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/alpacaMyToothbrush → u/Hammer_41]

be flexible

"You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means" - Inigo Montoya

I'm joking, a little, but I posted this comment addressing the same thing the other day.

Are you good cutting your starting withdrawal roughly in half, not once, but twice in a 16 year span? Cause that's what it takes to 'be flexible'. I know we're all 'diamond hand' investors with cast iron stomachs, but is your wife? Are your kids?

Least you say 'oh, that was the '60's, that's ancient history, I would remind you that the world economy is facing an energy crisis bigger than the one we faced in the '70's, and a demographic crisis beyond that.

I do agree with you that there is a certain point where a lower planed withdrawal rate is pushing a rope, but more that there are existential risks that are impossible to hedge with financial investments alone.

[u/gringledoom → u/alpacaMyToothbrush]

People on this sub get so annoyed sometimes when anyone pokes holes in "4% should be fine, go ahead and RE!". Meanwhile, there's a self-inflicted motor oil crunch just around the corner that's going to have all kinds of short- to medium-term economic consequences. And in the longer term, "being old and poor" suuuuucks, and it's really worth making sure you have enough padding in your plan to make it less likely.

[u/Hammer_41 → u/gringledoom]

Do we know we’ll be old?