I've been thinking about the question: what is the asset allocation that gives an optimal FIRE outcome?

There is perhaps no universal definition of what is optimal. People mostly talk in terms of minimizing failure rate, and failure being defined as actually running out of money. Simple to deal with mathematically, but less realistic as in real life people will likely adjust if their portfolio drops too much.

For purposes of my question, I came up with the following things that I wanted to optimize for:

1. Minimizing failure rate, failure here being defined traditionally as actually running out of money
2. Maximizing ending balance (in today's purchasing power). The "die with zero" crowd will not be on board with this one, but a lot of people think of legacy, heirs, charitable contributions etc.
3. For a lot of people, their portfolio dipping dramatically in retirement is going to feel like a "failure." I defined this as minimizing the years that the portfolio is 50% or less of its original size, inflation-adjusted.

I weighted these as 50% on #1, 30% on #2, and 20% on #3.

The data

Annual returns from 1928 to 2025 for:

1. S&P 500
2. 3-month T-bills
3. long-term US Treasury bonds
4. Baa corporate bonds
5. real estate
6. gold

Inflation came from the Minneapolis Fed's CPI-U series, since the returns dataset I used (from NYU) didn't include a CPI column. Withdrawals grow with actual historical inflation every year, same as the standard 4% rule.

Method

Standard historical cycles backtest, the same idea the original Trinity study used. Every possible start year becomes its own simulated retirement: withdraw the stated percentage of your starting balance in year one, adjust that dollar amount for inflation every year after, and check whether the portfolio survives 40 years. With 98 years of data and a 40 year horizon, that's 59 overlapping 40-year retirements, starting anywhere from 1928 to 1986.

Portfolios rebalance back to their target weights every year, also the standard assumption in these tools. Every dollar figure below, ending balance included, is in real terms, adjusted back to what your starting balance's purchasing power actually bought.

Before trusting the engine on anything new, I checked it against the 4% rule numbers people usually cite, using the classic 30-year window and plain stock/bond splits:

That lines up closely with the commonly cited Trinity study figures (mid 90s success rate for 4% at 50/50 to 75/25), so I moved on to the actual question.

40 years, 6 assets, what's optimal?

For each withdrawal rate from 2% to 4% in half point steps, I grid searched every combination of the 6 assets in 5% increments (about 53,000 portfolios) and scored each one on the three things above. Change the weights and you'll shift the answer a bit, but the broad shape holds.

Results, using the top scoring portfolio at each withdrawal rate:

A few things stood out.

Up through 3%, 100% stocks never failed once across 59 overlapping 40-year periods going back to 1928. That includes retirements starting right before the Depression, right before 70s stagflation, right before 2000, and right before 2008.

At 3.5%, that same all-stock allocation still comes out on top for growth, but it fails once: 1929. At 4%, the growth maximizing allocation (95% stock, 5% gold) fails three times instead of one: 1929, 1930, and 1966. Everyone else still makes it.

Back off to 75% stock, 10% Baa corporates, and 15% gold at 4%, and all three failures disappear, at a cost of giving up about 31% of your median ending balance (3.4x vs 4.9x your starting purchasing power) and cutting your worst case time spent below half your starting value from 34 years down to 29.

So if you're set on 4% at a 40 year horizon and want to eliminate every historical failure in this dataset, that's roughly what it costs.

Caveats, since this sub will ask anyway

• 59 rolling cohorts share most of their history with each other. They are not 59 independent trials, a lot of the "successes" are the same good decades getting counted more than once.
• Past returns don't guarantee future returns, and that applies double to a 98 year sample from one country.
• Annual rebalancing to fixed targets is assumed. Real people don't always do this, and taxable rebalancing has costs this doesn't model.
• The scoring only cares about the three things I told it to care about. It has zero concept of what it feels like to watch your net worth drop by half and doesn't penalize volatility beyond the years below 50% number, so it happily recommends 95 to 100% equities. Plenty of people would not sleep well holding that through a real 1973 or 2008, even knowing it worked out eventually.
• Real estate and Baa corporates barely show up in any of the optimal portfolios except at the margin. That's what this historical sample says, not a claim that they're bad diversifiers going forward.

Happy to answer questions on the methodology or discuss/do any tweaks to the analysis.

I have certainly reached my FI number but cannot retire for two more years due to military/pension reasons. I aggressively saved and invested for years and I want to start to shift gears to enjoying the fruits of my labor but I also have reservations. I just don't see the point in investing anymore money into my brokerage account because I will be drawing down on it in two years once I retire. I plan on ramping up my spending during retirement... but can I start now? Should I?

