None of us know the future.We have models and predictions, and we can read the news and sometimes detect the foreshadowing, and there are things we can expect and things that are probable.
But should those unknowns, that uncertainty keep you from pulling the plug on your career, assuming the parts of your plan that you can control are indeed in place?
I always thought that once you worked hard enough, once you saved large enough, and once you invested long enough… you magically clear the hurdle of reaching ENOUGH and life is good. All your troubles fade into the distance. You have won the game.
Like many of us, I started saving for retirement in my Roth IRA and 401(k) plan at my first job out of college, well before I ever heard of FIRE. In fact, it was well before FIRE was a thing.
In fact, it was well before FIRE was a thing. But I had good parents and my parents told me early on that it was a good idea to save for retirement, so like a good soldier, I did what I was told.
I was decent at math in school, but I wasn’t that good. I would’ve really struggled if I tried to be a math major in college. So I got a B.A. instead — like lots of lawyers do — and it was way easier than majoring in math.
While I may have been fine with the computational aspects of math necessary to plan for early retirement, when it came to actually applying those basic math skills to calculating what I’d need to survive in retirement, I was at a loss.
The math checked out. But with a 10%, 20%, or even 50% stock market drop in year 1 of retirement, would we still be okay? Yeah, we’ll be fine. And all of this assumes that we’ll not earn any more W2 or 1099 income in the future.