Tag Archives: retirement

Is your home an asset?

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I spend a LOT of time on this blog talking about your home, and rightly so; your home is often regarded as your single largest asset.

Or, is it?

TraineeInvestor reopens the debate with what I think is a really interesting – seemingly ‘throwaway’ – line in his comment to this post:

The overwhelming consensus of opinion on internet forums and blogs is that your home is not an investment. (There are even people who think it is a liability rather than an asset!!!).

The “overwhelming consesus” hasn’t made $7 million in 7 years, and probably never will 😛

But there is grounding to the home-not-an-asset way of thinking; for example, in this post I quoted Robert Kiyosaki who first told me that a home is NOT an asset [AJC: Unlike many others, I am not a Robert Kiyosaki detractor … Rich Dad Poor Dad was the first book that I ever read on personal finance and, at the time, it really opened my eyes to the value of financial education].

Here’s what RK said: 

  My Poor Dad Says   My Rich Dad Says
       
  “My house is an asset.”   “My house is a liability.”
       
  Rich dad says, “If you stop working today, an asset puts money in your pocket and a liability takes money from your pocket. Too often people call liabilities assets. It’s important to know the difference between the two.

Yet, paradoxically, TraineeInvestor also pointed to the exact opposite: study after study has shown that the wealthy own their own homes and the ‘poor’ do not!

So, what do I think?

Well – and, this may also SEEM paradoxical – I actually agree that a home is not  an asset in the sense that it doesn’t earn an income.

Of course, you could rent to yourself.

Tell me then, though, when do you – could you – ever realize the value in that ‘asset’?

Only if you sell (you never will); or, pass it on (it’s not an asset for YOU).

Yet, there is one way to realize at least part of the value of your asset (while you still need a place to live), and that is to release some equity by refinancing.

So, technically, I agree with the ‘non-asset’ thinking, which is why I ask you to at least minimize the equity in your own home to a mere (by Dave Ramsey standards) 20% or less of your current Net Worth (and, review annually).

I also advocate buying your first home – more for some ‘human nature’ reasons rather than strict financial reasons – but, nowhere in this blog have I ever said: “… then, upgrade it”! 😉

Why bother keeping up an esoteric “is your home an asset or a liability?” debate at all, when the only real question that you need ask yourself is:

Can I reach my Number if I buy my own home, then keep [insert ‘% of current home value’ of choice: 0%; 10%; 20%; 50%; 100%; other] tied up as home equity?

My standard advice is, YES … if:

a) I buy my first home (with whatever starting equity that my bank and I can agree on), then

b) [as soon as reasonably possible, start to] maintain no more than 20% of my net worth in that – or, any future – home as equity

c) and, reassess b) annually (against both my home’s and my own net worth’s current value)

Ultimately, the equity that you choose to keep in your home either helps you to reach your Number, or it doesn’t.

For most people, “reaching their Number” means amasssing ‘real’ assets in the range of millions of dollars. Logically, tying up valuable equity in something that can’t possible reach ‘millions of dollars’ in value is wrong, so why do it?

What does this all mean for you?

My ‘rules’ of home ownership are designed to give you the best chance to reach your Number by your Date.

Depending on how YOU choose to look at it, your home is either your single largest asset or single largest liability …

… the real point of this blog is to make sure that it doesn’t stay that way 🙂

Risk is in the eye of the beholder …

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Our Philip Brewer Confest is almost over, and it’s time to thank him for his articles and inspiration for a series of posts exploring the concepts of safe withdrawal rates [AJC: which has more to do with financial planning than family planning 😉 ], however I did want to wind up by exploring one of his comments:

I think your step 1 is the most important: Decide what you want to do with your life.

I wanted to write fiction. That doesn’t take much money, but it does require time (and high-quality time at that). So, for me, getting free of a regular job as soon as possible was a much higher priority than accumulating a vast amount of wealth.

For me, too, the turning point for my financial life – indeed my whole life – came in Step 1: finding my Life’s Purpose then using that to calculate my Number. For me, though, it happened to turn up a Large Number / Soon Date … that may not be the case for everybody.