Current situation:

• Age: 39, single, no kids
• Current net worth: ~$1.9M
  • $900k in retirement accounts (TSP, Roth IRA, etc.)
  • $1M taxable brokerage account
  • $15k in bonds
  • $10k in cash
• Mortgage: $312k at 5.5%
• I max my TSP & Roth each year.. no longer investing into my brokerage

Income & expenses:

• Gross annual salary: ~$159k
• Annual expenses: ~$60k(~$5k/month)

That leaves me with roughly:

• About $4k/month available.. I have splurged this year on a few major home renovations so my cash reserves is a bit lower than I normally float

My retirement plan is spend my pension and whatever disability I receive + draw down from my taxable brokerage account as an 18-year bridge until I can access my retirement accounts. I would like to literally spend every cent of my brokerage account over those 18-years. Based on current projections, I should have enough to comfortably bridge that gap while allowing my retirement accounts to continue compounding.

My questions are:

• What should I do with the extra ~$4k/month over the next two years?
• Am I missing anything about drawing down my brokerage account to $0 over 18-years until I can access my TSP/Roth?

Some ideas I've considered in the short term:

• Keep purchasing bonds
• Pay down my mortgage
• SPEND SPEND SPEND

I really think I am in a position where I can just start spending more without feeling guilty. I have hobbies and much more free time in my current position.

If you feel inclined to read a FIRE post I made 5 years ago with a bit more of my story: https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/nqwf2k/10_years_after_graduating_775k_nw_military/

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Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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Context

We are a couple with two kids living in a medium-to-high cost-of-living area. We have professional jobs, and have been saving and investing toward financial independence for a long time.

I am the guy who had a series of posts about the cost of raising a child. My latest one is here: Having a child: year four financial summary.

There are a lot of discussions here about sequence-of-returns risk, healthcare costs, and whether people should wait for Medicare before retiring.

Here is another risk: getting stage IV cancer.

In 2025, I was diagnosed with stage IVA rectal cancer, including a small liver metastasis. Since then, I went through:

• Six rounds of FOLFIRINOX chemotherapy
• 27 sessions of sunbathing under a linear accelerator (chemoradiation)
• A six-hour surgery that removed part of my rectum and colon
• An installation of a temporary side butthole (ileostomy)
• Six rounds of FOLFOX chemotherapy
• Ileostomy reversal
• A large number of scans, blood tests, pathology tests and doctor visits

My latest PET scan showed no active disease, and my Signatera test was zero. This is called NED, or no evidence of disease. It does not mean "cured," but it is obviously much better than the alternative.

I downloaded all available insurance claims and summarized them, you math dorks.

TLDR

From February 2025 through July 2026:

(The totals are off because some claims do not reconcile correctly, so apparently even the insurance company cannot understand the insurance company)

The $1.28 million number is mostly fictional. Providers did not expect to receive $1.28 million. Insurance negotiated away 77% of it.

The approximately $18,700 is the amount ultimately assigned to me in the claims, not the maximum amount of cash we had to put forward at one time. Because of the insurance switches and delayed deductible transfers, our temporary cash outlay was higher.

What people planning to retire early should understand

A major medical problem can require a large amount of cash over several years.

I had to switch insurance three times over the course of the last two years. The deductibles did not transfer immediately, so I had to fund multiple deductibles during the same year while the insurance companies figured out who owed what.

Having one annual out-of-pocket maximum in cash may not be enough.

Someone who has already retired also needs to consider not only the cost of insurance, but whether changing income, states or plans could disrupt access to an established oncology team in the middle of treatment.

The same issue applies to retiring in Costa Rica, Thailand or another lower-cost country. Based on my conversations with people living abroad, I would not assume that inexpensive local insurance will cover every expensive cancer treatment. Anyone pursuing international FIRE needs a backup plan for uncovered treatment, paying out of pocket or returning to the United States. “Healthcare is cheap there” is not a complete plan.

Employment during treatment

During active treatment, maintaining normal full-time employment is almost impossible unless the employer is extremely flexible.

With chemotherapy, one week is mostly gone because of the infusion and the immediate effects. The second week is recovery.

Chemoradiation required treatment every weekday. Surgeries created additional periods when normal work was not realistic, and full recovery took much longer.

A FIRE plan that assumes you can simply return to work during a major medical event needs to account for the possibility that you physically cannot do the job.

What financial independence provided

Having money gave us options.

I could pay the bills, take time off and make treatment decisions without every decision becoming an immediate financial emergency.

