BiggerPockets Money Podcast - FIRE at 50 by Creating “FI Paychecks” That Fund My Early Retirement! | Life After FIRE

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello, hello, hello, my dear listeners, as you may or may not know, my husband Carl and I have a new YouTube series on the Bigger Pockets Money YouTube channel called Life After Fire. And as a very special bonus, we are going to be airing episodes here on the podcast on Wednesdays. So without further ado, let's get into it. Today, I'm speaking with Mark Troutman from Mark's Money Mind. Mark has been retired for 10 years and has an interesting spending concept called the Fun Bucket. He also has a super interesting money story in general. We're going to talk about how he reached financial independence, how he left his job, and how he spends his Tuesdays. Hi there. My name is Mindy Jensen, and today there's no Carl Jensen. He's off playing hooky. And this is the Mindy and not Carl, Life After Five

Starting point is 00:00:46 podcast, where we talk about what happens after you reach financial independence. And we call this life after fire, because we're talking about and talking to people who are living their best life after reaching financial independence. Mark, thank you so much for joining. me today. I'm so excited to talk to you. Yeah, it's great to be here. Just down the street almost. Almost just down the street. Mark recently moved really, really close to me, and I'm so excited to have him in town. Mark, let's talk about your journey up to financial independence. Really quick overview. How did you reach financial independence? What was your job? How did you invest? Give me all the details. So I worked in the financial industry my whole career. I graduated in 1987, went to work in that year in a brokerage firm, which you can imagine was a very interesting year, right?

Starting point is 00:01:38 I was in high school. I was actually sitting on a margin desk in a management training program. And, you know, there was a quotes coming in, but people didn't have that on their phones or anything. So we were calling clients and saying, hey, by the way, you need to put up more money or we're selling you out. And they're like, why? What's going on? I'm like, well, the market's down, you know, whatever, 30%. And so my job was basically you need to call these people and say, you know, they need to put up money in the next, like, you know, half an hour or we're selling them out. So that was my first experience with kind of Wall Street as a recent college graduate. Wow, trial by fire.

Starting point is 00:02:17 Yeah. Well, and then I didn't really have any skin in the game, so it didn't really bother me too much. But in hindsight, now I realize how significant of a day that was. At the time, you're just like, well, I guess this is what the job is. And then eventually I got into money management. And my, you know, almost all of my career was managing a mutual fund. So that's what I did. And it was an equity mutual fund.

Starting point is 00:02:42 And I invested in equities, you know, my entire career. And that's kind of how I got there. I didn't have an extreme savings rate. like some people in the fire community do. It was more like, I look at it from a standpoint of gross income. You know, what is my savings as a percentage of my gross income while I was living in New York and New Jersey. So my taxes were very high.

Starting point is 00:03:03 So I was basically paying between federal and state tax. About a third of my income is going to tax. About a third was going to savings and about a third was going to spending. Okay. Well, I would like to note that 33% savings rate is still a pretty good savings rate. It's not 75% like some people, but that's okay. because this was also, when, 19, the early 1980s? Well, late 80s and into the 90s, yeah, 2000 is all that, yeah.

Starting point is 00:03:28 Yeah, so 33% is still really, really good. I mean, you retired, what age were you when you retired? I actually ended up leaving at age 50. I kind of backed into what I could have retired at. It was kind of somewhere in my early 40s, but I didn't know about the fire community. I didn't know about any of this stuff. I just, even at 50, I was like, well, I'm early, you know, and I didn't find the fire community until after I stopped,

Starting point is 00:03:50 working. Wait, wait, wait. You didn't find fire until after you stopped working. How did you know that you could retire early, Mark? Well, I did the math. What year was this? 2015 is when I actually stopped working. Oh, okay. So this is after the 4% rule. Had you heard of the 4% rule? Yeah, I mean, I was aware of that. And that's kind of what I was using is my justification that I had enough. And I also, I ended up sitting for my CFP after I retired just because I thought maybe I needed to keep some options open. Maybe I do need to work down the road. I wasn't sure. And as I was going through that, you do financial plans as part of that curriculum. So of course, you do your own financial plan. And I realized, oh, yeah, I'm good. I don't actually need to work anymore.