Just remember that Time = Money and if you are desperate to achieve that financial freedom (e.g. in Phil’s case, so that he can write that book) you may need a lot of both …

… IF so, then I have a hypothesis [AJC: tested on a subject of one i.e. me] that goes like this:

When you find your Life’s Purpose, you will most likely find that you will come up with a Large Number / Soon Date [AJC: remember, this is just my hypothesis albeit, now, supported by a little research] and you will not stop until you get it …

… your priorities (including your financial priorities) will drastically change.

 But, what about Philip’s thoughts about risk?

I would like to suggest, though, that your ideas on which assets are secure and which aren’t could use some fine tuning.

It’s true that you may not be able to work during your retirement, but most people will be able to earn at least some money if they need to. It’s also true that government pensions can be taken away—but so can anything else.

And don’t forget all the other ways that things can be lost or taken away—declining market can sap your portfolio, a lawsuit can seize your assets, a natural disaster can destroy your house.

My point is not that it’s hopeless, but rather that while racking up assets may increase your standard of living, at a certain point it no longer increases your security. (A flood can destroy a house worth $1 million as completely as it can destroy a house worth $100,000.).

At some point—and to my mind the point is well before you have $7 million—you don’t get as much security from adding another million to your portfolio.

I beg to differ: until I made my $7 million Number, my thoughts were EXACTLY about ” adding another million to my portfolio” … but, that’s only because I calculated that I needed it – not want, not desire, but need – to live my Life’s Purpose.

But, that may not be you; like Phil, you might just need a little extra time to write your book or to support huminitarian projects like backpacking to hotspots like Haiti, so your Number may be $100k, $1 mill., or … ?

And, unlike me, your assessment of your Number may include allowances for earning extra income through part time work, income producing projects, pensions, inheritences, or even handouts.

In that case, I challenge you to substiute your Number where, in my blog, I use the $7m7y illustration … the principles won’t change much.

[AJC: unless, you have a “<$1 million in >20 years”-type Number, in which case this blog is NOT for you 🙂 ]

So, substituting your Number for mine, here is the second part of my hypothesis:

– While you are trying to reach [insert your Number] so that you can achieve your Life’s Purpose, ‘hold back’ concepts such as risk take a backfoot to ‘push forward’ concepts such as REWARD, suddenly opening your eyes to the ‘benefits’ of burning the candle at both ends, starting a business or three, trying to become a stock market and/or real-estate mogul, etc.

BUT

– Once you reach [insert your Number], somehow your brain resets such that RISK (i.e. protecting your nest-egg) seems to become much more important than reward (i.e. growing the nest-egg) and all of a sudden CD’s, bond laddering, (dare I say it!?), index funds, 100%-paid-for-by-cash real-estate, etc. becomes much more attractive.

At least, that’s how it happened for me …

This doesn’t mean that risk isn’t important (after all, we spend a lot of time on this blog covering strategies to manage risk), it’s just that in some respects, it’s in the eye of the beholder 🙂

The Ideal Perpetual Money Machine …

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So,  it seems that creating a mix of bonds and stocks and then picking some magic withdrawal rate (e.g. 4%) is not the ideal way to plan our retirement (a.k.a. life after work) after all …

… instead, it seems that we need to create our own Perpetual Money Machine: a renewable resource of cash 😉

The ideal Perpetual Money Machine – at least, according to my liking – is Real-Estate (more wealthy people build their own Perpetual Money Machines using real-estate that any other investment, even more so than cash, CD’s, bonds, mutual funds, or stocks):

1. Real-Estate (particularly commercial real-estate, when purchased well) protects your capital and keeps pace with inflation; it will last as long as you do, and then some!

2. Real-Estate (when managed well -and, this is something that you CAN confidently outsource) protects your income (i.e. net rents; they will grow with inflation).

3. The bumps in your real-estate road can be managed with insurance and provisions: you can insure against most catastrophic losses (and, you can spead your RE investments to minimize even those risks), and you can keep a % of your rents (and, starting capital) aside to help smooth your income stream (against vacancies, repairs and maintenance, etc.).

For example, with $7 million (aiming for a $350k per year gross income – indexed for inflation – which should net $200k – $250k after tax), you could:

1. Keep $500,000 as a two years of living expenses cash buffer (one year to allow for the rents to start coming in, another year “just in case”),

2. Invest $6.5 million CASH into 5 x $1.0 million to $1.25 million dollar properties (allowing for closing costs, etc.),

3. Which should provide 5 x 7.5% x $1.0 million to $1.25 million = $400,000 gross rental income

4. Of which you would pay tax of 30% (say) and divert another 25% of the remainder to your ’emergency / provision fund’ leaving $215k (PLUS, tax benefits such as depreciation, tax deductions of cars, certain travel and other business expenses etc.).

