Subject: Re: Retirement Year 8
thank you much for the encouraging missive. You left out one other extrabudgetary disaster - the '22 bear market. Getting through that without feeling pressure to go back to work part time is an accomplishment

Thank you for the kind words.

As far as the '22 bear market was concerned: we really didn't do too much at the time but sit there. (We did forego the Jan 2023 inflation adjustment, which was a bit painful. IIRC, 2022 CPI was the high-water mark @ 7.5% +/-)

A big part of the aplomb was the experience that comes with age. I remembered market meltdowns as far back as the October 1987 ~22% drop. At the time, I was still in training and my financial concerns were more with meeting the rent payment than anything to do with Wall Street, but I did mark that many of the mid-career physicians I was training under were tense.

Then, things got better.

After that was 2000, a year I remember more for taking 90% of my 401(K) and buying a single share of BRK.A with it than any reactive moves.

Things melted, and then they got better.

After that came the 2008 real estate derivatives bubble, which did concern me a bit given the recklessness it exposed of the bankers we depend upon to treat our fiat currency with appropriate respect, as well as the ensuing lack of consequences of their behavior.

But, things got better.

So I felt as comfortable as I could reasonably be in 2022 while watching my portfolio melt down 22% in a few months. We have the luxury of being able to shrink our day-to-day expenses significantly (at least for a number of months) without too much pain. No new gadgets, defer some maintenance, stick close to home.

And, things got better.

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My awesomely detailed plan is "take the 6 good weather months off, do something to cover ACA health insurance expense in the winters until Medicare, and figure out what would be fun to do."

My own detailed plan was to let the flywheel spin down for a couple of years - long enough to where I recognized the guy in the mirror - then come up with a plan from there.

Ooops, but then my MIL died after a short brutal illness and Mrs s and her siblings were left with what can only be described as a fusterc of a (small, distant) estate. As the months of all the paperwork fell to me, I added a few more months of slothfulness to the end of my self-imposed two-year sabbatical

...just in time for the arrival of Covid-19.

Ok, let's add a couple of more years of working on the property, reading, and not getting out much.

By that point, I found I had found what was fun to do: see the last sentence. The projects are unlimited. So are the books. And. I'm finally at the point where I no longer know reflexively what the time is within 5-10 minutes, as I did for at least the preceding thirty years. Heck, sometimes I'm even off by a day.

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As regards the ACA: I wasn't really sure what our health costs would be in the ACA years. Having routinely spent my life going >10 years between doctor visits (at least those that didn't involve stitches), I was unprepared for the numerous prescription bottles now on my sink. Between the high-deductible Silver premium, the deductibles, copays, and out-of-pocket maximums, there were years of health care expenses that rivaled what our sons' annual undergraduate expenses had been, at least those who went to a state university.

The only other bit of hard experience to share was the transition of a married couple from Obamacare to Medicare. We turn 65 in separate years, and the first of us transitioned to Mcare in mid-year.

Surprise! That meant the cancellation of the joint ACA policy and then reapplication for a single ACA policy for one, and enrollment on Medicare supplemental and Rx insurance for the other.

The result here was that those maneuvers reset to zero all of our copays and out-of-pocket deductibles for the year. So, the one inavoidable year with six months on a joint ACA policy followed by six months with one of us on Mcare and the other on Ocare resulted in annual out-of-pocket medical expenses that rivaled the year of my knee replacement.

The Monte Carlos say 95%+

I approached the whole thing from as many directions as I could find and ultimately decided once you get to that level of statistical certainty, then a) the next few percentage points are asymptotic and b) no one really knows anything to a >95% confidence level, at least in anything close to a complex system. The only thing I felt I knew to a certainty was if I were to work for another five years, by the time I retired I would be at least five years closer to being dead.

Besides, I was done with my job. Time to move on.

Good luck!

-- sutton