Retirees -- Day 1 -- Bull or Bear Market...

Millyonare

Two questions for actual retired folks...

1. On the day 1 you retired, was Wall Street / FTSE in a bull or bear market?

2. What was your experience of your pension pot in the (say) 1-10 years after you retired?

Most commentators say never retire in a bull market... But curious to hear real-world experiences on it from the finance-savvy people here.

Non-retiree or pre-retiree thoughts also welcome 👍

sausage_time

You might want to ask in the Pensions, annuities & retirement planning forum.

masonic

I don't think many people would seriously propose someone delay their retirement because it's a bull market. That could leave them waiting many years for the next bear market, with very few windows of opportunity for retirement. Graphic below courtesy of Vanguard:

If we happen to be in a bear market, and the retiree still feels they are in a strong enough position financially to pull the trigger, then that is a good sign, but what is more important is having sufficient assets and a plan for managing a poor sequence of returns in the early years. This could happen even after entering a bear market.

Linton

Your portfolio should be designed to cope with any events that normally occur at least once a decade. Given that, the state of the market when you retire is irrelevant.

I retired in 2005. The 2008 crash barely affected me since their were serious restrictions at that time on drawdown and my investments were largely set up for buying an annuity.

Sea_Shell

I quit in July 19.   We all know what happened shortly after 😉

tacpot12

I retired in 2017 which was a bear market. Seven years later my portfolio is worth about 10% more than I expected it to be worth and I had have five years on income from it. (I lived on savings for the first two years as I retired at 53 so couldn't draw down on my personal pension).

dunstonh

Most commentators say never retire in a bull market

Never heard that said before.      Its a completely bizarre thing to say as well.   Perhaps the people saying it have no understanding of planning, markets or real life.

Millyonare

dunstonh said:

Most commentators say never retire in a bull market

Never heard that said before.      Its a completely bizarre thing to say as well.   Perhaps the people saying it have no understanding of planning, markets or real life.

It's a very common debate in the US, where investors and researchers tend to be a bit more sophisticated than in the UK and Europe.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/06/14/success/retiring-into-a-bear-market/index.html

Will_Do

How are you meant to know? I am no professional but I have been interested in investing and observing the markets for almost 40 years. I have come to the conclusion that you can only truly identify market trends after the fact. So it could be a bull market today but in a few weeks time it might be evident that tomorrow was the start of a downturn. What am I missing?

Sea_Shell

So by that chart, we have another 2.5 years of "bull" to come, on average. 😉

Hoenir

Millyonare said:

dunstonh said:

Most commentators say never retire in a bull market

Never heard that said before.      Its a completely bizarre thing to say as well.   Perhaps the people saying it have no understanding of planning, markets or real life.

It's a very common debate in the US, where investors and researchers tend to be a bit more sophisticated than in the UK and Europe.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/06/14/success/retiring-into-a-bear-market/index.html

US debate tends to be very US centric. As for more sophisticated I'd say it's American Exceptionalism that shines through. Currently it's like watching someone in a Tesla travelling along a motorway at high speed in thick fog.