After every few ‘good years’, you can trim your provision fund back to two years of living expenses, allowing you to buy some more real-estate (therefore, providing the basis for another future pay rise!).

If you don’t like real-estate, then you can always lower your spending expectations and dust off your bond-laddering books 🙂

Fitting a square peg into a round hole …

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The real problem with any of the so-called ‘safe withrawal rates’ that we explored yesterday – with 4% currently being perhaps the most popular amount advocated – is that they all assume a fixed annual spending amount, but are actually generated by a totally volatile (some would say random) portfolio.

We’re trying to fit a square peg (fixed annual spending) into a round hole ( a ‘random walk down Wall Street’) 😉

But 7m7y readers have an even more fundamental problem with planning our ‘retirement’ based on this type of common industry wisdom: we are planning on retiring early, hopefully, with a very large Number and a soon Date!

Most retirement models assume a 30 to 35 year retirement lifespan …

… I don’t know about you, but I retired at 49 and intend to live AT LEAST another 40 years 🙂

Many of my readers will be aiming to reach their Numbers even sooner .. and, may expect to live even longer!

The bottom-line: traditional retirement planning models don’t work, because we need money that will last as long as we do … we need a Perpetual Money Machine, because we don’t know how long we will live once we stop working.

A Perpetual Money Machine is anything that:

a) Protects your capital over the long-run, even allowing for the ravages of market changes and inflation, and

b) Produces a reasonably reliable stream of income, that also (at least) keeps pace with inflation.

Neither stocks nor bonds – the traditional tools of retirement investing – fit the bill for us:

1. Stocks are too volatile, and the income tends to be artificial (e.g. so-called dividend stocks attempt to fix the level of dividend provided even as the company’s profits fluctuate).

[AJC: Raiding marketing, R&D, and other seemingly non-essential budgets in lean years in order to protect the dividend stream is – to my mind – the mark of a poorly run company]

2. Bonds provide a very safe return, but the % returned each year is too low, meaning – at least, to me – an unnecessarily reduced lifestyle, especially after allowing for reinvestment to try and keep up with inflation.

That’s why my Rule of 20 is exactly that: a planning rule, NOT a 5% spending rule!

[AJC: Otherwise, I would have called it the 5% Rule, d’oh!].

In other words, my advice for PLANNING your Number, is to decide what initial income you want and multiply that by 20 in order to find your Number …

… but, my advice for LIVING your Number is to turn on your Perpetual Money Machine and live off whatever it happens to produce, after allowing for taxes and provisions against inflation and contingencies.

The Myth of the Safe Withdrawal Rate …

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I have noticed an unusual phenonemom: I write a post on one theme and your (i.e. our readers’) comments explore another one entirely!

This is a GOOD thing … it means – I hope – that we are building an online community dedicated to the idea of linking our finances to our life, rather than simply attempting to fit within society financial ‘norms’.

Case in point: I wrote a post exploring various windfalls, and the comments lead us down the path of exploring so-called ‘safe withrawal rates’, which is the idea that there is a Magic Percentage of your Number that is ‘safe’ to withdraw to live off each year.

The problem is, what % do you choose?

For example, I have proposed the ‘Rule of 20’ for calculating your Number, which seems the same as proposing a 5% ‘safe withdrawal rate’, but Jake disagrees:

A 5% drawn-down rate on the pot of gold is a little on the risky side if you want the money to last.

After looking at a bunch of data, I feel that a draw-down rate of 2-3% is too conservative, but 5-6% to aggressive. 4% or so seems right. I know, only 1% off from your value but over time it makes a huge difference.

So, Jake has highlighted one problem with selecting a ‘safe’ withdrawal rate … if you are out by even 1% your spending can be over (or under) the ideal by 20%. I don’t know about you, but a 20% payrise (or paycut) is a pretty big deal … people quit their jobs over less!

So, what do the experts recommend?

Believe it or not, there is support out there for just about any annual % of your nest egg that you may choose to spend, for example:

7% – Not so long ago, the financial services industry proposed spending as much as 7% of your portfolio each year in retirement.

