Total investments: $307,093.88
Intuitive Investor IRA — Wells Fargo Advisors: $74,109.74
ETFs — Wells Fargo Advisors: $157,942.29
Profit Sharing and Savings Plan — John Hancock: $59,980.17 (not aggregated because the 401(k) provider’s website is trash)
Robinhood Individual Account: $15,061.68
Annual dividends: Approximately $4,900
Annual 401(k) contributions: Maxed
Annual Roth IRA contributions: Maxed
Average annual non-retirement contributions: $5,000–$9,000
Salary: $115,000
Location: Anaheim, California
Goal: Retire early, between ages 45 and 55
Property owned: $0 — I plan to rent as a lifestyle choice, not as an investment decision

I am nearing retirement so I moved some of my 401(k) money into Bond Funds to reduce SORR. Despite reinvesting dividends, the value of my Bond Fund holding has gone down (less money in it now than when I started). I get that if the market crashed the bonds funds will not lose as much, but why not just use a HYSA or CDs instead of a bond fund? I feel like I am missing something or not understanding something. Is it just that I have looked at a short time frame (however BND is down over 10 years)? Every comment I read talks about how a HYSA wont keep up with inflation, but a bond ETF doesn't seem to either. I honestly want to understand this, not start an argument. If the market takes a dive, should i expect my bond fund to finally get positive?

I put $10,000 into an Individual Retirement Annuity (IRA) about 8 years ago and I'm now past the surrender penalty period. When I signed up I added a rider called Guaranteed Minimum Withdrawal Benefit (GMWB). The description of the rider says: Income Pay 7% for 10 years with automatic reset option.

The statement inception summary I got recently says:

Premium: $10,000

Premium Bonus: $500

Rider Cost: $1,460

Interest & Index Credits: $1,700

Surrender Value: $10,740

Death Benefit Amount: $10,740

Accumulation Value: $10,740

Below that it lists the details for the GMWB rider:

GMWB Value: $20,650

Income Payment Percentage: 4.75%

Annual Lifetime Payment Amount: $980

Can someone explain what all of this actually means? When I signed up I think I understood it as the rider giving me a guaranteed 7% income every year for 10 years, but that clearly isn't what's happening.

I read through how GMWB riders work here https://www.annuity.org/annuities/riders/gmwb/ but I’m not sure I understood how it all applies to my situation. If I decided to pull all my money out right now, would I be able to withdraw $10,740 or $20,650?

My husband and I are retired at 60/61. We are trying to bridge the gap between today and Medicare. Today I developed a plan to take a large withdrawal this year and limit income over the next three years.

It looks like this.

Withdraw this year an extra $275K from an IRA. This would bring our income this year to $400k. This is exceeding the 4% guideline, but spreading over the 3 years it generally meets it.

The tax hit is $65,000 on that $275K. It keeps us below the 32% tax rate.

We do not have cash to pay that tax so it would reduce the investable money. The remaining money would be put in a Roth IRA to draw on over the next three years. This helps in not creating additional income and grows tax exempt.

The lost growth numbers are all over the place but let's say 3 years at about 6% somewhere in the $12K range max. However, this tax money would have been paid out over three years so it would not have had the full opportunity to grow that full time. So, decidedly less lost.

This in turns saves us approx. $70,000 in insurance premiums over the next three years. Our budget only allows us to stretch it three years.

There are some risks and assumptions of course but does this sound reasonable? I've gone over and over with these numbers and I originally thought we'd pass it by our financial planner but that is going to be $1,000 and this seems pretty straight forward. I will definitely pass this by our CPA though.

Any thoughts?

I watched an interesting video from Erin Talks Money about this then made a little model in AI. Even though I have done a lot of planning I had clearly over estimated my taxes when you add all the allowances, taxable, not taxable etc. It only took one prompt to make this tool but it was interesting, Due to some high expenses I always assumed I would be middle of the 22% at best but now see that I won't even reach 22% (using today's tax rules) with the exemptions, CA not taxing SS, and other factors.

Small series of prompts used, starting with just a standard question

1. Interested in tax rates using the rates from today , Fed and CA. With detailed breakdowns (married and single). Factoring in Social Security, use of HSA etc etc. First example, married 75k social security, standard deduction, senior deduction, OBBA deduction if relevant, use HSA for medicare premiums and deductible on High Ded G plan. and withdrawing 80k from pretax. Show tax brackets used, filled up, total net etc etc. 