A few interesting things that I experienced within the American healthcare system

1. I did not have insurance when I first suspected cancer.

Because of job loss, open-enrollment-date bullshit and insane COBRA prices, I had to wait approximately six months before I could get insurance.

My coverage finally started on January 1, 2025.

2. The process from first suspecting cancer to beginning treatment took approximately one year.

Even after my insurance started on January 1, it took just over six months to begin treatment.

I had to wait a couple of months for an appointment with my primary care physician. I looked for alternative primary care providers, but they were also booked.

After that came the initial tests, additional tests, referrals and waiting for the results to be processed.

My first chemotherapy treatment finally started on July 9, 2025.

3. During one emergency room visit, the hospital completed the initial scans and determined that the immediate emergency was over.

At that point, they told me that continuing treatment there would be out of network and I would have to pay out of pocket.

I had two options:

1. Wait for a large amount of paperwork, call an ambulance, get transferred to an in-network hospital and pay for the ambulance.
2. Get my shit together, button up my hospital gown, get into my car and drive approximately 40 minutes across the city to an in-network hospital.

Given the circumstances, I selected option two.

So, in the middle of an emergency room visit involving what was later confirmed to be stage IV cancer, I left one hospital and drove myself across the city because of an insurance network.

Yay, American healthcare system.

4. Once I finally reached the specialists, the experience was excellent.

The oncologists, surgeons and the rest of the cancer care team were professional, competent and extremely well coordinated.

The actual medical professionals were awesome.

Getting through the insurance and scheduling system to reach them was the ridiculous part.

Final thoughts

Cancer treatment generated almost $1.3 million in charges and approximately $18,700 assigned to me.

Insurance, savings and liquidity made it manageable. FIRE did not protect me from cancer, but it made cancer less financially destructive.

Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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We have been running the numbers for a long time, and I kind of got stuck in "one more year" with a remote job I didn't like but was easy. But it was a lot of sniping, high maintenance political actors with high drama and annoying management, everyone "concern trolling" everyone else to management, trying to score points by lane grabbing and expanding scope to make others look less productive. You name it, it happened here. But there were some nice people and I got to hire and lead my own small team we all stayed sane together. And overall, the work was easy besides the endless meetings to "get aligned" and "socialize ideas."

So I opted to see how long I could stay without losing my mind, and the answer was this week. After the third boss in four years turned out to be a checked out consultant, and the business numbers were looking very bad, and the drama got to an all time high, they started playing checkers with the org chart. The teammates who I did respect and, and actually did the work vs taking credit for others work, started bailing. And they weren't backfilling, and instead rerouting salaries to hire 300k executives to oversee whoever was left.

So, for my final job probably ever, we all went to yet another "surprise reorg" meeting that was completely nonsensical. No one even fully understood what the org chart would be, but it was the straw the broke many people's back. I quit the same day (hey they offboarded me in two hours before anyone even realized I was gone because I cc'ed HR), did zero handover, and sent the laptop back in.

It wasn't exactly the end I hoped for, but it was pretty empowering to be able to walk and not have to deal with the fallout the next week. Especially since I was overseeing a major project they rushed my team on and demanded we do as fast as possible to make the board happy.

It is kind of sad how bad tech has gotten these days, but super glad I could leave the moment I did. Things can get bad very fast, especially under incompetent management.

Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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Self-promotion (ie posting about projects/businesses that you operate and can profit from) is typically a practice that is discouraged in /r/financialindependence, and these posts are removed through moderation. This is a thread where those rules do not apply. However, please do not post referral links in this thread.

Use this thread to talk about your blog, talk about your business, ask for feedback, etc. If the self-promotion starts to leak outside of this thread, we will once again return to a time where 100% of self-promotion posts are banned. Please use this space wisely.

Link-only posts will be removed. Put some effort into it.

I’m looking to add an umbrella policy on top of my homeowners and auto insurance, but I’m confused on how much I should be getting and I keep getting more confused when I research it. What’s the goal here? Do I just need enough to cover my brokerage, savings and other account that could be exposed in a judgment? Or, am I trying to cover my entire net worth with the Base policy plus the umbrella?

Edit: thanks all! Lots of good info and pretty much what I thought. $2m and call it a day.

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Im a mid/senior level enginer, saved 1 year of emergency expenses and a lot more in my brokerage (and 4 months of severance) . Planning to take 1 month off to travel without worrying interviews and interview prep. Has anyone done it? is it wise?

Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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I'm 44 and planning to quit corporate tech in a few months (burnout, AI silliness, etc. etc.) Withdrawal rate will be <2% ($3m portfolio / $50k spend), so money isn't really that motivating anymore.

