Despite not knowing how long I will live and how well my investments will perform while I'm in my 60's, I feel more comfortable spending and enjoying a little larger portion of my retirement savings now knowing that I should be OK with if my nest egg isn't as large as I had expected it to be at age 70 with a heftier social security income stream. The author is correct, it's insurance so if you can afford to wait and you have no health issues that put your longevity into question, then waiting is a smart option. As someone once said "If I made the wrong decision by waiting to claim my SS until I turn 70, I won't live long enough to regret that decision".
I 100% agree. While the bulk of my stock investments are in the Total Stock Market and S&P500 funds, I've always kept about 10% of the stock portion of my portfolio in Mid-Cap and Small-Cap funds to balance against the enormity of the top 5 or 10 companies that dominate the broader index funds. To me this strategy feels more stable in the long term and when emerging from recessions, stock market dips, pandemics and other market maladies this strategy tends "spice up" overall performance.
A long time ago I realized that money doesn't buy happiness. Instead does buy protection against one form of unhappiness. Namely, always miserably struggling to survive. You can be wealthy and still miserable, and relatively poor and quite happy. If you have enough to take care of yourself and those you love with good health, good food, and comfortable shelter you can choose to be happy with that or anything more that your money can buy. But if the "anything more" becomes "more than you can afford" you will get in trouble. Often those in this situation think they only need to win a lottery and then they will be happy are much more likely than not to find that huge sums of money gained suddenly are not an answer to unhappiness, but source of many new and unfamiliar problems and sources of unhappiness. So no, money does not buy happiness.
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Despite not knowing how long I will live and how well my investments will perform while I'm in my 60's, I feel more comfortable spending and enjoying a little larger portion of my retirement savings now knowing that I should be OK with if my nest egg isn't as large as I had expected it to be at age 70 with a heftier social security income stream. The author is correct, it's insurance so if you can afford to wait and you have no health issues that put your longevity into question, then waiting is a smart option. As someone once said "If I made the wrong decision by waiting to claim my SS until I turn 70, I won't live long enough to regret that decision".
Post: Covering the Basics
Link to comment from March 22, 2023
I 100% agree. While the bulk of my stock investments are in the Total Stock Market and S&P500 funds, I've always kept about 10% of the stock portion of my portfolio in Mid-Cap and Small-Cap funds to balance against the enormity of the top 5 or 10 companies that dominate the broader index funds. To me this strategy feels more stable in the long term and when emerging from recessions, stock market dips, pandemics and other market maladies this strategy tends "spice up" overall performance.
Post: Far From Middling
Link to comment from June 27, 2021
A long time ago I realized that money doesn't buy happiness. Instead does buy protection against one form of unhappiness. Namely, always miserably struggling to survive. You can be wealthy and still miserable, and relatively poor and quite happy. If you have enough to take care of yourself and those you love with good health, good food, and comfortable shelter you can choose to be happy with that or anything more that your money can buy. But if the "anything more" becomes "more than you can afford" you will get in trouble. Often those in this situation think they only need to win a lottery and then they will be happy are much more likely than not to find that huge sums of money gained suddenly are not an answer to unhappiness, but source of many new and unfamiliar problems and sources of unhappiness. So no, money does not buy happiness.
Post: Does money buy happiness?
Link to comment from May 1, 2021