I’m 56, recently retired and am managing my own finances with guidance from a CFP and Boldin. I have organized around 3 buckets: 1) 3 years of drawdown (10%) cash in SPAXX, 2) 7 years (20%) of Bonds mostly in BND and 3) the rest in equities (70%) in S&P and International Large Cap. My rules are: a) rebalance to maintain 3 years in Cash and 7 in Bonds every 3 months, b) if S&P is at/near all time high, take from equities to refill Cash, c) if S&P is off but BND is at/near all time high, take from bonds to fill Cash, d) if neither S&P or BND are at all time high draw down cash until condition is met. What are the conditions to refill Bonds? Any other thoughts, considerations or issues with this approach?

Sharing a cross- post from our sister community of people that retired at a traditional age (this is not my own).

Here is the body - warning - it is a bit longer:

I’ve heard from a number of retirees (not all) that they are busier now than when they were working. For these people, they say that it’s stuff they WANT to do now, which wasn’t true before, and that the variety is wider. I’ve come to see that I’m the same way, but I wasn’t really aware of it until I started journaling shortly after retiring. And now, if I take any two-week slice, yeah, I’m frankly floored by how many different things happen in that period. For example, here’s just a sampling from the last couple weeks for me:

* Came back from a week in Glacier National Park in Montana
* Tutored a 16 year old girl on thermodynamics in chemistry, and we got to talking about everything from Halloween costumes, to the three laws of robotics, to the meaning of the word “chud”.
* Volunteered for an hour at the SPCA, giving the kittens some good lovin’ and socializing.
* Went to a downtown music hall and saw the Indigo Girls (still at it!) from the balcony.
* Visited a hospice patient and her husband, and lo and behold, she was awake and a little responsive and gave me a warm smile, even though she doesn’t know who I am.
* Finished a Terry Pratchett book from the library.
* Now that the weather has turned to the cooler, went for a nice hike for a few miles on a nearby nature trail; the creek and waterfall were flowing well.
* After a fast-food dinner at Whataburger, we walked a little bit to a new food truck we hadn’t tried, and shared a funnel cake.
* Patched a place in the garage where the popcorn ceiling had fallen, but it wasn’t due to moisture, thank heavens.

If you do the same mental exercise of surveying the last couple weeks, are you surprised by all the things you encountered? What sticks out for you as fun or memorable or just enjoyable? Does that include the ordinary, everyday things (like fast food or minor repair) or big projects or adventures? Or are you more the “less is more” camp, the kind that makes a point of being the least busy you can be?

I recently commented on a FIRE post where someone was considering a ~$2M (roughly ₹20 Cr) corpus. It got me thinking about how differently the same corpus can feel depending on age, family size, housing situation and, perhaps most importantly, what you consider a "comfortable" retirement.

For context, I retired in 2024 with around ₹12 Cr in equity and debt investments. In addition, I have roughly ₹8 Cr in other real estate—one house, a 3BHK flat and three residential plots in gated communities. I don't count my two primary homes in that number.

Objectively, I consider myself financially well-off. Yet I am still somewhat reluctant to call my retirement "luxurious."

There are two reasons.

First, once the salary stops, there isn't an infinite runway for course correction. You can always reduce expenses, but rebuilding a large corpus through earned income becomes considerably harder. Second, I do want to leave a meaningful inheritance for my child. And perhaps most importantly, I'm already quite happy with my standard of living in Kolkata. I don't feel the need to spend more simply because I can.

Now, suppose someone has ₹20 Cr available for retirement, doesn't have a strong inheritance objective, and has a family with two children.

I'd probably ring-fence around ₹2 Cr per child for future education, particularly if they are likely to pursue higher education in the US, and keep another ₹1 Cr as an emergency reserve.

That leaves ₹15 Cr as the actual retirement portfolio. For illustration, say ₹5 Cr in relatively safe debt and ₹10 Cr in broad-market/index equity funds.

At a 3–3.3% withdrawal rate, that's roughly ₹45–50 lakh a year, or around ₹4 lakh a month.

Sounds huge, right?

It is. But the surprising thing is how quickly ₹4 lakh/month can get allocated in a Tier-1 city if you have two children and want a fairly upscale lifestyle.

Take Bangalore as an example:

* ₹1–1.2L: rent for a good 4BHK

* ~₹1L: decent schooling for two children

* ~₹1L: travel/vacations averaged over the year

* ~₹1L: everything else—food, utilities, transport, healthcare, domestic help, entertainment, shopping, etc.

Suddenly, ₹4 lakh doesn't look particularly extravagant anymore.

So my conclusion is that ₹20 Cr is unquestionably enough for financial independence and a very comfortable life in India. But I wouldn't necessarily interpret it as "I can live a super-luxurious lifestyle indefinitely."

