The forth Earthsea Book, it follows Tenar (from The Tombs of Atuan) with Ged as a secondary character. Less fantasy and action than the previous books. But still interesting. 3/5
I’ve recently been doing a review of my investments and retirement goals. I was made redundant in early 2023 and made an estimate on how long my savings would last. While it wasn’t enough to retire on it was a good percentage of the way there.
I got a new job after a few weeks but I decided to make some more detailed calculations to see how much I would really need and if I was on track.
Note: That all numbers in the blog post are 2023 New Zealand dollars and I’m assuming are inflation adjusted.
My Situation
I am a New Zealand citizen living in Auckland, New Zealand. I work in IT and have a stay-at-home partner and no children. We rent and don’t own property. We have Investments in Managed Funds and Term Investments plus Kiwisaver Retirement accounts. I am not including any inheritance.
Our total expenditure is around $50,000 per year. About half this is rent. This doesn’t include major purchases ( eg a replacement car ) or travel.
Why retire early?
The big reason to retire early is due to declining health and life expectancy. At 55 I can expect till live till around 85. Which probably means I’ll die in my 80s. If I’m lucky I’ll be able to be fairly active till 70 but probably not past that. Almost certainly at either myself or my partner will be unable to do active activities (eg walking around a city all day or tramping) by 70.
This means if I retire at 65 I might get 5 years of active retirement. Whereas retiring at 55 could give me 15 years, 3 times as much. If I get sick at 67 then the difference is even greater 12 years vs 2.
Retirement scenario
My working scenario is that I will retire at 55. We will then spend $70,000/year for 5 years on extra travel etc. Then $60,000/year in our 60s followed by $50,000/year from 70 onwards.
New Zealand Superannuation will kick in when we each turn 65. This provides around $15,000 after tax for each person.
Running the numbers
So to test this out I’ve been using a free app/site called ficalc.app . It lets you plug in your retirement length, portfolio and spending and it will run it against every starting year (in the US) since 1871. It will then show you the success rate including the “nearly failed”.
A hard year to check against is 1973. A falling stock market and high inflation wipe out a lot of your savings at the start so you need a good initial amount to keep ahead of your later withdrawals.
1973 starting date.
I found I would need around $1,350,000 starting amount for every year to be successful and no near failures for a 30 year retirement. The numbers were virtually the same for 40 years.
However if I adopted the Gayton-Klinger Guardrails strategy and spend up to $5000/year less when my portfolio was down I could get away with just $1,200,000 saved.
The result
It appears that we will need around $1.2 to $1.35m (in 2023 $NZ) to retire at at 55 with my assumed spending patterns. At my current saving rate there is a good chance I could reach this.
Delaying retirement beyond 55 to save more money loses healthy years of retirement with not a lot of upside in risk reduction. However a delay of a year or two greatly improves the expected outcome so it is an option if things look tight.
There will always be some risk. ie a Stockmarket Crash, financial loss, costs increase (eg rent) or health event could cause problems and I would no longer be working to adjust to it.
We also won’t have a lot of spare money to voluntarily spend on things. eg a $40,000 on an extended holiday wouldn’t be in the budget and would be hard to save for.
I ran the numbers assuming I buy rather than rent. However since Auckland housing prices are so high compared to rents it doesn’t seem to be significantly worse than paying rent out of savings.
Lone Man tries to survive space emergency. Tries to be the next “The Martian” but doesn’t succeed. Science flaky. Many people like but I gave up at 30% through 2/5
A moderately detailed biography single-volume biography that gets good reviews. I could mostly follow the action (except perhaps some of the battles) and characters. Would definitely recommend 4/5
Suspicious a convicted murderer is innocent Maigret arranges his escape and surveillance. One mysterious man directly challenges Maigret to solve the mysterious web of people around the case. 3/5
Covering the 2020 US Presidential primaries and election. Mostly from the Democratic side. Reasonably good but not quite up to the 2008/2012 books. 4/5
The story of the conception, making and release of the 5 Best Picture Nominees at the 1968 Oscars. 4 Classic films and one Bomb. Great book, Highly recommend. 4/5
How weapons developments from 1300 to the end of WW2 shaped how wars were fought at the tactical and operation level. Very interesting, recommended. 4/5
The First Inspector Maigret detective story. A dead body and a live businessman are both match the description of a notorious fraudster. A short interesting listen. 3/5
A woman’s body is found in a stable near a canal and Inspector Maigret is called to investigate. Her upper-class but disreputable English husband is suspected. Lots of descriptions of Canal life 3/5
Throughout Earthsea magic is dying and people are sicking or going mad. Archmage Sparrowhawk and young Prince set out to investigate. A very real-feeling story. 4/5
A very detailed account of the battle of Jutland and British Navel Culture. So detailed I gave up trying to follow the Audiobook but would work better if printed. 3/5
The History of the P-51 Mustang through 3 people. Designer Edgar Schmued, Tommy Hitchcock, the man who fought for its adoption, and Don Blakeslee, an ace who flew it. 3/5
Nominally a history of the people’s of the pre-Columbian Americas. Covers the population, age and sophistication of the civilizations based on recent discoveries. 4/5
A short book on the Bletchley Park code-breaking efforts of WW2. A general overview concentrating on a few characters with much left under-covered. 4/5
Last read July 2021. A semi-repeat of The Martin where a lone astronaut has to science the shit out of a bad situation. This time to save humanity. 4/5
Working through increased complexity of Checkers, backgammon, chess, and Go. Poker, Scrabble, and bridge the author looks at how humans and computers play them. 4/5
Based on tapes recordings made by the actor and those that knew him. Honest and Deep rather than broad and concentrating on his early life and career. 4/5
Classic Children’s Fantasy story that I haven’t read since I was a kid. Told in a very epic tone and language. Good although I missed the map on audiobook. 4/5
Covers 1958-1964. Especially the 1960 Democratic primary and election, Johnson’s unhappy Vice Presidency and the first months of his Presidency. As good as the others in the series. 4/5
A Introduction to Effective Ultruism and how you can do the most good in the world via carefully picking charities to give to and other alternatives. 4/5