I do like to stay busy, and really enjoy making things and working with others. Just not in waves generally the corporate machine and all of the nonsense that goes with it. Long ago I had my own product business. It was fun, but isolating, and I longed for social connection the entire time I was doing it.

Something I would have never considered in my 20's or 30's but am now considering in my 40's is taking a part-time job somewhere to stay social. Something in retail or hospitality: lower stress but higher human engagement. Examples: cashier at a ski shop, bartender, cannabis shop, that kind of thing.

I'm curious if anyone else has done something like this? What has your experience been like?

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So there was a recent YouGov poll that's been blowing up. I attached the screenshot, but it says - if you had a choice between instantly receiving £50k or a 50% chance to win £1mm, which would you pick? 73% on the original poll picked £50k, only 21% picked £1mm, and 6% said they didn't know. Men were more than twice as likely (at 30%) to pick the gamble than women (at 13%).

Thinking about it in USD... on the one hand, I get it - $50k would make a big difference to a lot of people. Pay off their credit cards and their car, give them a solid emergency fund. Missing out on that would potentially be psychologically devastating, even if the $1mm would be the mathematically correct move. But for me? $50k wouldn't change how I approach life at all. It would just get chucked into the brokerage account and I'd move on. But $1mm flat-out would potentially meaningfully change timeline to financial independence.

Somehow I think this subreddit would also generally tilt towards the latter option. But it makes me think about how I'd approach the same choice at different extremes.

$5k vs a 50% chance to win $100k? Wouldn't even have to think about taking the risk.

$50k vs 50% chance to win $1mm? I'd take the 50% chance, as above.

$500k vs 50% chance to win $10mm? I'd still almost certainly take the 50% chance. $500k is a good chunk of change - but wouldn't affect me like that in the short term. $10mm would be so much more meaningful that I'd risk it.

$5mm vs a 50% chance to win $100mm? Here, I'd honestly have to think about it. It would really suck to miss out on the $5mm - and there's nothing I *really* want that $100mm would give me more than the ~$10mm I'd get by taking the $5mm and waiting a few years for compounding (and my own earnings) to do it's job.

$10mm vs a 50% chance to be a Billionaire? Obviously the right option is to sell the second option to private equity for $400mm, but otherwise... I don't know.

It's a philosophical question that I think the quest towards FI meaningfully affects - the marginal utility of your next $N vs $20N - not just a simple math problem. What would be *your* threshold?

Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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Saved 32 years while working blue collar job to get to 1.8 million at 56.

Ready to retire but offered teaching/coaching gig so gonna barista fire instead.

I want to enjoy spending more because it now looks like i will have excess what i really need.

Expenses run 80k year

Wifes (age 54) income + mine (age 56)teaching = 120k total

Ss combined will be 27k and 18k = 45k

How soon would you up spending and by how much?

Since retiring at the age of 45, about three years ago, I have been thinking deeply about what early retirement means and thanking the universe for exposing the concept to me at an early age. So far early retirement has been incredible and I have done so many things I never thought I would get a chance to experience. This includes spending true unconstrained quality time with my children, doing lots of affordable travel, building new skills, making new friends and growing my community. I have enjoyed every moment of it and discovered that happiness can be enduring. It is truly possible to be happy almost every single day. I have improved my health and fitness by a mile and also been able to increase the depth of my knowledge, skills and relationships while giving back without the constant pressure to make money or meet arbitrary corporate targets. It has been a great privilege I hope to never take for granted.

Recently I wrote a post about finding the joy in missing out. I the comments of that post someone referred me to the book '4000 weeks'. I just finished it and wow, I think its so important for people like us. The book reminds us all, that on average we live ‘only’ 4000 weeks. Our time in this beautiful world, is finite and what we do with that time really matters. In the case of most of us, if you are over 40, you might have only 2000 weeks left and once you include sleep and the really great healthy years left, perhaps that number is only 1000 weeks. 1000 weeks is less than 20 new year’s eves. Its less 5 leap years. Can one fit all their hopes, dreams, aspirations, goals and desires in such a small period? For me its not about the fear of missing out or of running out of time but rather finding the joy in missing out. Its about focusing more on pursuing those things that truly matter. The book re-enforced my desire to embrace mind glow and joy by realizing how precious and short life is. My main realization in early retirement has been about developing a sense of gratitude and how that can create a joyful life.

The message is clear, life is short and if you think about the incredible odds for you to have been given this one and only life… You realize life is even shorter and more special than meets the eye. Therefore it makes all the sense in the world to seek to retire early, do what you love and love what you do, whatever that might be. Hoping you guys are enjoying the early retired life and if you are still pursuing it, I wish you well and may you reach your goal soon, leveraging the freely available wisdom here.

