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birb_cromble  16hr ago (text post)   130 thread views

Weekly Finance Thread - 2027-06-27

A weekly thread to discuss financial matters - from personal all the way up to global.

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When planning for retirement, is there a useful heuristic for when it makes sense to pull back on contributing to your 401(k) and stashing money in a taxable brokerage account instead?

Right now I'm operating on a premise that looks something like this.

  • Assume my retirement spending base is the equivalent of the highest inflation-adjusted year I have on record.
  • Assume $15,000/year (inflation adjusted) for private insurance until I can get Medicare at 65.
  • Assume Medicare will exist when I'm 65.
  • Assume social security will not be available on retirement.
  • Assume the market between now and my death at 95 will have 5th percentile performance (ie: dogshit)
  • Assume my tax advantaged accounts will be accessible without penalty at 59.5.
  • Add a small yearly buffer as a safety factor.

My thought right now is that I should keep contributing to the 401(k) until I have enough saved so that I can survive entirely on my tax advantaged accounts from 59.5 to 95, based on those assumptions.

Is this reasonable? I've had "you must contribute to your 401(k) or you will die starving in a ditch" pounded into my head for so long that it seems almost blasphemous to even consider alternatives.

The thing is, you're going to die somewhere and if you are one of the only 5% of people still with enough money to support themselves when they get old, guess what the tax on your pension is going to be? It's like being a prepper after Hurricane Katrina.

Spending money now at least guarantees you'll get something for it, and that something won't be an extra year being cranky and yelling for somebody to change your urine bag.

It's like being a prepper after Hurricane Katrina.

Well Hurricane Rita hit only three weeks later, though I don't know what the fiscal analogy there is.

The analogy is that if you are known as prepper, when SHTF your hoarded supplies become number one target in your neighborhood. You have guns? Well, your desperate neighbors have guns too and nothing to lose.

This is why OPSEC is the most crucial element of survival success in such situations.

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