Starting point is 00:04:36 Since you retired in 2015, have you generated any income by trading your time for money? No. Okay. Woohoo. I love that answer. But although I will say that if you do, decide to trade your time for money, that's okay too. I'm just setting the bar. Okay. So you, you retired based on the 4% rule. You understand that this is your, like that this works. Do you draw down from your investments? I do draw down now, but I didn't kind of initially, or at least I was very concerned about doing it initially. I did have a period of Wi-Fi, so my wife was working for a few years. After I stopped working, she did not make very much money. She was basically an administrator at a police department.

Starting point is 00:05:25 And she was actually deferring all of her income into her 457. So we weren't really living off of her income. But what we were doing is, well, I kind of had income avoidance for a couple of years, I guess you would say, because I was kind of afraid to draw down. I mean, the mask said, yes, you can do this. there's no problem you can start living on your portfolio but when that income stops it i think people don't realize how much it'll kind of freak you out you know you don't have this paycheck coming in anymore and so i was trying to kind of like how do i avoid actually having to take money out of my portfolio

Starting point is 00:06:05 so i kind of looked around and we had this classic car and i was like well i'm not really using that anymore if i sold that i wouldn't have to draw down for a year so i sold that and then And in the second year, I did work for a very small private company, and I owned a very tiny sliver of the stock, but it was a private company. So I never really knew if it would pay out or what it would be. And so I never counted it in my kind of five portfolio figure. But they did end up cashing me out in my second year of retirement. And so that enabled me not to have to spend in the second year. And it was about a little less than what I would spend in a year.

Starting point is 00:06:45 So it wasn't some huge, you know, windfall or anything. It was basically a year's worth of income. Okay. Well, a year's worth of income is still more than you had and more than you were counting on. So I'm sorry, did you say how much that classic car sold for in terms of your annual spending? Yeah, I'll tell you what it was. It was a Porsche 9-11, 964 model in case anyone out there is wondering. 1993.

Starting point is 00:07:09 And it was, it's called an RS America. So it's a lightweight car. We used to race cars or drive cars. racetrack. And when we moved to Colorado, and that was in 2008, we had sold all of our race cars. We owned a factory race car and stuff like that. And we had sold all that stuff. And then when we got to Colorado during the kind of market correction of 2008 and 9, my old mechanic called me up and or somebody from that club called me and said, hey, there's this car available. Do you want it? So I bought it for like $30,000.

Starting point is 00:07:39 Drove it on the racetrack for a couple of years. And then it became kind of a collector car. And I was driving it on the racetrack one day and somebody said, I can't believe you're driving that car in the track. And I was like, well, why? I paid 30,000. It's no big deal. That's kind of what, you know, it's a low cost track car. And he's like, you need to look that thing off. And I was like, okay, you know, so I looked it up. And they were selling for about $100,000 at the time. And now mine, because it had been on the track and had a cage in it and stuff, I didn't, I ended up selling it for $85,000. Okay. So that's a nice amount of money. I wish I had a car that I could sell for $85,000. MR-2s don't quite go for that.

Starting point is 00:08:18 So you didn't take out from your portfolio for the first two or the first three years? Two years. Okay. What happened in year three that made you feel comfortable with taking money out of your portfolio? So even though I had run my own numbers and I was familiar with the 4% rule and at around that time is when I started reading big earns material, you know, early retirement now. And he talks about, you know, other safe withdrawal rates or other ways to come about the safe withdrawal rate figure. And I read all of this stuff, which if anyone's familiar, that's, you know, kind of mind-boggling in itself because

