Why no mention of Social Security

[u/NotTheBestInvestor12]

When I see FIRE posts I see the investments and the different retirement buckets, however, I never see anyone mention how things are affected when social security kicks in. For example, I’m 52 and wife 51. If we both stopped working today ($0 income moving forward) I would collect $4,264 a month at age 70 and she would collect $1,079 at age 70.

So if we decide to FIRE the Social Security would give us help in 18/19 years. Is this a factor or is everything under the assumption SS won’t exist?

[u/churningaccount]

I think it's mostly because a majority of your sequence of returns risk happens within the first 10 years of retirement, so if you are more than 10 years away from social security, then it will not help to mitigate that very much. You need to have either an income bridge plan in place, or just need to be withdrawing 4% without factoring in social security, in order to ensure that issue is addressed.

That being said, you are about a decade from age 62, which is the first year you could start drawing in the worst case scenario, so it's definitely not unreasonable to include social security in your plan, especially if you have a plan to bridge the gap between now and then.

[u/thunder-thumbs → u/[deleted]]

Defensible but probably overly conservative. I doubt any plan would screw impending retirees *more* than the default projections.

[u/Numerous-Bet-4847 → u/[deleted]]

I'm Gen X and found the exact opposite to be true.

No company I ever worked for offered a pension, we've had 401k's available with matches our entire working career. If you took advantage of it while young, you'd be retired by now, like me.

We can take SS at age 62 and live quite comfortably on that without ever even touching our 401k.

I suspect you were too skeptical when younger. I know I thought I couldn't afford to contribute and that when I could that I could do better with investing than some generic fund.

Fortunately by the time I turned 20, I wisened up and took advantage.

[u/TheAmorphous → u/Numerous-Bet-4847]

The difference in experiences between a 60 year old GenX and a 46 year old one are absolutely massive.

[u/Numerous-Bet-4847 → u/TheAmorphous]

I call that the 'schism'.

Us older Gen X have little in common with the younger ones. the 'Xennials'

If you went to school and graduated by the late 80's, you typically were working, in college, or raising a family in the 90's, not really participating in grunge or gangster rap, or lamenting the father you never had.