6% – More recently, Paul Graangard wrote two books proposing a bond-laddering and stocks strategy that supported a spending rate as high as 6.6% of your portfolio each year.

5% – Investment funds routinely allow spending of 5% of the portion of their investment portfolios dedicated to simply keeping up with inflation. Indeed, my Rule of 20 appears to support this withdrawal rate, too.

4% – A large number of studies – probably, the most famous of which is the so-called Trinity Study – advocate spending up to 4% of your initial portfolio (ideally, 50% stocks and 50% bonds, rebalanced each year), which provides somewhere between a 90% and 100% certainty that your money will last at least 35 years.

3% –  A whole slew of new retirement planning tools (generally using a Monte Carlo approach to modelling tens, hundreds, or even thousands of potential economic scenarios) have been released over the last 4 or 5 years by the financial services industry, purporting to analyse hundreds of alternative economic scenarios to try and model what would happen to your retirement portfolio (i.e. simulating changes in interest rates, market booms and busts, etc.) to find the ideal ‘safe’ withdrawal rate. The trouble is that a lot of these advocate very low withdrawal rates, typically in the 2.5% – 3.5% range. 

2% – Some even advocate a totally ‘risk-free’ approach to retirement savings by investing close to 100% of your retirement portfolio in inflation-protected bonds (i.e. TIPS); historically, these have provided a 2% return, after inflation and with total protection of your starting capital.

So, which is right?

None, as TraineeInvestor explains in his comment to my post:

I’m not fan of draw down models either. If you have to spend your capital to avoid eating cat food (or the cat) or are working with a very limited time period fair enough. But with a sufficiently long time horizon, my view is that any draw down rate is dangerous – in fact I would be uncomofortable if my nest egg was not growing at at least the rate of inflation (after taxes and spending).

Another way of looking at it is that if you are relying on draw down of capital for living expenses you are very vulnerable to adverse events. No thanks – I’d rather sleep soundly at night.

Me too! 🙂

Is Mike aiming high enough?

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Mike is a divisional CEO for JP Morgan (runs a whole country for them!), and he earns $250,000 in a bad year and $350,000 in a good year. He’s running fast and aiming high.

But, is Mike aiming high enough?

If you weren’t following the comments on this post, then you were missing out on more than 50% of the benefit of that post … I think that also holds true for most of my posts; our readers rock!

Anyhow, Mike said:

I’m 36 and have already got up to the savings level of someone who is 50 or 55… question is when do I want to take it easy and stop working for a while- or at least working make myself rich instead of JP Morgan, who owns the company I’m running!

Aspiring to the savings level of someone who is 50 or 55 is no great shakes; it’s where Mike goes from here that will dictate his future, so I asked Mike a few questions:

Disclaimer: We know next to NOTHING about Mike’s true situation, so nothing here constitutes financial advice* … it’s best if you – and, Mike – treat this as a hypothetical, merely illustrating how to apply 7m7y ‘rules’ to somebody on an income rather than working their own business/investments. On with the questions …

1. What’s your Number?

2. What’s your Date?

3. Why?

4. What’s your Current Net Worth?

It may be that Mike’s presumably super-high salary (after all, he is running JP Morgan in his neck of the woods!) combined with an aggressive savings / investment strategy will do the trick …

Mike’s response:

Salary isn’t super high – only $260K USD a year (base salary & guaranteed bonus) – max variable bonus on top of this is another $100K so it’s comfortable but not huge.

My number is abour 10 million – would like to hit it in the next 14 years or sooner.

Current net worth is 1.7M USD with $1.3 M in very liquid assets (cash…) Residence is fully owned and monthly burn rate is pretty low.

Given that Mike’s Prime Financial Objective should be to reach his Number by his Date, his financial strategy should be the one that he is most comfortable with that seems most likely to achieve that target …

… IMHO, he (or anybody) should only choose a more ‘active’ (read: risky) strategy if it’s a by-product of the strategy that he truly resonates with …. for example, I would start a business even if plonking my money in CD’s would have been enough – that’s just me [AJC: but, it wouldn’t have been all of my money – or even a lot – going into starting that business].

What does this mean for Mike … I mean, Hypothetical Mike? 😉

Well, let’s go through the steps:

STEP 1 – What is Your Number / Date?

Mike’s Number is $10 Million and his date is circa 2023.

