Early-retirement wannabe

fatbeetle

Marine_life wrote: »

What's making you want to come back?

We've been away from the UK for 18 years and although we make regular visits back I am conscious that it some areas it has changed a great deal.

I've been getting more and more homesick over the past 5 years, or feeling the "hiraeth" as us Welsh would say. I had a few, very significant, bereavements last year, and they made me realise how much I wanted to spend time with friends.

I promised my (now late,) mother that I would return every two years for a holiday when I emigrated, and I kept to that, so I don't think there's any big shocks awaiting me. My last holiday in the UK was in the winter of 2015 for 2 months.

When I emigrated I kept my house on, and rented it out. So we now have a mortgage free home, in one of the most beautiful parts of the UK (Sennen, Cornwall,) to return to, and are in the position of retiring early, (me 59, wife 54,) due to money we have earned and saved over here.

So a mix of emotional, lifestyle, and financial reasons really.

gfplux

fatbeetle wrote: »

I've been getting more and more homesick over the past 5 years, or feeling the "hiraeth" as us Welsh would say. I had a few, very significant, bereavements last year, and they made me realise how much I wanted to spend time with friends.

I promised my (now late,) mother that I would return every two years for a holiday when I emigrated, and I kept to that, so I don't think there's any big shocks awaiting me. My last holiday in the UK was in the winter of 2015 for 2 months.

When I emigrated I kept my house on, and rented it out. So we now have a mortgage free home, in one of the most beautiful parts of the UK (Sennen, Cornwall,) to return to, and are in the position of retiring early, (me 59, wife 54,) due to money we have earned and saved over here.

So a mix of emotional, lifestyle, and financial reasons really.

Fatbeetle, do come back here and tell us how you feel when you settled in "back home"
Those of us who have been away are always curious how it would feel.

Marine_life

Some of my observations on safe withdrawal rates:

http://earlyretirefree.com/safe-withdrawal-rates-swr-and-why-you-should-be-worried/

jamesd

Your conclusion is misrepresentation and false premises and misrepresentation is used throughout the post in a way that may fool those who don't know what safe withdrawal rates are.

The risk needed to achieve a safe withdrawal rate has not changed at all. The SWR depends on the investments chosen. Choose to use deposits and you get a lower SWR than using investments.

Commonly quoted SWRs do not use deposits, they use shares and bonds. 4% is not a SWR using deposits.

We do not appear to be in circumstances resembling those which are the limiting cases for safe withdrawal rates. Those are sustained high inflation and sustained low investment returns, with real returns for an equity and bond mixture below 1% for fifteen years being one limit.

A safe withdrawal rate is one that for the investments chosen wouldn't have failed historically, including for those periods of high inflation and low returns.

If you want your post to make sense, remove the phrase safe withdrawal rate and mention of 4% from it. If you did that you could well end up with a reasonably correct post usefully discussing how those who want to achieve a particular income target might now find that they can't achieve it using risk-free deposits and might have to use some investments as well.

Your final conclusion is correct, though: DYOR. Learning what a safe withdrawal rate is would be sensible and reading What Returns Are Safe Withdrawal Rates REALLY Based Upon? a good start on that.

Thrugelmir

Using historical models to predict Safe Withdrawal Rates may be flawed if we have now entered an extended period of low interest rates and returns.

Seems to be a possibility that's receiving increasing amounts of coverage. One senses a degree of nervousness creeping in, in certain quarters.

westv

One of the ways to see how your portfolio withdrawals mighy cope with market volatility is to use historic data.

michaels

Marine_life wrote: »

Some of my observations on safe withdrawal rates:

http://earlyretirefree.com/safe-withdrawal-rates-swr-and-why-you-should-be-worried/

Another way of looking at this is how much does the govt have to offer above rpi/cpi to sell its index linked gilts. This has pretty obviously fallen over time. IE it is not just nominal interest rates that are lower but real rates too.

madeinireland_2

Well a bit of a sudden surprise today (even though I knew it was coming it's a month earlier than expected) but I have a voluntary redundancy offer which means I will be retired now (if accepted) by the end of August and given I have holiday to use up means I have just a few days left. I will most certainly go for it so finally at the age of 56 I will be free from work.

I will have enough funds from the offer to support me for the next 3 years before I take my DB pension.

Bye bye work.

Yippee!!!

Marine_life

jamesd wrote: »

The risk needed to achieve a safe withdrawal rate has not changed at all. The SWR depends on the investments chosen.

I don't agree.
The SWR depends on achieving a certain rate of return.
If I need to opt for more volatile investments (e,g, equities) AND the return on those investments is reducing then then my relative risk has increased.

weenie15

The Finance Zombie has been running a 4% SWR experiment for the past 2.5 years. The notional 'everything in Vanguard LS 100%' is over £100k up from its original portfolio value, despite the 4% withdrawals.

http://www.thefinancezombie.com/2017/07/safe-withdrawal-rate-experiment-month-31-july-2017.html