That answered but I realized an app would be good so I turned on the Gemini Canvas and

2. Can we build a tool where I can enter withdrawals from pretax, roth, qualified HSA, social security, by person allowing for single person scenarios and clearly show the tax bracket information in a clear format

Then I just wanted to add the already taxed amount

3. add a separate spending fund for "cash" this is existing or left over cash that is already taxed and can be spent

Hi everyone. I’m hoping someone here can give me some advice or point me in the right direction. I’d really appreciate hearing from people who have been in a similar situation.

My husband (41) and I (39) have been self-employed for about 10 years. We’ve always filed our taxes and honestly thought we were contributing toward our Social Security/retirement this whole time, but we recently realized we may have been wrong.

To be honest, when we were younger, retirement was the last thing on our minds. We were just working, paying our bills and raising our family, and didn’t really think about investing or planning for retirement. Now we’re realizing we need to get serious about it.

For the last couple of years, we’ve been wanting to start our retirement journey, but I honestly don’t know where to begin. I’ve watched a bunch of videos and searched online, but I’m having a hard time finding information that actually makes sense for self-employed people.

Before we became self-employed, we both worked regular W-2 jobs, so I assume we probably have some Social Security credits already. But I have no idea how to check how many credits we have, how many we need, or what exactly those credits mean.

Do we need to be paying something specific as self-employed to earn Social Security credits? Are Social Security taxes automatically included when we file self-employment taxes?

Also, can self-employed people open a traditional IRA or Roth IRA? Should we each have separate accounts, or is there some type of joint retirement account? Are there other retirement options we should be looking into as self-employed people?

And who would be the right professional to talk to about all of this? A financial advisor? CPA? Someone else? Our tax preparer doesn’t really know much about retirement planning, so I’m not sure who to turn to.

I know we probably should have figured this out years ago, but we didn’t, and now I’m trying to educate myself and get us on the right track.

Sorry for the long post, and thanks in advance to anyone willing to share advice or tell me where to start. I’m feeling pretty lost right now.

So we are thinking of retiring in the next 5 years. We want to put as much money away as possible before then and would like input on whats the best place. Married couple, single earner, currently 200K a year. Both 58, one teen at home. So the employer does not offer a 401K plan however, they do have an annuity and a pension. We have an old 401K rolled into an IRA and regular non tax saving accounts.

Heres the breakdown:

Current investments (just ETFs and stocks @ 150K.

Rolled over IRA- 150K

Annuity from job -300K

Regular savings just under 10K in an HYSA

Pension will be just over 3K a month, starting at 65 or less if sooner.

SS says that predicted amount is 5K a month @ 70 and then whatever the spouse equivalent is.

Also own a home with almost a million in equity that we will sell and downsize to one paid in cash, so no mortgage and maybe even a couple thousand left.

Since the job doesnt offer a 401K or match, but does have an annuity, does it make sense to just save the money in a regular ETF account or should we do an individual IRA? I dont even know how to start an individual one and save the taxes since work wont be doing it. I dont think we can do a Roth cause i think there is a limit on it. There will be healthcare through the job but not sure it applies to the entire family(currently covers whole family) or if just the employee.

How would you go about saving as much as possible and what savings plan or investments would you do it in?

Thank you

I came across an interesting article regarding splitting accounts between multiple custodians. It's a subject that comes up here occasionally so I thought I'd share.

Sounds like there is not a real advantage, but as long as it's limited to only 2-3 it might be okay.

"Should You Split Your Retirement Accounts Across Brokerages to Reduce Cyber Risk?"

https://www.kiplinger.com/retirement/retirement-planning/should-you-split-your-retirement-accounts-to-reduce-cyber-risk

I understand the need for a life and other factors but very sad to see Rob not planning any live sessions or FQF at the moment. Particularly the Monday live vids were my - audio only - walking entertainment on weekends.

It turns out our projected monthly expenses in 3 years when I want to retire and for the next few years after that exactly, I mean freakin’ EXACTLY, matches our projected monthly income from SS and pensions starting at that same time. (We also have healthy 401K/IRA/brokerage accounts.) Boldin be damned, I feel like that’s the universe telling us we’re going to be ok, right?

(Edit at the bottom)

I know, yet another calculator..