Starting point is 00:08:59 it is very, you definitely get deep in the weeds in that stuff. And came to the conclusion that, well, he's done a lot of research. I agree with the way he approached everything, 3.25 percent. And I should be fine. Plus, I hadn't withdrawn anything in the first two years. I was already kind of two years ahead of the game because I hadn't drawn down. And I was like, okay, well, if I just say, okay, then 3.25% is my number, not for 3.25. And then I'd also read an article that Morningstar I'd put out saying that another way to kind of improve your sequence of return risk is just not to take a inflation raise in a year after your portfolio has declined, for example, and it made a really big difference because it gets compounded, because if you don't take that one inflation

Starting point is 00:09:52 raise in that year, then the following year, you're taking an inflation raise on the previous amount, but that one year has always, you know, you're kind of behind a year as a result of that. So I was like, okay, so I have this, you know, kind of investment policy statement or withdrawal statement and says no more than 3.25% and if the market or your portfolio goes down in total value in a year, the following year do not take a raise. And then I felt comfortable enough with that approach that I was like, okay, you can start drawing down. But I didn't, so I create a paycheck for myself, but I didn't give myself the paycheck to the full 3.25%. Actually, it was more like, I want to say it was like two and a half percent just because I didn't feel like,

Starting point is 00:10:37 I needed all of it. But so then that was an extra buffer, right? So you can see the progression here, buffer after buffer after buffer, contingency after contingency. Dear listeners, we are so excited to announce that we now have a BiggerPockets Money Newsletter. If you want to subscribe to the newsletter, please go to biggerpockets.com slash money newsletter and subscribe. All right.

Starting point is 00:11:03 We'll be right back after this. Tax season is one of the only times all year when my money. Most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly where your money is going, and more importantly, where your taxed refund can make the biggest impact.

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Starting point is 00:13:48 Kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash BP money. Welcome back to the show. Okay, so in the 10 years that you have been retired, have you ever taken the full three? point two five percent out or even gone up to four percent no wow uh and do you feel restricted in any way no because i think you know like i said i retired at 50 i could have retired at 42 43 um so i had it more than i needed i guess you would say so the portfolio is sizable enough that even at a lower withdrawal rate i live a very very comfortable life so you now draw down from your investments what is that process look like? Do you sell every January 2nd? Do you sell quarterly?

Starting point is 00:14:39 Actually, I have about a 10-year runway of cash, but it's still only an 80-20 portfolio. But again, because it's overfunded and I live at a, like I said, I live at a comfortable level, but it's not, you know, some crazy extreme amount. Maybe by some people's terms, it would be, but not by my terms are certainly the New York City type terms. But I pay myself a paycheck out of the cash amount that's in the portfolio and actually looking at the portfolio now. Because again, not only did I not have a bad sequence, I had a really good sequence over the last 10 years, right? So, I mean, that's helped a lot. And the income that the portfolio generates between dividends and interest actually exceeds what I spend in a year.

Starting point is 00:15:29 So effectively, I don't ever need to sell anything. Well, you need to start spending more, apparently. Oh, and I'm working on that. We can talk about that. I hate, by the way, I'm flying first class to economy and back. You can join me on United. I changed United from Southwest. I can join you because you're going to pay for my ticket?

Starting point is 00:15:48 No. Then I'm going to stick with my ticket on Southwest. It was an inexpensive flight. It wasn't that bad. Yeah. Well, I hope you enjoy your very luxurious first class trip. Let's talk about this, this cash buffer. As you draw down from it, it's just in cash?

Starting point is 00:16:09 It's in treasure bills. Okay. As you pull out of that, do you replenish it? I don't need to because the dividends and interest, so I do not reinvest dividends on my equity holdings. So those just come in and the interest on treasury bills, you know, just comes in, right? What is the interest on treasury bills right now? It's about four and a quarter right now for very short-term treasury bills. Okay.

Starting point is 00:16:35 And what does very short-term treasury bill mean? Zero to three months, like one to three months. Do you take money out like at the beginning of the year? Do you take it out quarterly? Yeah, interesting. So I, from my brokerage account, I have money that's transferred to my checking account on a monthly basis. So effectively, I've created my own paycheck.