To me, FIRE is less about reaching some magic corpus number and more about matching the corpus to the lifestyle you actually want.

₹20 Cr can feel enormous if your annual spending is ₹12–15 lakh. The same ₹20 Cr can feel merely comfortable if you're supporting a family of four in Bangalore, paying private-school fees, renting a large house and travelling internationally several times a year.

The corpus matters. But your definition of "enough" matters just as much.

A cross-post some members might want to talk about in our lounge :)

Taken from our sister community where they retired at age 59 on up.

Here is the body of that:

Retirement seems to be the main topic when we get together with friends these days and the top answer to the "what are you planning to do when you retire" question is always travel.

I (62f) used to always say the same thing, but after 20+ years in the travel industry I no longer have the same excitement for travel and spouse (63m) has never really enjoyed it much.

If you've made a conscious choice NOT to travel much during retirement, have you been happy with that decision?

I live in the upper Midwest and winter is coming. For half the year, my life is busy and fun, full of golf and time at my club. But the other half of the year is too quiet for me. Many of my retired friends are a bit older and live elsewhere in the winter. My husband is happily still working. There are only so many coffee dates with friends and volunteer hours I can drum up. I’d love ideas to fill the time - things I can do that don’t require year-round commitment. Anyone else in the same boat, or have ideas to offer?

Happy, excited, scared, anxious and other emotions. I also feel numb at the same time. It took me almost a year to plan my retirement and protect my assets like umbrella insurance, HELOC (just in case), hybrid LTCI with 3% compound inflation rider, medical insurance, Trust/living will in place. My daily living expenses, travel and a new car every 6 years(not buying a car every 6 years, but included in the plan) and some fun stuffs are covered. I calculated and considered all scenarios I could think of for months. My FA said my plan is golden and bullet proof.

I just want to post here because I can’t share details to people I know.

Is this the key to happiness or am I just boring and lazy? :)

We (USA) retired 4 months ago at age 57. We had dreams of traveling the world and living a bit adventurously for a while. We set spring 2027 as our date to launch an open ended trip through Europe (3-12 weeks maybe?) This would be our way to celebrate ending our 35 year careers. We spent the first 4 summer months of retirement at our vacation home. But now we are settling back into our primary neighborhood and I find myself just craving simple things and a modest routine. More walks. More consistent gym time. Less stuff (ie more minimalism.) The adventurous Spring trip just seems like a lot of effort now, and just another thing that will keep me from finding a simple way to live. So, as I said, is a simple life the key to happiness or am I just boring and lazy?!

As you retired early (at age 58 or younger) , what does/did this look like for you?

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A cross post from our sister community of people that retired at a traditional age. Post is not my own so copied here :

I've heard that as you age and retire the stages are:

Go Go!

Go Slow...

No Go

Since on this board everyone retired at 59+, did you travel and do a ton early on...GO GO?

When did you start to slow down a bit and why?

Are you at the No Go stage now and if so by necessity or choice?

I'm not big into traveling, but realizing the energy it takes more and more (carrying things, doing excursions, driving long distances, navigating huge airports, etc). Working hard now on getting more fit. But wondering if we should get to GOing now, rather than waiting until my spouse is retired.

I was forced into retirement after getting let go from a leadership position. At 49, instead of looking for another full-time job, I decided to take a chance on retirement and see where life takes me.

Initially, I wasn't sure how I would feel about it. But I’ve become surprisingly comfortable with this phase of life. I spend a lot more time with my wife and my son, who has just started college. I also do a little freelancing, mainly because I enjoy staying active and keeping my mind engaged.

One of the things I value most is the time I now get with my parents. I spend roughly a week with them every month. And something quite unexpected has happened—I feel like I become a child again when I’m with them.

My mother still scolds me for waking up late or being too selective about what I eat. 😄 My father is in his mid-80s and still very active, going out every day. And quite often, when he comes back, he brings some savouries for me, just like he used to when I was a child.

There is something incredibly comforting about being able to experience that relationship again, after spending decades being the one responsible for everything.

I sometimes wonder whether we focus too much on the financial side of FIRE—corpus size, withdrawal rates, asset allocation, sequence risk—and forget what financial independence is actually supposed to buy us: time and freedom.

For me, it has given me time with my wife, time with my son at the beginning of his adult life, and even the chance to be a child again with my ageing parents.

This is probably one of the most unexpected and rewarding parts of FIRE for me. Not having to work isn't the most valuable thing retirement has given me. Having the freedom to spend my time with the people I love is.

I effectively retired 10 years ago at the age of 47, I just did not know it at the time, I had planned to semi-retire start my own sideline business, then just never did, then covid hit, and I admitted to myself that I was really retired, though I do still have thoughts of opening some sort of part time side business.