STEP 2 – What is your Required Annual compound Growth Rate?

Starting with his $1.7 million Net Worth [AJC: reading between the lines, Mike’s paid off house may not even ‘break’ the 20% Rule – and if it does, not by much, so I don’t see a problem here] our faithful online calculator shows me that Mike ‘only’ needs a 13.5% Required Annual Compound Growth Rate on his Net Worth.

[Tip: If you haven’t used this calculator before, it’s simple: Mike’s ‘ending value’ is his $10 million Number; his ‘starting value’ is his current $1.7 million Net Worth – although, I would be tempted to subtract cars/furniture and any other personal ‘stuff’ that can’t be easily turned into cash and/or loses value … house is probably OK to include here – and, ‘the number of periods’ is just his 14 year Date] 

STEP 3 – Select your Growth Engine

This is where it gets fun … Mike simply needs to take a look at Michael Masterson’s table of ‘money making strategies’ – handily reproduced for you in this post – to see that any number of strategies will be enough to propel him from $1.7 million to $10 million in 14 years: anything from stocks to real-estate to small business.

But, not CD’s … this calculator shows that Mike’s biggest risk is actually the low-risk ‘investment’ option that he has so far chosen: cash …

… if he keeps ‘investing’ in cash, Mike’s Number will be struggling to reach $3 million in 14 years, rather than the $10 million that he needs 🙁

Rather than being the ‘safe haven’ that it appears, keeping his assets overly-liquid is actually stopping Mike from reaching his financial objectives … worse still, it’s forcing Mike to think about chasing more income, when it’s the exact opposite strategy that Mike should be following!

That’s why, I recommend that Hypothetical Mike choose stocks and/or real-estate in whatever mixture of either / both that suits his temperment.

Now, we are talking Value Stocks when we suggest a 15% compound growth rate, and reasonably well-geared (i.e. no more than 25% – 30% starting equity) commercial real-estate – mixed with stocks – when we suggest a 30% compound growth rate.

But, here is the key …

… for Mike, and anybody else whose primary Making Money 201 ‘accelerate your income’ tool has been climbing the corporate totem pole to a position where (a) income is [relatively] high, (b) expenses are reasonably low, so (c) saving rates are high, their net worth will most likely grow even if they merely plonk their money in their 401k and/or Low Cost Index Funds…

You see, Mike will continue feeding his Net Worth with both Investment Returns AND additional salary contributions.

This means that Mike will most likely reach his Number simply sticking his money into low cost index funds:

Mike should follow the advice that Warren Buffett gives to all the Hypothetical Mikes of this world … in fact, it was virtually tailor made for his situation:

If you are not a professional investor, if your goal is not to manage money in such a way that you get a significantly better return than world, then I believe in extreme diversification. I believe that 98 or 99 percent — maybe more than 99 percent — of people who invest should extensively diversify and not trade. That leads them to an index fund with very low costs.

Given that Mike’s current salary / job makes reaching his Number a virtual gimme – with such a variety of relatively low impact [AJC: certainly in the context of amassing a $10 million fortune!] Index Fund, Value Stock, and/or Real-Estate investment strategies available to him, what would you advise him when he says:

Right now my best option is to continue to get a successful track record (already turned around the business and changed it from major losses to modest profits) and maybe I can find a better gig.

What advice would you give to Mike?

I know what I would say 😉

* [Insert: ‘Not qualified financial advisor; not financial advice; seek qualified advice before investing; take two Tylenol and call me in the morning; yadayadayada’ disclaimer message of choice]

Retiring with enough …

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Philip Brewer has written a couple of articles for Wise Bread exploring the question: “Can You Buy Your Way Out of the Rat Race?”.

He says:

If you’re tracking your spending, you know how much money it takes to live on. If you’re tracking your investments, you know about how much return you’re getting from your capital. With those two numbers, you can get a pretty good estimate of how much money it takes to buy your way out of the rat race.

In its simplest form, the cost to buy your way out is just your annual spending divided by the return on your investments. I used to do that calculation a lot. When I got my first job interest rates were in double digits, so I could imagine getting $30,000 or even $40,000 a year — plenty of money to live on — from an investment as small as $300,000.

This is good advice if you want to retire on “$30,000 or even $40,000 a year” … I don’t 😉

The problem with these types of retirement articles is that they usually start from the assumption that your current salary +/- 30% is what you want to live off.

