John Doe

Comments

• A former boss (when I was working in the Middle East) told me that when he was in university, he and a number of his fellow Irish countrymen would take summer jobs on the New Jersey shore. They were aware of the format for Social Security numbers and when the job application asked for their number, they filled in any 9-digit sequence. The employer(s) apparently didn't care or didn't bother to do any kind of check.

  Post: What could save Social Security and Medicare or bring it closer to insolvency

  Link to comment from February 24, 2026

• "Throughout your career, you were always dependent on your company’s leadership not making catastrophic decisions, the banking systems functioning correctly, and the broader economy remaining robust." I would second this comment. When I was working as an engineer in the Middle East there was a downturn in oil prices in the late 1990s. Although my job did not end due to the economic slump (oil was about 80-90% of the country's GDP), all of us "guest workers" discovered that an employment contract was no guarantee of continuing employment. We were all just 30 days away from being sent home to find employment elsewhere. I lived there for 28 years with that 30-day horizon always in view....

  Post: Laid Off

  Link to comment from February 6, 2026

• My wife and are fairly well synchronized when it comes to spending habits, but she has no interest whatsoever in financial topics. My parents were "Silent Generation"-types, who lived on the installment debt treadmill and had practically no savings habits, while hers were slightly older, having endured the Great Depression as children, and were maniacal savers and nearly pathologically frugal. So, we've both reacted against our respective upbringings. She tends to spend more freely than I do, but we manage to make things work out. I can't think of a single blow-out fight over money in our nearly 40 years of marriage, and we're on track for a comfortable retirement in a couple more years. Thanks be to God!

  Post: Are you and your spouse synchronized?

  Link to comment from January 20, 2026

• The answer to the question of whether to stick with money market or lock in your interest rate with a CD is.... Yes. (That was the answer our high school German teacher always gave to either-or questions.)

  Post: Should I Lock in CD Rates Now or Stay in Money Market?

  Link to comment from January 15, 2026

• Some years ago I was sent to Milan, Italy for a couple of weeks for my engineering job with a Middle Eastern oil producer. My wife and two daughters followed me a week after I had arrived and we made plans to take the train from Milan to Venice for some tourist activity on the weekend. At the Milan train station I needed to find an ATM to get cash for the trip, so I told them to "SIT HERE" until I returned. It took me longer than expected to find a machine and while I was gone the initial boarding announcement was given. So, sure enough, when I returned they were gone. My wife had the train tickets while I had the cash. Neither of us could move without the other. I assumed they had boarded the train, which was soon to depart, to ensure we didn't miss our train and were waiting for me to join them. While I headed for the platform and ran from one end to the other of the train, peering in all the windows and trying to spot them, they resumed their seats back where I had expected to find them. Just as the train was about to leave the station I got on board without tickets, thinking that I just must not have seen them. After all, they weren't on the platform or at the place where I had told them to wait as far as I could see. (There was a wall with huge, arch-shaped openings between the place they were to wait and all the platforms, so I really couldn't see). In the end I found the conductor on the train and explained my predicament. They dropped me at the next stop and put me in touch with the ticket office back in Milan where my wife had gone to change the tickets for the next train. (My post-paid cell phone made calls in Italy, but her pre-paid plan did not allow for such things. We learned our lesson!) They took the next train and I got on when it arrived where I was waiting. SMH. What part of "wait here" did you not understand?

  Post: Right Day, On Time and at the Right Place: A Rare Trio

  Link to comment from October 1, 2025

• Reminds me of the time shortly after I had moved my family to a Middle Eastern oil producing country to take up employment back in the mid-1990s. I was grousing about how the new ATM card issued by the bank next to my apartment only worked in the newer machines and the machine closest to my apartment was one of the older ones. So, every time I went to pull cash out of the ATM it never worked. Then we got a letter from friends who had taken up residence in a far less developed Arab country -- "Our car was stolen last week and spotted in a village about an hour's drive from the capital. If we pay off the right people, we might be able to get it back." Perspective is everything!

