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birb_cromble  1d ago (text post)   377 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.

I have strong memories of reading first-hand accounts by preppers after Katrina explaining that they were forced by government officials to give up their stockpiles to feed hungry people nearby, which I interpret as 'in times of hardship, it's better to be in a weakish position with the vast majority than put yourself in a position where you are visibly richer and safer'.

I can't now find those accounts and Google is telling me that this is misinformation, so either my recollections are wrong (entirely possible, I read this years ago) or the internet is being curated again. Assign low epistemic confidence.

Maybe it is misremembering of very real stories of cops going house to house to seize guns (in totally unlawful and unconstitutional way) and American gun owners obeying.

It was rather sordid and blackpilling episode, like the whole Katrina story, and it is understandable no one wants to be reminded of it.

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