Starting point is 00:16:53 How did you transition from saving for retirement to spending? In what way? Well, and you didn't. hear about the fire movement until after you were retired, a lot of fire adherents are super savers. They just save, save, save. They don't spend very much until they reach financial independence. And then you kind of have to flip that switch. Did you have a switch to flip or were you always comfortable spending?

Starting point is 00:17:18 Fortunately, I had a fairly decent income for most of my career. And even though I was saving 30%, I still had a decent amount of spending. And again, you know, you don't, you know, kind of drive cars in a racetrack. You're not spending money. So I was comfortable spending in certain areas, but not all areas. So we would spend where it made sense. And we had, you know, a decent house. We had nice vacation.

Starting point is 00:17:49 So spending wasn't really a challenge. But having that decent savings rate allowed us to not worry. you know, it allowed us to accumulate, you know, wealth over time. And so even though, I guess I didn't have a challenge spending money per se, but I've had more of a challenge in spending what I can logically spend today. That's been more of the recent challenge. And it's kind of like, you know, if you don't fly first class, you're inheritors certainly will, right?

Starting point is 00:18:24 So I've been telling myself that every time I book. a first class date. Although Katie, my daughter is coming on some of these trips and we are both fly first class. How do I get adopted? Don't you want another daughter, Mark? What is the biggest difference between what you thought retirement was going to be and what reality is? So I guess, you know, this kind of goes back to what one of the things I learned about being financially independent was it's not about the money. It's about the time freedom. And I'll give you two examples. One is my father had cancer in 2018 and his treatments weren't going well. He decided not to get treated anymore and went into hospice. And this was in early 2018 and obviously I was retired. And I just told

Starting point is 00:19:19 my wife and daughter, I said, I'm buying a one-way ticket and I don't know when I'll be back. And so I was there. for the entire period of his hospice. And at that moment, I realized financial independence is not about gaining a lot of assets. It's about having the freedom to do things like that and be where you need to be at the time you need to be there. And then, you know, my wife ended up getting cancer in 2019. And for two years, she was going in and out of treatments and so forth. And again, I was able to be there 100% of the time. And she even said at one point, she's like, I am so glad we're a financial independent

Starting point is 00:20:01 because you can be here the whole time and you're not worried about somebody calling you at work and saying, we need you here. We need you to be doing this. You know, I was 100% focused on her treatments and, you know, hoping that she was going to get better. Unfortunately, she did not and passed away in 2021. But I realized that is the power of. financial independence, not what it can buy us. That's such a powerful statement.

Starting point is 00:20:30 And I think that there's people who are not really in the fire community. Maybe they've discovered the fire community. They're like, oh, that'd be great to be a millionaire. That'd be great to quit my job. I hate my boss. And it's not this realization that you are now able to do the things that you want to do or be where you need to be. I think you said it so well.

Starting point is 00:20:54 And I appreciate you sharing that story. So that retirement has changed a lot then for you from when you first retired. Oh, yeah. I mean, there's definitely been, you know, phases of it. And even after my wife passed away in 2021, that's really when I, I think, got very involved in the fire community. And it was about the community, not about, you know, the money aspects. We'd already, you know, I'd already figured all that out. But it was more the social aspects.

Starting point is 00:21:23 I mean, I could have been just one of these people that their wife passes away. They just sit on the porch or sit in their house and don't do anything and become depressed. And are one of those statistics that, you know, the spouse passes away shortly after the other spouse. Well, the financial independence community enabled me not to be that person. And I, it was interesting that, well, I met Amberley Grant in 2019 when my wife first was diagnosed with cancer because we had to go. go to Denver for seven weeks and like the next day basically is what they said you need to be in Denver for the next seven weeks for her treatment and a fortunately I either one of us were working so we were able to do that but we didn't have a place to stay so we reached out in the choose

Starting point is 00:22:11 fI Denver group and just said hey we need a place to stay and the outpouring of support was just phenomenal it you know brings up emotions every time I think about it and Amberley was one of the people that wrote back and just said, hey, I have this Airbnb that I'm going to start putting out there, but I won't do that if you need it. And so we went over there and we met, and that's actually kind of how the whole Fin Talks thing started was just conversations that we're having. But so we actually went to a camp five in 2019. My wife went as well. She was kind of healing from her first bout with this cancer. But then in 2021, after she passed away, Amberley, you know, and many people in the community and kind of reached out.