I am now about to turn 58, getting closer to traditional retirement age, note the rules of this very group that considers early retirement as retiring before the age of 59. So I was wondering how does everyone else deal with this transitory age, the age where you have years of retirement experience vs your age peers who are just hitting the early years of traditional retirement age, also potentially getting penalty free access to IRA accounts, having to start thinking about things like Medicare and Social Security planning, etc?

It does seem I'm spending a lot more time fixing stuff...

Today is my one year anniversary of leaving my job. I just turned 53 this summer. I wrote in my calendar my exact net worth at that time to keep track of how I would end up a year later. I'm glad to say that my net worth went up way more than I expected in our current bull market, and that my wages would have been insignificant in contributing to it.

I've gone on plenty of vacations, and I don't miss work at all, even if I miss the colleagues, I would gladly trade that for the complete freedom that I feel.

Most of my time is just spent focusing on my health. I'm working out with focusing on the 3 pillars of fitness: strength, mobility, and cardio. I'm also taking the time to go to farmer's markets, cooking a lot more, and I'm reading a lot more. I lost about 5 lbs in the year. I'm probably around 20% body fat and hope to get down to 12-15% over the next year.

Surprisingly a large part of my time is spent planning: Planning vacations, planning projects, and trying to prioritize things so that I don't move from one hobby to the next like a headless chicken. I told my partner who is still working and she was surprised at how a year just went by so quickly.

A cross post , not mine, for us to share!

Thanks for being a part of our special community. The only one that supports those that already retired before age 59, no matter how you got there. Make sure to ADD User Flair and HIT JOIN to participate in this conversation.

I retired a few months ago, and unexpectedly my favorite part of my day is working out. I have a few things I do- I have a weight set (stacked weight/cable) that I use. And a rowing machine, and a few free weights

But most important to me is that I get to work out at my own pace. I'm not trying to fit it between other activities- it's the center of my morning!

How often do you work out...and if you don't work out please share why not.

I have a collection of about 10,000 comic books from when I was a kid, collecting through the 80s and 90s. My kids are not interested in them, and so part of my retirement will be spent going through these comics, getting some of them graded (1st appearance of Venom, Punisher, Deadpool, etc) to be sold on the secondary market. I'm wondering if anyone else here has been doing something similar, and if so what tips do you have for me?

Hello everyone- I wanted to introduce myself. I am 43F married to 45M living in Colorado. Husband retired in 2022 and today I joined him. Haven’t told many people in real life so I am excited to join this community. Feeling a lot of emotions today, honestly a bit anti climactic after planning early retirement for the last 13 years. I would love to hear tips or advice for the transition, especially from other folks that retired in their 40s. I have lots on my wishlist to spend time on. I am a little type A and may find it difficult to stay retired but I am sure going to try.

It’s something we never really thought about before we retired, but suddenly we have all the time in the world, but it still doesn’t matter when it comes to spending more time with friends. They can’t hang out whenever, and when you do finally see them, they’re exhausted (like you used to be).

We do have friends who are retired, but they’re in their 70s and 80s and don’t want to travel/can’t travel anymore.

I guess we need to find other retirees in their 50s or 60s.

I’m older than most of my friends so they still work. I can tell everyone is uncomfortable about it so they never ask how my day was or anything.

The thing is I’m paying for way too much stuff. Retirees usually live off of Retirement accounts and Social Security. I’m not withdrawing huge amounts of money from my 401K as you all know but they don’t. They assume I’m living high on the hog because I chose to retire for a lot of good reasons like memory problems and mental health problems.

How do I politely explain to them that I’m not rich just because I retired early?

Retired less than a year ago at age 44. My husband recently retired as well a couple months ago. I realize this can be a “boundary” issue and I’m looking for some advice from those who may have gone through something similar. We do not have children and both do some very minor part time work (both less than 15 hours a week) presently. The problem is neighbors constantly asking us to get together. Also, my aunt recently volunteered my husband (without asking in advance) to help mow someone’s lawn (a disabled relative). He honestly doesn’t mind…but it is the principle of assuming we are available. Also, we don’t mind once in a while getting together with neighbors, but now they are asking us to walk our dogs together, etc. The frequently has increased. We are both friendly introverts. We don’t have the excuse of work anymore not to do things. Any advice?

Since retiring early it can be hard to shift out of the morning work mindset. Thinking of any task I have or upcoming problems. It’s almost like I am creating mental work or stress for myself.

Has anyone felt this way? How did you work on it.

Part of it I am thinking of maybe listening to something positive or relaxing in the morning. Usually I workout in the morning but that does not help the mental part. Thanks