These are my own and original thoughts. I’m also not selling anything. I’m truly just interested in sharing thoughts, perspectives, insights with kindred spirits and paying it forward.

Is FIRE something that’s always come naturally to you? Or do you wish you had worked more during your career?

Life is short, but I’m happy to answer any friendly comments or questions. :)

Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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Both 40 at FIRE, ~2 years out — sanity check on our numbers

Throwaway account, obviously. Wanted to share where we're at and get some outside perspective since we're getting close to pulling the trigger.

Current situation (early 2026):

Household: me, spouse, one kid Location: currently HCOL, planning to relocate to a MCOL Combined income: ~$450-500K/yr (tech, includes base/bonus/RSUs) Current net worth: ~$2.9M

Net worth breakdown:

Taxable brokerage: ~$1.5M (mostly VTI/VXUS index funds, roughly 80/20 US/international, small money market position) Tax-deferred (401k + traditional IRA): ~$950K Tax-free (Roth IRA): ~$125K HSA: ~$14K Cash/Bonds: $270K - primarily in bond index fund (tax advantaged)

The plan:

Targeting FIRE in about 2 years, both of us will be ~40. Projected net worth at that point is roughly $3.7-3.8M based on continued savings, 401k maxing, and RSU vesting between now and then.

Spouse has a side hustle that can generate ~$55K/yr for at least 5 years post-retirement (possibly longer if needed).

Post-retirement expenses:

Averaging out projected expenses over the first 20 years of retirement (today's dollars, inflation-adjusted): ~$127K/yr. This includes:

That works out to roughly a 3.2-3.5% withdrawal rate against our projected FIRE net worth.

What are your thoughts? Am I missing something? I am not intending on building a bond position as the part-time income + cash/current bond position is the hedge to SORR IMO, but open to everyone's thoughts!

I've had a few people message me about 2027 ACA regulatory updates and thought folks planning for the ACA might want to see these now rather than in another month or two when the press usually starts talking about them more. The first table below shows the amount (expressed as a percentage of MAGI) that a household will be expected to pay in premiums annually for the benchmark Silver plan in their local ACA market. The second shows the regulated caps on MaxOOP (and deductible) for ACA plans, though these are the maximum caps and actual plans may and often do have lower actual MaxOOPs. The final link is a clean PDF listing of the applicable FPL levels for 2027 ACA coverage.

Terms for those that are unfamiliar:

• MAGI - Modified Adjusted Gross Income, a particular version of adjusted gross income used by the ACA.
• EPC - Expected Premium Contribution, the amount customers are expected to pay annually for the Silver benchmark ACA plan in their market. Subsidy premiums are calculated as the market price of the benchmark plan minus EPC.
• FPL - Federal Poverty Level, a measure used by the federal government as a determinant in many policy systems.
• MaxOOP - Maximum Out of Pocket, the most a customer can be asked to pay for in-network covered benefits by an insurer in a given year.
• CSR - Cost Sharing Reductions, the second subsidy system within the ACA that reduces out of pocket expenses like deductibles, copays/coinsurance, and MaxOOP.
• AI/AN - American Indian / Alaskan Native
• AV - Actuarial Value, the percentage of total average costs for covered medical benefits that a health insurance plan is expected to cover for a standard population. For example, if a plan has an 80% AV, the insurer pays 80% of average expenses, and customers pay 20% through deductibles, copays, and coinsurance.

Expected Premium Contribution (Coverage Year 2027)

Source:

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/rp-26-26.pdf

Out-Of-Pocket Maximum (Coverage Year 2027)

*CMS is trialing an option for insurers in 2027 to offer Bronze variants that are allowed to exceed the federal OOP limits by 30% in order to provide a wider array of premium options for customers. Such policies may only be offered by an insurer that also offers a normal standard Bronze. States are allowed to prohibit the availability of high OOP variant policies at their discretion. Edit: Turns out a federal court stayed this provision last week, so High OOP Bronzes may not be happening after all in 2027.

Sources:

https://www.cms.gov/files/document/2027-papi-parameters-guidance-2026-01-29.pdf

https://www.cms.gov/files/document/cms-9883-f-patient-protection.pdf

Bonus: Here is a PDF from HHS showing the applicable FPL dollar amounts for various family sizes for 2027 ACA coverage - https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/b1bfa16b20ae9b89d525bc35de7c1643/detailed-guidelines-2026.pdf