Starting point is 00:22:55 And she said, hey, you know, I'm going to be speaking up at Camp 5 Midwest. I think it would be really good if you came up there. And, you know, get out of the house, come on up and support me too. Because she's speaking and was a little nervous about it. And I was like, yeah, that's great. I'll go up there. The person I sat next to in the little circle when you introduce yourself with Jordan Grumman. I mean, you couldn't imagine a better person to be sitting next to when you've just lost your spouse.

Starting point is 00:23:20 and that was, you know, a really, it's almost like, you know, fate or whatever, you know, it was just a, you know, a coincidence that we were sitting next to each other, but that was super helpful. And then actually I went to another camp I, had a good experience of that one, went to another one after that in Southwest a few months later. And again, Jordan was there, and he came over and was like, how you doing? And so you could see this community is it's something that's not like other communities. I don't know how to describe it, but since then, I've kind of immersed myself and been to a lot of events,

Starting point is 00:23:55 but, you know, that was also the Southwest meetup was the, when the fun bucket actually came about because I was staying at Kevin's house and we talked until like three in the morning about how we're not spending any of this money and how do we do this. And that was actually when the fun bucket was created in 2021 and right before Camp Five Southwest. We have to take one final ad break, but we'll be back with more after this. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch.

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Starting point is 00:27:20 slash money free. Thanks for sticking with us. So I definitely want to talk about the fun bucket. I tease it in the opening, but I want to highlight the personal finance community, the word community. Yes, there's money talk at meetups, but you can go an entire meetup or an entire campfire without talking about money once. It's the community aspect that is so important in this experience because you,

Starting point is 00:27:49 whatever you are going through, somebody else has already gone through it and has gotten on the other side of it and can give you advice and is happy to do so. And it's, it's money related. It's personal related. It's, you know, kid related. I've had talks about, you know, child rearing at camp fives. And I was thinking, I was toying with putting in, if you've been to a camp five, you've met Mark at the beginning of the show because yeah you are at I mean you go to all of the event so let's talk about this fun bucket I know Kevin sometimes calls it a different rhyming F word but for the sake of this show we're going to call it the fun bucket what is the fun bucket so the way it came about was you know I was at his house and this was in 2021 so let's see that's

Starting point is 00:28:37 almost what, six years into retirement. And he was asking, you know, some of the same questions. Like, what do you draw down? How much do you draw down? And I was, at the time, I think I was averaging less than 2% a year. And he said, well, you need to take some of that icing off the top, move it over into a fun bucket. And I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, you are so far ahead of where you could have been if you were drawing down at the 4%.

Starting point is 00:29:07 rate and with a normal sequence of returns. We've had these good sequences. You are drawing down far less than you could. You need to learn to, you know, turn up the dial a little bit, like in his vernacular, turn it up to 11. And learn to spend some of this money. And the best way to do that is just to take some of it off the top, move it over into a separate account as if you've already spent it and allow yourself to spend that money no hold bar so there's you know if you do do things that you wouldn't ordinarily do and i also belong to this rock retirement club and we've talked about that in that club and it's kind of overcoming the frugality mindset because i was still you know always trying to travel on points or for free or you know you know wouldn't buy the

Starting point is 00:29:58 extra drink at dinner or whatever. And so taking some baby steps in allowing yourself to spend. And some of the things might be like hire a cleaner if you don't, instead of cleaning your own house or, you know, upgrading to Economy Plus instead of economy or first class or whatever. And so the fund bucket, the idea was the money is over on the separate account and literally I have it in a separate online savings account labeled Fun Bucket. And I allow myself to do things that I might not have ordinarily agreed to because I would have been like, well, I don't know if does it fit into my budget. I'm not sure.