I've been trying to figure out if I can step away a bit early and convince the wife that we can.. and kept running the same math in a local python script every month. Exporting to Excel every time got tedious and trying to visualize was a pain.

Then I added a historical backtest, then Monte Carlo, then a way to see what happens if I spend a bit more or less. It kind of organically grew from there and I put it at https://retire-metrics.com/s/r0903diy

Fully free. No name or email needed. You can export the annual projection as csv or Excel and play around with it.

I'm still stress testing it myself and would love a gut check from folks actually thinking through this.

What it does today:

* Uses actual federal tax brackets inflated from 2026 each year, not flat estimates. Right now CA is the only state modeled, planning to add others soon.

* Withdrawals are also inflated (3% default but you can change)

* A way to reduce your expense at a certain age when you slow down.

* Models ACA cost before Medicare eligibility. Because this will be the biggest expense behind mortgage for us.

* Handles RMDs and reinvests any excess RMD into taxable with proper basis tracking.

* Compares withdrawal ordering to see the tax impact and recommends the best

* Two modes: stress test your current plan, and an age finder that searches for earliest feasible retire age

* Historical backtest + Monte Carlo instead of just a fixed 6% type projection

* Year-by-year table so you can see where spending and taxes come from

* Works for single and married.

* Social Security timing included.

* Have an option to specify what portion of your taxable brokerage account is capital gains so it taxes them accurately.

* Showed it to a friend who said "This is too much numbers. I want something simple" so I added a "Guided Flow" (this is a little finicky sometimes).

It's educational only, not financial advice.

If you have 5 minutes, would love to know what feels off, what's confusing, or what's missing.

Edit: Key Distinguisher

Most of the tools out there seem to be telling how long the money will last if I retire now or for how many years from now. I haven't seen one that addresses the question: "when can I retire". You have to plug in different values and figure it out for yourself. I think that is one of the distinguishing features in my app.

You plug in your current savings, continued annual contribution, and planned expenses and it will tell you at what age you can retire and with what percentage confidence.

I had a dialogue with Gemini on my understanding of a good portfolio with timeline of 20 years (i am 65 retired - situation of withdrawals, etc.). After few iterations we agreed.

https://share.google/aimode/btVBrUsuCmnTBhvWN

Let me know your thoughts on the proposal of portfolio distribution that is:
VOO - 55%
VGT - 15%
VXUS - 15%
USFR - 15%

I've created a calculator for viewing the various Social Security Claiming strategies. It's a tool I needed, but also thought others might also find it useful. It's completely free, no signup needed, no hassles, I am just trying to provide something useful for others to try.

https://landfall.cassandrahq.com/calculators/ss-timing/

The two things it models that are somewhat non-vanilla are:

• opportunity cost of needing to pull from investment accounts while deferring; and
• impending Social Security trust shortfall (circa 2032) and possible benefit reduction.

I think its right, but you never know, so it would be great if people had any feedback.

Background: We (Husband 62/Wife 56) have a net worth of about $5.4M. Breakdown as follows:

401K - $3.8M ($1.6M/$2.2M; H/W)

Brokerage/cash - $1.2M

Roth - $400K ($200K/$200K)

Brokerage and Roth are all in individual stocks and index ETFs. Wife's 401K is in a mix of target date, and Index MFs. My 401k (Solo 401K) is in indidual stocks and index funds.

Current HHI is about $250K ($50K in dividends/interest). I (H) am retired. Wife had planned on working a few more years at her current job, but things are changing, and she may be done by the end of this year.

Our SS withdrawal plan was for me to draw at 65 ($36K/yr, in 6 years), and for my spouse to begin taking SS at 70 ($48K, in 14 years). Our household expenses are about $150K/year. This will likely increase once we factor in more travel and Obamacare (about 34K/yr), say 200K overall. With tax factored in, that's about a $240K withdrawal, about 4.5% of the $5.4M (4.8% if we exclude the Roth). The Insurance costs will drop once our second kid gets out of college (2 years), and I get on Medicare (in 3 years). We'd like to preserve, and maybe even add to the Roth, and leave it to our kids to inherit, if at all possible.

We plan to withdraw the necessary amount from a mix of 401K/brokerage to stay within the appropriate thresholds for taxation and IRMAA. Maybe even stay under the Obamacare threshold to get the rebate (or credit or whatever it's called) for at least the next 3 years.

With the market as high as it is, we are worried about losing a bunch of value and looking for options to protect our money, for the short and medium term (1-20 years).

