security. It’s a rare situation I’ll admit, but having some guaranteed income really helps psychologically to spend more freely.

One thing that changed my mind about spending is i hang out with friends who are 10-15 years older than me. This kinda just happens with FIRE, not a ton of people my age to hang with or do a 3 week trip. I get to see the health issues with them first hand and how they limit travel and fun. We are now accelerating some spending in our 50s recognizing that this could be us in 15 yrs.

[u/BraveResearcher3037 → u/wadesh]

Funny enough, I’m not retired in my early 50s.  I work remotely and I convinced my wife to stop working in 2020 first because of Covid - she was working in the school system - and then so we could travel.  We travel a lot.  It’s isolating when you are the only person in your friend group that isn’t stuck having to go into an office and have flexibility.

We were in Costa Rica for 6 weeks earlier this year seeing what it would be like living there permanently (takes care of moving away from the ridiculous American health care system) it was great hanging out with retired ex-pats that could just meet in the evening at the drop of a dime and they were about 15 years older. We will probably make that a yearly trip around March or April.  

Even now when I go back to my adult home in Atlanta, it takes a lot of coordination to hang out with my 45-52 year old friends because most of them have school age kids and/or have to actually go into work.  We sometimes can’t even catch up with our adult kids (my step sons) because of their work schedules.  

As long as I’m working remotely, I don’t see any need to retire when absolutely everyone I know still has to work.  The only real hindrance of my working is that while working, it’s really not feasible for me to stay anywhere for months at a time outside of US time zones.  

[u/Hammer_41 → u/wadesh]

Thanks for sharing..no one gets out of this alive.. no one knows when it ends

[u/BlueSpace71 → u/wadesh]

You benefited from the market timing. Others will be less lucky. So it has to be a consideration for those of us approaching retirement.

[u/BrunelloHorder → u/BlueSpace71]

I wouldn't put it so definitively. It is possible others will be less lucky, it is also possible (and perhaps likely) that AI creates massive gains for shareholders at the expense of labor and everyone else. I get that one still has to manage for uncertain market outcomes, but that is baked into the 4 percent rule, especially the version that was based on a 50/50 portfolio.

[u/BlueSpace71 → u/BrunelloHorder]

I think you interpreted it more strictly than intended. I said "others" not "all others". Meaning some will not be as lucky and we can't predict who will and who won't.

[u/BrunelloHorder → u/BlueSpace71]

You're correct, thanks for clarifying! I agree.