Starting point is 00:30:36 And now it's like, well, the money's sitting there. That's what it's for. Say yes. So, you know, I went to Bali for the last two years. We've done a whole bunch of super high-end cruises in the last couple of years. You know, whenever there's a phi event that I want to go to, it's not a question of can I? It's just, yeah, sure. Let's do it.

Starting point is 00:30:57 So that's and then I reimburse myself from the fund bucket. That's the idea. And what I've found is that I frequently don't even have to reimburse myself. A lot of these things are fitting within my normal kind of paycheck anyway, not the really big expenses, but some of the smaller ones like upgrading a seat on an airplane. Typically it fits within my budget anyway. But because there was money set aside for that potential spend,

Starting point is 00:31:23 it's easier to just say, well, just do it. So that was kind of how the fun bucket came about. So do you feel like you're missing out on anything? Do you feel like, oh, I would like to do this thing, but I can't because I'm unsure about spending money or I don't want to pull out of my portfolio? Yeah, not anymore. Not since I have the fun bucket. I've not had to have that concern because it's plenty.

Starting point is 00:31:52 It's well funded at this point. So I don't really have to. At this point, it's more of, is there a space in my calendar to do stuff? We have been, we are recording this on March 17th. We have been having a bit of a market downturn. It is actually a little difficult to keep up with just how far the market is down right now. The last time I looked, it was up like 400 points. It had dropped, I don't know, a thousand last week. How has the recent market downturn affected your mental status with regards to early retirement? Yeah, it doesn't bother me in all because I think, you know, being an older person, I've been through this quite a few times and also managing money during those periods of time. These, you know, slightly more volatile periods.

Starting point is 00:32:38 And again, I mean, the market is down approximately 10%, which is just a normal correction. I mean, the NASDAQ's down 13%, but it's still not even a bare market, which would be 20%. These are very normal occurrences in the equity markets. This is not something that I worry about in any way. I think it's actually kind of funny that people are talking about it. And I think the reason people have been vocal about it is, well, certainly, there's some political uncertainty with the new administration and everything that's going on. So that raises people's, you know, uncertainty, I guess you would say, or concerns.

Starting point is 00:33:11 But we also just have not had a 10% correction, which literally happened, you know, multiple times a year in history. But we have not had one for a very, long period of time. So for very new investors, this is something new to them. And they will learn that this is, you know, kind of a normal occurrence, nothing to be concerned about. And, you know, the bigger ones are when you have periods of time like the lost decade of the 2000s where the market didn't do anything. And somebody even asked me, did that delay your retirement? And I said, actually, I think it might have accelerated my five portfolio. And here's why. Because I was an accumulator during that 10-year period. I was, you know, constantly saving and investing during that

Starting point is 00:33:57 period. So when you are in the saving and investing mode, in fact, you should cheer for markets to go down because you're buying at that time. When you want markets to go up is when you are actually going to tap your portfolio. But in the interim, you would rather have a flat or even down market as an accumulator than an up market. So the people who are accumulating and have a very long time frame should actually be happy that the market is going down. Okay. So this is great for people who have a long term to retirement.