  Post: The 1% Club: Our Unnoticed Wealth

  Link to comment from September 26, 2025

• [Our fund] equips advisors with tactical exit strategies and patented indicators designed to limit downside and preserve growth. Reminiscent of a front-loaded fund we were sold in the late 90s by one of the leeches parading around the Middle East as investment advisors before I educated myself about investing for retirement. The fund had an automatic trigger to sell any stock that had lost 10% from the purchase price -- essentially locking in any losses. I really took a bath on that "investment!" After that experience I wised up and started using no-load funds.

  Post: Inventing Problems

  Link to comment from September 9, 2025

• In my line of work (engineering) almost everything we do is based on assumptions and for us SWAG is a "Scientific" WAG. The irony is palpable and intentional!

  Post: Recommendations for Retirement Planning Tools

  Link to comment from August 12, 2025

• We spent 30 years in the Middle East and raised our 4 kids there. They all moved back to the US for college and then basically launched themselves -- Mom and Dad were living 10,000 miles and 9 time zones away. When our older daughter's marriage fell apart after less than two years, we were beginning to transition back to living in America, because my job with the national oil company was ending after I turned 60 (mandatory retirement age). We bought a 3-BR house near our eldest, who was temporarily hosting her and her 1 yr old baby. He and his long-suffering wife had basically been standing-in for us in terms of looking after his 3 younger siblings as they each started their college careers. Our daughter moved into the house and found a low-paying job in a daycare center looking after babies, because the organization would accept public assistance payments to look after her little guy while she worked there -- it's hard to find good help. Four years on, and her divorce is final, she's pulled herself together, finished training to become a physical therapy assistant (scoring a perfect 800 on her board exam!) and even remarried. We had some rocky interactions at times, but she was working on her issues with a counselor, and we were happy to let her live with us rent-free to help her get back on her feet. She has wonderful parenting skills and having our grandson as a long-term "houseguest" was a real treat. Our story has a happy ending, but I know of few families like ours, with four kids and none of them going "off the rails" permanently. Each of our kids is now married, two with children, and they are all living productive, virtuous lives with a strong commitment to a local church. I credit a "Higher Power" for this outcome, because when I look at my own shortcomings and the struggles my wife and I have had in our marriage, it certainly wasn't our "stellar" parenting that got us here....

  Post: Family Dynamics, Part 2: Supporting Adult Children

  Link to comment from July 30, 2025

• I agree with the post from the author that there are two different questions being kicked around in this thread.

  1. How much money can a person withdraw from retirement accounts annually in order to have a fighting chance of making their assets last for 30 years? The 4% rule is a rough approximation to answer that question.
  2. How much money will be needed annually during the span of one's retirement, which could last 30 years? The answer to this question does indeed depend on whether the income needs are for one person, two people (and with or without the 39 cats), or possibly even more, as some grandparents occasionally end up raising grandchildren.
  The 4% rule does not address question #2, because the purpose of the rule is not to satisfy actual living requirements. It's there as a first guess as to how to stretch assets to provide 30 years of "spending money" -- i.e., don't draw down your assets too quickly, or you may run out of money before you reach the end of that hypothetical 30 years of retirement. If you estimate that you will need more than the amount of money that an annual (inflation-adjusted) 4% withdrawal rate can provide, then (as Jonathan points out) you need to make some adjustments to fill the gap between what you can expect using the 4% rule and what you project you will need. Maybe the 39 cats will have to go, and maybe you also need to (1) delay the start of retirement so you don't need 30 years of withdrawals + have more years to accumulate assets + increase your monthly Social Security check, (2) reduce your "requirements" for income by cutting expenses and lifestyle expectations, (3) increase income by part-time work during retirement ("Would you like fries with that?"). None of these adjustments has anything to do with the 4% rule. The final question posed by the author is indeed a valid question, "What factor do you need to multiply by one person's expenses to come up with the amount needed for two people?" That can be approximated by making some simplifying assumptions. I.e., there are shared costs (assume only housing) and there are individual costs (everything else). If we guess that housing costs are x% of expenses for one person, then for two people (all other things being equal) the total expenses can be estimated by the formula [Total Expenses] = (2-x)*[Expenses for one] If housing costs are 30% of expenses for one person, then the factor would be: 2-0.3 = 1.7 It's not a particularly precise estimate, but it gives an order of magnitude guess. Your mileage may vary....

  Post: How does the 4% Rule Change Assuming A Couple in Retirement?

  Link to comment from February 27, 2025