When my salary was $250k, this probably also held true for me … but, just a year or two earlier (when I was actually planning my own retirement) my salary was only $50k – plus my wife’s $60k, making our total household income less than half my ‘required retirement salary’.

So, I describe the retirement calculation process much as Philip describes it, with an extra step:

1. Decide what you want to do with your Life

2. Decide how much annual income you require (probably, without needing to work … but, that’s up to you)

3. Convert that amount to the capital that you need.

Now, Philip would say that you should subtract any income and/or pensions that you expect to receive along the way …

… I recommend that you don’t.

You see, you may not want to – or be able to – continue work through your ‘retirement’ – and, government pensions can always be taken away.

Rather, I recommend that you assume neither of these while you are ‘retired’, and reinvest any such ‘windfall income until you have enough accumulated to effectively increase your Number, hence your standard of living.

Huh?!

Well, Philip suggests:

Among people who invest for large institutions, there’s a rule of thumb that you can spend 5% of your endowment each year, and then expect to have a bit more to spend next year than you spent this year.

Of course, they can’t expect that 5% to be more every single year. Some years the investment portfolio does poorly–and after one of those years, the 5% that’s available for spending will be less than the previous year. Maybe much less.

For households, therefore, the rule of thumb is 4%.

We have a similar rule: The Rule of 20, which seems effectively the same as Phil’s 5% Rule [AJC: we’ll explain why it’s actually a VERY different concept, in a series of MM301 posts, coming up soon] … this is probably enough because you will probably:

– Earn some additional money in retirement (remember those part-time income and pensions that we mentioned?)

– Spend a little less as you get older (unless you feel that health care will outweigh all of those Learjet trips?)

– Overshoot your Number, if you wait until reaching your Number (on paper) before actually trying to sell your business / real-estate, etc.

BUT, don’t let me stop you from building in an additional buffer by modifying my ‘rule’ to anywhere between the Rule of 20 to the Rule of 40.

Hint: I wouldn’t bother … the Rule of 20 is plenty to aim for; but, don’t let me stop you from aiming for more …

…. just don’t try and make it LESS 🙂

What is your Number?

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Well, it certainly took me a long time to ask the question (see Reader Poll: What Is Your Number?) and, it took me almost as long to answer it.

Why?

I’d like to say it was because I was forensically and actuarialy analyzing the results … I’d like to say it was, but that wouldn’t be the truth, which is much more mundane: it was mainly because I forgot all about it after our ridiculously long Australian summer holiday season (Aussie summer = USA winter) 🙂

So without further ado, here are the results:

Now, the first thing that you may notice is that the answers aren’t in any sort of obvious order; traineeinvestor was the first to notice:

The order … is not sequential. I fully expect to be awake all night trying to figure out whether this is really a cover from some experiment in behavioral finance.

Actually, the reason is equally mundane: I was trying to copy the following poll from GenerationX Finance, but when you compare them, you’ll find out that I even got that wrong (!?!):

I presume that GenX ‘randomized’ the ranges to make his readers think through all the options before merely selecting the first one that looked OK; at least, that’s what I would have done had I not tried to copy him 😉

But, to help us analyze the results, I have graphed them side -by-side and in logical order:

OK, that tells me that we are on the right track:

– either I am attracting the ‘right’ audience for this blog (which is nice), or

– my readers have altered their perceptions of “how much is enough” based upon some of my preachings (which would be really nice).

Given that GenX’ers are born in the 60’s and 70’s (I was born in the – late! – 50’s … scary, huh?), I can understand why some may be aiming for only $1 mill. to $3 mill., but to my mind, it’s still too low; and for Gen Y and so on, inflation will decimate your living standard by the time you reach ‘standard’ retirement age, so you have no choice but to aim higher.

But given that so many of our readers have lofty targets – and, I just may be responsible at least in small part for at least a few – let me ask you, what would you like to see from this blog in 2010 that you haven’t seen (enough of) yet?

Are you saving enough for retirement?

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This video asks an important question, one that we asked our readers some time ago (and, will answer tomorrow).

It also seems to indicate that roughly 8% is a safe withdrawal rate, at least for men who choose to retire at the standard retirement age in the USA … we’ll explore this further, through a series of posts beginning later on this week.

For now, what do you think is a ‘safe’ % of your Number to live off each year?