Starting point is 00:34:35 What about people who retired yesterday, retired last week, retired last year? Well, that's why I think when you get to a point, and I did not do this, and I got very lucky. So I was 100% equities all the way up until the day I retired. Now, that could have gone very bad if I had a bad sequence starting the day I retired. I got very lucky. I would say in hindsight, it would have been much smarter to have had a runway of cash or cash like investments somewhere in the neighborhood of five years prior, or at least start building that five years prior to retirement and then with the ultimate goal of having somewhere in the neighborhood of five years of cash in retirement. So that's why, I mean, I'm overly conservative and I have the 10 years,

Starting point is 00:35:26 but I think five is certainly sufficient. And then you don't have to worry, like I do not worry about where my paycheck is coming from. If the markets were to go down or sideways for a very, even a decade, it wouldn't bother me. But if you're, you know, 90% equities or 100% equities, that's a real problem in retirement. So you do need to think about having kind of a more conservative portfolio to some degree in retirement so you know where that, you know, retirement paycheck is going to come from. So you don't have to worry about it. And did you say, did I hear you say you have an 80-20 portfolio? Yeah. Okay. So 80% equities and 20% bonds? Well, short-term treasuries. Short-term, okay. Which is not, well, it's even less, you know, volatile than bonds.

Starting point is 00:36:15 themselves. Why do you choose treasuries over bonds? Well, because I like the idea that it is not going to fluctuate. It will fluctuate from the standpoint of the interest rate environment, you know, just what it will pay, but the principle isn't going to fluctuate. So right now, earning, you know, four and a quarter percent, I'm happy with that. I don't have to worry about any volatility in the fixed income side, having a higher equity exposure than many retirees might. They might be more like 60-40. I'm much more comfortable having a higher percentage of equities, but offsetting that with a very kind of, you never want to use the word guaranteed, but principal protected fixed income portfolio of short-term treasuries and money markets.

Starting point is 00:37:06 So again, what I'm hearing you say, Mark, is that you made an educated decision. You didn't hear it from your best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend the other day over ice cream. And you're like, oh, you know what? That sounds like an interesting idea. I'll do that. You knew what you were getting into. You understood the investment vehicle. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:37:27 So I kind of came about it two ways. One is you can come at it from how many years of cash do you want? And then therefore, what is that in a percentage of portfolio? You can also do, you know, I have like a retirement plan and you can do the whole mononetka. Carlo and say, you know, what is the success ratio of the plan based on different, you know, asset allocations? And then, you know, I have been a meant, Warren Buffett has been kind of a, you know, a mentor to me, not personally, but just, you know, I've been an owner for a Berkshire athaway for since the late 90s. And, you know, he talks about the 90-10 portfolio. I don't

Starting point is 00:38:06 know if you're familiar with that, but he talks about for my wife after my pass away. the recommendation to the trustee is 90% in, he says, S&P 500, or he has later said, or total stock market and 10% short-term treasuries. So I use that as a baseline as well, and I said, okay, well, why the 10% treasuries, why the 90% equities, and what does that mean? And I said, I get it. And I've looked at some research papers that go through that. And actually, it's a very logical, you know, approach.

Starting point is 00:38:38 But I just said, I feel a little bit better just having 80, 20, than 90%. 90-10, but 90-10 would work as well. What do you do for health care, Mark? So I'm on the ACA. I have attempted to get a subsidy, but every year my income has kind of gone through the level where I can get a subsidy for a couple of reasons. One is the year my wife passed away. I ended up doing very large Roth conversions because I was still in the married filing

Starting point is 00:39:05 joint category. The following year, I was considered a surviving spouse, because I was considered a surviving spouse, my daughter was a dependent, so I also did very large Roth conversions before I dropped to the single tax bracket. And then I sold my house, which doesn't help because I had some capital gains there. So this may be the first year I get a subsidy, but I'm not too concerned about it because the health care cost really isn't that significant in my mind. Okay. That is one of the biggest questions that I get is how am I going to provide for health care for me? and my partner, my family, whatever their makeup is.

