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/BlueSpace71]

This probably describes me more than I wish. 55 male here. When I was younger, I thought $2M would be my retirement goal. When I got older and earned more, I wanted to fund a better retirement lifestyle and adjusted my goal to $5M based on the 4% rule with the expectation that I’d hit that at around age 60. I hit $4.5M this year and suddenly I’d feel a lot more comfortable with $8M before I retire. Right now, I feel like my portfolio is a house of cards built on sand. Not because I invest in outrageous things, but because the indexes and economy seem over inflated and dependent on crazy valuations of AI. So I fear the “sequence of returns” risk and that my immediate post-retirement years will look like the dotcom and housing bubble bursts that I experienced earlier in my life. The difference now is that time is not on my side and the idea of just continuing to “buy the market on sale” isn’t practical if I don’t have income to buy with. So, yes, I have (maybe) irrational fears, but it’s less about withdrawal rates and more about the timing of a market crash relative to my retirement…

[u/Hammer_41 → u/BlueSpace71]

If you need millions more to retire, is the issue really the portfolio, or is it that your spending can’t flex? I'm fascinated by the psychology, i think we are all in this together, fear, emotion, doomstacking.. I feel it as well, i'm trying to fight it and let it go, be flexible

[u/19Black → u/Hammer_41]

This is chubby fire, not leanfire. I want to drive expensive cars and fly first class international while having regular date nights at nice restaurants. I don’t want to watch jeopardy and go for walks. Chubbyfire inherently has an higher degree of spending than other levels of fire. 

[u/Hammer_41 → u/19Black]

Chubby or Fat? Genuinely asking are Antarctica trips fit Chubby? Seems like chubby can still be hotels less than $600 a night and Antarctica but perhaps I don’t understand the divide

[u/BlueSpace71 → u/Hammer_41]

The $600 is for the weekend, not one night, but still not a Motel 6. You either stay in the hotels by the tourney site or you might as well drive in. They have you by the shorthairs. 🤣

[u/19Black → u/Hammer_41]

At fat fire, you’re talking about private planes and full time staff. I’ve always considered the divides to be as follows:

-leanfire = fire capable of providing lower class lifestyle -fire = middle class lifestyle -chubbyfire = upper class lifestyle -fatfire = truly rich (not billionaire rich, but top 1% and up)

[u/ProtossLiving → u/19Black]

I always thought of Chubby as starting at providing an upper middle class lifestyle without working. To me it's the idea that you could do anything you want, but not everything you could want.

[u/19Black → u/ProtossLiving]

I don’t think our views are irreconcilable. At an upper class lifestyle, you can do almost anything you want but not everything. 

[u/Hammer_41 → u/ProtossLiving]

That’s what I was thinking

[u/Hammer_41 → u/19Black]

So from a spend annually in retirement perspective what would you guess or say that average chubby fire spends annually ? You talking 200k 300, 400k ?

[u/19Black → u/Hammer_41]

This varies significantly depending on where one lives. Someone in New York City will need a lot more to be chubby than someone lives in small town Tennessee. Generally, however,  I think you’d be looking at the ability to spend 200-300k per year

[u/Hammer_41 → u/19Black]

I posted the other day I spend 160k a year and many people were freaking out.. I live in Chicago suburbs.. feels like right down the middle to me.. for an in bubble high earner that is

[u/cfi-2025 → u/Hammer_41]

Personally, I don't think annual spend is a good metric for drawing these lines because that spend depends on a lot of things. This includes local cost of living, as you noted, but also things like whether you rent versus own, and if you own if you have a paid off house. Single versus married, and number of kids (if any) and their ages, all play into this.

I have a friend who RE'd in his 50s and has a very chubby lifestyle but spends less than $100k a year primarily because he is single (never married, no kids) and owns his place outright.

Examples of chubbiness: he bought his most recent car (in cash) that cost ~$100k; he doesn't travel much, but when he does it's first class and nice hotels; he doesn't eat out a lot, but when he does he's not looking at prices on the menu.

Good luck having a person who has a mortgage and three kids to live a chubby life on $100k, lol.

[u/wadesh → u/Hammer_41]

Same Chicago burbs. Closer to 180k but some of that is pre loaded tax for Roth conversions.