Jeff Vinick

Comments:

• Simple, optimistic and pragmatic has worked for me. We just retired at 57. I believed that markets would return their average over 30 years with ups and downs along the way. That pretty much happened and then some. Dollar cost averaging, annual rebalancing, and age-20 in bonds served us very well. Now I'm at 57/43 in perpetuity. I made a 10 year rolling Treasury ladder yielding 4.8%, have most of my equities in VTI with about 5% stocks that I've owned for a while (they've gone up about 6x in 6 years and I'm still holding). I know I would make more being 70/30 or 60/40, but this allocation provides yields that almost cover our yearly spending. I'm good with that. Maybe at 70 I'll start investing more in equities for my kids. It's easy to get caught up in minutiae but very good shouldn't be the enemy of great.

  Post: Not Scared of Bears

  Link to comment from April 28, 2024

• I agree. Live passionately, invest like a robot. I've used simple rules of thumb for allocation, dollar cost averaging and rebalancing and it's been amazingly effective. Sometimes it's hard to put money into an equity index when you 'know' it's going to keep falling. And it's hard to rebalance into bonds when you're certain equities will continue going up. It's also hard to shut out the financial noise, especially when you enjoy reading and listening to it as a matter of interest. Investing this way, though, has done very well over my 30+years of doing it and I'm glad I mostly followed my rules, although often in retrospect.

  Post: Don’t Sweat It

  Link to comment from August 11, 2022

• Love your blog, not your calculator. 12x salary is a flawed amount because I save over 50% of my salary monthly and we live below our means. I have about 35-40x what my annual spending will be in retirement. A more accurate number to guage retirement readiness. I've always had problems with retirement calculators that based results off of salary. If my salary is cut in half, suddenly I'm retirement ready based on my savings. The calculator penalizes big savers. Sorry, not a fan.

  Post: We All Want an A

  Link to comment from August 10, 2022

• It's good to know the risks of retirement. What concerns me, though, is simply whether I'm at risk. What's the magic net worth or portfolio amount that provides security and peace of mind? 3 million, 4, 5? I suppose it also depends on what you spend in retirement. Is having 30x your planned annual budget enough or do I need 40 or just 25? There are lots of things to worry about. I want someone to tell me when I can stop worrying. And maybe even retire. I guess for now I'll look to the 4% rule as a guide.

  Post: What to Worry About

  Link to comment from August 8, 2022