Starting point is 00:39:46 And I have also been on the ACA and not found it to be a difficult experience to navigate. If you are finding it difficult to navigate, I would absolutely recommend an insurance broker because the site can be a little bit confusing. I did end up going with an insurance broker because I was looking for a specific doctor to be covered by a specific type of plan, and she was able to help me find that in a way that I was not able to do. But, yeah, I don't find the ACA to be all that difficult. It actually, you know, thinking back, so when my wife was diagnosed, she ended up getting laid off from her job, which is a whole other story. I won't go into that. But she was let go,

Starting point is 00:40:35 and we ended up going on COBRA, which was very expensive through her employer. In hindsight, and then later switching to the ACA after, I think it was about 12 months or something like that, even though we could have gone for 18 months. I think it just worked out that we did 12 months. In hindsight, we should have just switched the ACA right away. It would have been actually less money. Yeah, Cobra, I think there are very specific circumstances that Cobra makes sense. But Cobra is usually really, really expensive because you're paying all of the employer subsidized costs as well as all the ones that you had. And it just always feels like it's two or three thousand dollars a month for Cobra.

Starting point is 00:41:16 Yeah, it was like 1800 a month. And then when we went on her own, it was like a thousand a month or something. So, Mark, what do you do all day when you're not gallivanting around the world? Good question. Lately, I've been like nesting. I've been working on this house. You'll have to come over and see my landscaping. It's almost all in.

Starting point is 00:41:33 Oh, yes, I would love to. So lately it's been some of that. And, you know, I get up. I still like to read the Wall Street Journal every day. I exercise, so that's, you know, my mornings pretty much. And then I try to always have at least one thing on my calendar that I feel like at the end of the day I'm going to be glad. I felt like I was productive. So, you know, I do have this podcast that I do.

Starting point is 00:41:57 So that takes up some times, you know, in the week. And then there's a lot of, you know, travel still involved. I do still have a little foothold in Crested Butte. So sometimes I'll go back there this past weekend. I was skiing there. So, you know, your time definitely gets. It's filled up even in retirement. So it's not a hard thing.

Starting point is 00:42:14 And then with this community here in Longmont, there's always something to do. So never a challenge of having something to do every day. I really am sometimes very surprised when people say, oh, I don't want to retire. I don't know what I would do all day long. And I look at my husband. I look at everybody else in the FI community locally. And I say none of them had time to have a job now. They're constantly doing.

Starting point is 00:42:39 they're constantly active. Longmont is a great city to be retired in because there's always people that are not working during the day that can go and hang out and do whatever it is that you want to do. Yeah, I would 100% concur with that. And that's one of the reasons I wanted to move because in my other town that I lived in Crescenta Butte, it's a very expensive town. So people are having to work multiple jobs and no one was ever available. And that's the benefit of being here now is everyone's available.

Starting point is 00:43:09 or at least everyone I know is available. So there's plenty of opportunity to do things with people. And I think what I found in this retirement period is the money side, we kind of figure out relatively quickly for most of us. But the social side is really where you should be focusing on making sure you're complete in this kind of retirement period. Yeah, absolutely. the retiree who

Starting point is 00:43:38 you know retires and then passes away is doing that mostly because they don't have anything to do they sit they're sedentary they are not out there you know having these relationships and doing these things and that I mean typically they're older but if you don't know what you want to do when you retire start making a list Carl and I spoke recently with Justin Peters who talked about

Starting point is 00:44:04 making a bucket list and keeping, like starting your bucket list now, make your bucket list, continually add things to it, but also start going through your bucket list and checking things off so the journey is enjoyable as well as once you get to retirement, you're used to doing things. So now you say goodbye to your job and you do these things full time. Mark, this was so much fun today. I always love talking to you. And thank you so much for joining me.

Starting point is 00:44:32 where can people find Mark's Money Mind? Yeah, so on any of your podcast players, Mark's MoneyMind usually comes out about once a week, but usually when I'm traveling, sometimes I miss a week here or there. I've been back now, so hopefully back to a regular schedule, or Marks MoneyMind.com is also where you can find me. Mark, thank you so much for your time today. And my viewers, if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up. And don't forget to subscribe to this channel for more inspiring fire videos just like Marks. This is Mindy Jensen, signing off.

BiggerPockets Money Podcast - FIRE at 50 by Creating “FI Paychecks” That Fund My Early Retirement! | Life After FIRE

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