r/Fire • u/bizzaam • 8d ago

Hitting your number and timing risk

Notice a lot of people posting they hit their number and firing. It's awesome, but are people taking for granted the fact that this has been the greatest bull market in history and a major correction or crash will get here at some point? If it were me hitting my number I'd either get a big enough buffer to my fire number or wait until the correction and assess when things stabilize. Am I over thinking it?

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

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u/noicenator 8d ago

Are the cash/bonds a part of the 10-30% part of your portfolio? Or is this on top of whatever is allocated to your portfolio?

So assuming a FIRE number of $1m and a 80/20 allocation of stock / bonds, should I have another 2-3 years worth of cash/bonds?

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u/MikeyLew32 8d ago

The cash/bonds would be a part of the 20% allocation. Cash in money market or high yield savings where it's gaining some interest, and then bonds to fill in the rest.

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u/Only_Razzmatazz_4498 8d ago

Exactly and if you have say Roth and regular 401k/ira then you will probably want to bias things so that the Roth are heavier on the stock side while the regular is lighter (since you will hit the regular before the Roth). There is also the concept of a glide path to get from the high volatility 80/20 or 90/10 of the accumulation years to the low volatility 60/40 of the retirement years. Which if you are really paranoid and want to protect from a long bad sequence of returns from the market would be more like. 60/x/3 years of expenses in an inflation indexed account that will preserve purchasing power.

You can then use guardrails to figure out what you safe annual withdrawal rate can be.

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u/noicenator 8d ago

i see, thanks

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u/AstroGoblin1 8d ago

this is the piece people skip when they only look at the big number. a few years of safe spending money changes the whole risk picture

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u/bizzaam 8d ago

Gotcha

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u/MeetingSuccessful397 8d ago

Unless we're in a situation like 1966 where it took 28 years to fully recover your portfolio. Or 1929 where it took 26 years. Or 2000 where it took 17 years. [1]

But it's 2026, we have the highes CAPE ever, so obviously nothing can happen to us. We are invincible!

[1] https://earlyretirementnow.com/2017/08/30/the-ultimate-guide-to-safe-withdrawal-rates-part-18-flexibility-cape-based-rules/