In an earlier article, I described my unexpected decision to use fixed-term immediate annuities (FTIA) to form a floor for my expenses over the next ten years. I thought you might find it of interest if I expand on this, relating to the balance of our income needs and how this might play out over the longer term. To be clear and upfront this strategy is “Prioritizing Income Generation Over Capital Preservation” but not in a reckless way and could change over each 10 year block.

Well, mostly FI, but some RE. (FIRE standing for Financial Independence, Retire Early). Christine Benz from Morningstar recently attended a CampFI event in Spain, and wrote about her experience here.
She comments that “A lot of people have a caricatured perception of the FI community. They assume that everyone is trying to live on $10 a day in order to hang it up at age 35.” While she met some young people, she met older people as well.

Dear HD readers:  We had so much fun with the original version of this post, that I thought it might be fun to add a 3rd possible route to funding retirement at $138,000/yr.   Of course, there is no reality in this, no real personal info, it is just a scenario.  And, most important, any legal route that get you to your desired retirement income is the right one for you.
 
One of my friends is hitting 73 in August and we were discussing his need to do an RMD this year. 

I’m 58 and my wife is 56. We’ve been planning our retirement with care and intention for years—no debt, solid retirement savings, a well-diversified portfolio, and a liability-matching plan (LMP) that covers us until Medicare kicks in. We’ve talked through our priorities, run the numbers, and built our plan together. The core approach to our plan was heavily influenced by Bill Bernstein and Wade Pfau’s writing and we are content with a good funded ratio.
One thing we agreed on early: when one of us loses or leaves work,

I always thought the glowing stories of FIRE folks were a bit dodgy. Much of the time they aren’t even retired in the traditional sense. Sometimes they go too far sharing their acquired wisdom for cash.
I followed one blogger for several years. She shared her frugal ways, extreme in my view like buying her two-year olds shoes in a second hand thrift shop. She wrote a book, gained a lot of publicity, was featured in news articles and gave advice. 

Based on the feedback I have received on HD over the years mostly directed at my failure to budget or track expenses in detail using spreadsheets, my selection of some high expense investments and to not pay much attention at all to our investments, failure to use financial or retirement planning services, retaining life insurance in retirement, beginning Social Security at FRA while working, buying cars for cash, retiring at age 67(part of my income replacement strategy),

I have expressed my opinion on the need for and desirability of a steady income stream in retirement, as guaranteed as possible. Next Friday my pension will be deposited in our bank account. On the second and forth Wednesday each month our Social Security will be deposited. All that has happened each month for the last seventeen years.
I don’t worry about withdrawal strategies, withdrawal percentages, guard rails, tip ladders or any similar strategy. The IRC tells me what I must withdraw from my IRA. 

My view is that nothing will be done to fix the funding of Social Security through 2028 thus leaving people with concern for their future and to ponder rumors and misinformation. The latest report from the Trustees that should have been released by now is not available yet, but here is a summary from the last in 2024.
My opinion is to be conservative when planning your retirement in the next few years, and use 80% of your current projected Social Security benefit.

I find the “liability matching” concept as outlined in Dr. Wad Pfau’s “Funded Ratio”  helpful based on our household-specific inputs I provide.  This analysis, while based on different inputs than those of Monte Carlo simulation, has given me another way to project whether we expect to have adequate financial resources for the remainder of mine and my spouse’s life.
I have used Mike Piper’s simplified funded ratio example spreadsheet to “run the numbers” using the following inputs for each year of our expected life spans:

1) Select a conservative,

I’ve had April 1 on my calendar since last July. Today is the day I can apply for a July 1 retirement date from my university. It also happens to be the date I can apply for Medicare because of my 65th birthday on Aug. 1.
I knew how to sign up for Medicare and what to do because we just did so for my husband, who turns 65 in May. Last week, I reviewed the materials from the retirement webinars I attended at the university so that I’d be 

I spent 30 years working for a US megacorp: however, I joined the company in the UK. I was on the UK payroll for about six years, and therefore a very small part of my pension is paid by the UK company (with COLA). I was astounded, when I applied for Social Security, to find that the US government was going to reduce my benefit by the amount of my UK pension.
How did that make sense?

Last year I earned $16.68 an hour – sort of. That’s more than the minimum wage in all but the District of Columbia and for California fast food workers who earn $20 and hour. Fast food workers are mostly part-time, I on the other hand are no time.
That hourly rate is my dividends and interest converted to a equivalent full-time employment. 🤑 I suspect capital gains would boost that a bit- or maybe not this year.

Some people are enamored with the word tariffs. My new favorite word is assumptions.
I was listening to a podcast today and they told a story of a person who went to two financial planners seeking to determine if his retirement plan was sufficient. The first planner told him he had a 95% chance of success. The second said 75%. Naturally, he went with the first planner, but failed to ask the key question. What assumptions were used in the calculation?

Last month I did my best to analyze investments to the market as an alternative to payroll taxes for Social Security. My conclusion was that the payroll taxes were worth it, though some readers respectfully disagreed.
But what if I could go back in time for a do-over. What if at age 16 I began to invest an amount into the market that was equal to and in addition to the payroll tax deducted from my pay?

My wife and I are 58 and 66, respectively. She’ll be retiring soon, but expects to launch herself in a new job for at least several years. I expect to continue working until just after turning 70. I’m in my dream job as the president of my local community bank. We are in our forever home enjoying single floor living. We’re both healthy and travel for a short and long vacation annually. Our four  kids are launched in their careers and doing well;