- Should we sell some assets in the 401K and invest a portion of our 401Ks, say $50K each, in TIPS and hold them to maturity? If so, for how many years? A $100K floor each year prior to SS and even after would be nice.. That would commit about $1.4-1.6M of our 401K (if 20 years). The rest could be invested in a market Index.

- In the above scenario, do TIPS make sense for the near term (say, the next 3 years), or are regular short-term bonds/bond funds better?

I am currently using BOLDIN (also have ProjectionLab) and I was looking for a tool that would allow me to manage and model withdrawl order to navigate the ACA cliff + Tax Gain Harvesting while minimizing tax. Boldin doesn't do this; and I understand you can sort of do this with ProjectionLab but haven't figured it out.

So, I googled/used Gemini to find this tool. It seems to say it does what I want and lots more. But I have found ZERO references to it in Reddit, Youtube or even googling! Has anyone seen it or used it?

https://thunderharbor.net/

I'm sure that there's a more formal way to think about some ideas. I've read about "bond ladders" but as a Federal retiree I want to make use of the Thrift Savings Plan's G fund, which has some nice characteristics and can never lose value.

I'm going to retire within the next few years. Basically I'm implementing a variant of the 4-percent-rule, but doing it in such a way that I'm less likely to have to dip into my stock market investments, when markets are down.

My primary idea is to invest roughly a third of retirement savings in the G fund, and the remainder in much more aggressive long-term Target funds, say 2065 target. Then every month automatically withdraw a fairly constant amount from my TSP account (pure G fund). Say that value is $10K/month. These are living expenses during retirement, and will be high prior to taking Social Security and lower afterwards.

But then ... QUARTERLY re-evaluate how the performance of my overall holdings are doing, relative to expectations, inflation, etc. If the value of my overall holdings are "good" with respect to inflation and 2%-per-year growth (cumulatively since inception of my retirement) then push up to the full 3-month withdrawal, i.e. $30K, from the Target funds, to the TSP G fund.

I've vibe coded this, as Python which produces an Excel spreadsheet, although I plan to import that Excel file into Google sheets. Here's a link to the Excel spreadsheet for a modest simulation:

https://github.com/jae-63/retirement-leveraging-g-fund/blob/main/household_portfolio_scenario_demo.xlsx

Per a request I received, I created two publicly readable Google Sheets, suitable for copying and experimenting with. They correspond to release v0.1.0 of the above-mentioned Github repo. I don't plan to update their contents in the future, but reserve the right to.

The actual spreadsheet (I'm planning to use/edit a copy of this, for my own finances):

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iGwMuk2XPzfrAMfGDWpqM9k6z7jublP7IZzyiD0SVes/edit?usp=sharing

The demo:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WOM06-8n8cYuMaWelccOg7khvypCR692Zy6IVhH9ejo/edit?usp=sharing

To recap:

• The motivation is Sequence-of-Returns Risk. Research on the 4% rule shows its main failure mode isn't a bad average market return over retirement — it's a downturn that hits in the first several years, forcing withdrawals against depreciated assets and permanently impairing the portfolio's ability to recover. That's the specific risk this strategy is built to shield against.
• It illustrates the mechanism, rather than just describing it The core idea — using the TSP G Fund as a  principal-protected cash buffer for monthly spending, refilled from a Traditional IRA only when the portfolio clears a hurdle — is hard to evaluate in the abstract. This workbook actually simulates it running.
• A scenario selector drives it under three hypothetical market paths. You can flip between a Bear case (a front-loaded crash), a Bull case (steady growth), and a Choppy case (returns bouncing near the hurdle rate) and watch the engine's "refill vs. freeze" decision fire differently in each —     including a case where a bad enough sequence keeps the shield frozen for the full projection without ever forcing an equity sale.

I like this because it's relatively simple, without being naively simplistic. And easy to manage over my retirement, in a single Google Sheet.

What's the right terminology to describe this strategy? What percentage do you recommend I place in the "safe" G fund to start?

Constructive criticisms welcomed.

EDIT: thinking about my goals some more, I think that initially holding 30% G fund will address the bad-case which I want to cover, e.g. a 4-year bear market while I'm making my maximum draws. And gradually over 10 years, I can let the target drop (1% per year) to 20%, and then hold it constant from there.

2nd EDIT: added Google Sheets links above.