Patrick425

Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. No further discussion needed.

Yeah, I don't think this would work out too well. Along with reasons that others have mentioned including penalties for early withdrawal before age 59.5 from retirement plans (However, principal contributions older than 5 years contributed to a Roth IRA can be withdrawn at any time), there are others. The 4% rule assumes you are retiring at a traditional retirement age (65ish). You are adding 20 years to your retirement life that the $1M will have to cover. Also, your kids would be around 15 years old or younger when you retire. Your family health insurance premiums will be at least $1,000 a month, probably closer to $2,000 (and you won't be eligible for Medicare until 65). Also, your SS benefits will be greatly reduced when you finally are eligible to collect it since SS is based on highest 35 years of pay. If you retire at age 45, you may have 25-30 years of pay at the most (based on the current way SS works). As a side note, the 4% rule is questionable. If you Retire at 65 and have $1M and use the 4% rule, the $1M principal would get you to age 90 (assuming it's 4% of your initial retirement amount and not 4% of the amount at the end of each year) . So, it seems to assume that you just move all the money to cash when you retire. That would be a foolish move. You should be at least at 50/50 (50% Equities/50% fixed) or 40/60 in retirement.

All exactly true. One of the issues with people who are afraid of or have a negative view of the market is that there is a lot more noise made by the general media when the market has a down day or a rough year or two. 75% of the time the S&P 500 is up on an annualized calendar year basis. The S&P 500 has only been in existence since 1957. However, it can and has been extrapolated back to 1926. Since that period, if you take the annual returns of the S&P 500 and calculate rolling 10 year annualized returns, there have been only four (out of 82) 10-year periods where the annualized return has been negative. It's never been negative over a 20 year period. The worst 20 year annualized return was 3.11% for the 20 year period ending 1948 and that included the great depression years (the cumulative return for that same period was 84.42%. The average annualized return for a 20 year period is 11.01%. The average cumulative return is 854.63% I'm not suggesting that you should only invest in a S&P 500 index fund. As adambr2 stated, you should have diversified retirement portfolio. My point is that over longer periods of time (10+) years, historically, the market has always gone up. The S&P 500 has been up 9 calendar years in a row now. We are due for at least a few bad years. Trying to time it is a foolish game. You just have to be in for the long hall and roll with the punches.

S&P 500 up over 7.4% year to date after today's close. Crazy. Last 9 years the index has had positive returns each year. There has never been 10 straight calendar years of positive returns for the S&P 500. Something will eventually spook the market, geopolitical or otherwise, and a correction will happen, but it's been quite a ride so far!

Can't understand at all how anyone could possibly be upset with this?! A known commodity that is controllable for 5 years at a bargain price for prospects that might be great someday, or may not be. I'll take controllable known greatness over possible greatness any day.

One of the supposed benefits of using bitcoin is safety. In fact, cryptocurrency was basically started because of distrust of institutions. However, it's not "unhackable": http://www.zdnet.com/article/bitcoin-exchange-nicehash-hacked-70m-lost/ http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-exchange-bitfinex-hacked-60-million-stolen-2016-8

"This is Chuck, here to remind Bill to SHUT UP!" Cracks me up every time. rewind.."reminding Bill to shut up!...rewind..."to shut up"...rewind..."Bill to shut up".

Swing and a Drive, watched that movie last night and really enjoyed it. As I was watching I was thinking that it kind of reminded me of "That Thing You Do" and another movie that I can't think of the name now. Again, thanks for the recommendation, not a movie I would have normally clicked on when browsing. In regards to "must sees", I have a long list of them and would agree with Bikeage that "Good Fellas" would be on that list, but I would hope most people have seen that one. Although, some of my co-workers are 20-25 years younger than me and I sometimes have a hard time believing some of the movies they have not seen (Back to the Future, Ghostbusters - the original, Blues Brothers, etc). I want to ask them what is wrong with their parents. How did they never introduce you to these classics? Anyways, as far as possible "hidden gem" must sees, one that comes to mind is "The Pope of Greenwich Village". Most others I can think of are comedies like some of the early John Cusack films like "The Sure Thing" and "Better Off Dead". Now that I think of it, "Martian Child" , also with John Cusack, is not a well known film that I thought was decent. "Night Shift" with Henry Winkler and Michael Keaton (directed by Ron Howard) is another not widely known comedy I always enjoyed. I know there is more, but having trouble thinking of them now. I use the phrase "hidden gem" loosely in the films I'm mentioning, especially the comedies which would possibly come of as a bit dated and campy to a younger viewer and they are not as critically acclaimed as Sing Street. Most of these I first saw when I was much younger and they were simple, silly, and fun and I would definitely watch them again if they popped up on cable somewhere...but they hardly ever do.

Thanks for the recommendation! Looks like a movie I would enjoy. I'm definitely going to check it out.

There is a certain value to not having debt on your personal books. I know that it probably would have made more sense for me to not pay off my student loan and mortgage as soon as possible but it sure feels good. Not to mention that if you pay off loans earlier and reduce your debt, your credit score will increase. This in turn will increase your chances for any loans you may need in the future and will also get you better interest rates on those loans.

I switched all my retirement accounts to index funds. Fees are way cheaper and over time you do exactly the same as trying to beat the market. Imho, best post/advice in this thread, especially if you are looking for long term retirement type saving. .....sorry for the long post, and I know all the posts above are not necessarily about retirement savings planning, but I'm all for people taking a vested interest in their own financial futures. Save early and diversify your investments. If you in your 20's or 30's you should have no less than 80% of your retirement savings in equities. As your savings grow, you should be sure you diversify among large cap, mid cap, small cap, and international. This can easily be done with Index funds either with just core index funds or also adding growth and value funds (although, I feel the core funds alone are fine). Non-equity money can be invested in an Intermediate bond fund. The only caveat to this is remembering to rebalance your portfolio quarterly or semi-annually. Otherwise, target-date funds are another option and will automatically rebalance and become more conservative as you get closer to retirement. I have 5% of my retirement money in individual stocks and it's more of just a "fun" thing to do without risking too much of my total savings. I would caution anyone against putting too much of their retirement money into individual stocks. My wife works for a company were all employer contributions to 401(k) goes into the company stock. While the stock has done well over time, I always try to have her keep her total investment in the stock at no more than 15% of the total...and preferably closer to 10%. I'm sure many former employees of companies of Enron and Worldcom wish they had done the same. I think the US does a bad job in general of educating students in primary education regarding financial planning in general. There are too many 25-35 year olds that either feel like they can't afford to save (which is usually not true, they actually can't afford not to save) or that don't understand/trust the market. The average person only pays attention to news regarding the stock market when there are drastic downturns. The S&P 500 has never had a negative return in any 20 year period and very rarely has it ever had a negative return in any 10 year period. Over long periods of time the market has always gone up. There is no guarantee that that will always be the case, but I'm not going to bet against history. Diversify and don't panic during downturns in the market. To me, trying to time the market is a fool's game.

R.I.P. Mary

I always heard stories that her and Gabe Kaplan did not exactly get along on the set of "Welcome Back Kotter"

Not sure I understand. With the economy and current unemployment levels, yes, the employers call the shots and can be very particular about what they are looking for.