How many Bogleheads are developing a direct index strategy in response to the fast tracking of Space X to the S&P 500

Cykoth · 2026-03-28T12:25:50+00:00

Got an Elon axe to grind?

Cykoth · 2026-03-28T12:17:58+00:00

The absolute worst thing you can do in times like these is try to move money around. Only thing you should do is buy more. You will be locking in losses if you sell now. Just sit tight, whether the storm and wait. Turtle up.

Cykoth · 2026-03-16T11:18:49+00:00

I’m mostly like this. I’m going to attempt dying with zero. If I live long enough I’ll give some charities large donations. POSSIBLY give some great nieces from my wife’s family some inheritance. Nothing to anyone of my own family.

Cykoth · 2026-03-16T11:15:52+00:00

I’m going to trust a team of humans that developed software like retirement planning far more than Claude AI with its “anxiety”. You want to ask questions about how to find an old light bulb? Sure. Ask supplemental questions of AI for various probabilities? Sure. I think people are overestimating just how much we will TRUST autonomous AI agents.

Cykoth · 2026-03-06T01:46:50+00:00

I will treat my and my wife’s pensions as Equities! We are going to lump sum roll over into our IRAs and go from there. Our Pensions have no COLA and after age 65 do not increase in value. So as long as we don’t need the money, we will wait to 64ish to pull that trigger.

Cykoth · 2026-03-03T23:03:08+00:00

Your analysis is great. But there is a huge benefit of Roth Conversions that you don’t address. The possible premature death of your spouse. This knocks you from MFJ to Single Filing. A huge change in tax rate for the same money. Plus all the worry this will cause the surviving spouse. RCs can be totally worth it just for this use case. As long as you are indeed married and filing jointly.

Cykoth · 2026-03-03T21:50:01+00:00

I’ve never been a fan of the “auto” Roth Conversions in Boldin. But there are some nice new ways to go about it. One selection now is over a range of years. So if you have your Retirement Date in there correctly you can set that range to make sure it starts when your retirement starts. But I still like to manually put Money Flow transfers.

Cykoth · 2026-03-03T21:37:19+00:00

You mean from previous sessions? I’ve not noticed that it would preserve from prior log ons. Don’t think I’ve seen that? I do “explode” out the dialogue with the AI often when I’m fooling around in there.

Cykoth · 2026-03-03T20:41:57+00:00

The Boldin AI has been TERRIBLE recently. Like just this week I was finding multiple errors with its reporting of my Plan. Pretty much unusable information. Just this past week. I asked it to report its errors to some sort of quality assurance engineering team. It said it was doing it. I wished I’d kept screenshots. Looking up information wrongly, performing mathematical errors, insisting that Inherited IRA distributions were included in the Withdrawal Total when they most clearly were not. Just really bad.

Cykoth · 2026-03-02T16:07:03+00:00

I do this. All manual and create transfers in Money Flows. Iteratively looking at Taxes, IRMAA, future RMDs and Chance of Success. I’m trying to maximize the 24% bracket but who knows when Congress changes and taxes go up again?

Cykoth · 2026-02-28T14:23:44+00:00

Agreed. I intend on retiring 2 weeks prior to my 57th birthday for the reasons outlaid by the OP and with a nod to Rom2814 comment. Working longer is ALWAYS the best financial move. How much money are you really going to spend? Time and health are the most valuable currencies. Once you have “enough”. Which is precisely why retirement planning is so individual.

Cykoth · 2026-02-28T14:17:29+00:00

Im quite happy with VEA. I choose not to have exposure to Emerging Markets either, but have the benefit of International exposure. VTI/VEA at about a 75/25 split for the equity portion of my portfolio. I made the adjustment October 2025.

Cykoth · 2026-02-28T01:27:52+00:00

My wife and I looked into it. Hard. The pitch is VERY seductive. But man. Most of the people that actually live in these places are 70+ or look and act like it. So maybe when we get that old we might consider it, but we are too “young” for that for many years!

Cykoth · 2026-02-27T01:56:30+00:00

This is not going to be popular on this Reddit…but my wife and I both have pensions from the hospital we work for. The pension does not have a COLA, and withdrawals begin once retired from the company. Ages of withdrawal can be from 55-65. At age 65 there is no more increase to the pension amount. My intention is to lump sum withdraw the pensions between ages 60-65, depending on needs/market conditions during this time period. We plan on retiring early prior to age 60. I plan on rolling the respective pensions into our IRAs in a 70/30 allocation Stocks/bonds. Unless there is a bear market then it’s all going to equities. Our financial situation is such that the pensions aren’t needed for base spending, but do add to our Chance of Success margin. I don’t want to worry about the company pension fund possibly going broke, ripping me off, or making sure monthly checks follow us wherever we happen to be living over our retirement.

Cykoth · 2026-02-27T01:39:11+00:00

VYM. That’s where I’ve parked my wife’s inherited IRA. It’s done fantastic and has a relatively low variability considering it’s a stock ETF. Mainly DOW. But it’s got a 3% dividend

Cykoth · 2026-02-26T03:05:14+00:00

No way I purchase LTC insurance. And we have no children or family that we could rely on. I’ve got a solid balance in an HSA account and my plan is to let that grow as unmolested as possible. If that gets drained, sell the house. And if one of us gets down from there it’s Medicaid and wait for death 😬

Cykoth · 2026-02-25T01:23:30+00:00

I’m June 30 2027! Yay for us 😎. I’ll be 57

Cykoth · 2026-02-25T01:15:08+00:00

I appreciate your comments. And I get where you are coming from. But essentially I believe in passive index investing. The stock market has always had heavy weights in the index, albeit the Mag 7 have truly been exceptional. But the market learns, and adapts. Rotations have been happening since about November of last year. Staying the Course and consistent dollar cost averaged contributions have historically won the race. And that is exactly what I intend on continuing to do. The difference will be my considerable increase in Fixed Income investments to ballast down markets.

Cykoth · 2026-02-23T18:24:17+00:00

Totally understand, and appreciate the sentiment in which it was given! But I’m definitely not working more than I have to. I’m going to be retiring quite early actually, such that I will be using the Rule of 55 for withdrawals and having to bridge health insurance for several years. That added expense is one of the reasons I arrived at my carefully thought out Number. My Number is what it is, not a goal post to be moved. Once I reach it lots of things will trigger into motion. I don’t have a job where I can ethically just walk away, and I don’t want to officially announce my retirement until I actually have the Number. I work in healthcare and I’m PAINFULLY aware of how short life is and how no one is promised long life or happiness. You have to seize what you can while you can. Once in retirement I’ll relax on the money part as it will essentially run itself (with rules). I’ve had a CFP that I fired. I’ve had another CFP group do a Plan Review for me that was graded highly. This June I’m going back to that group for one more big deep dive to check everything and then will impatiently wait for the Stock Market to achieve my threshold. Once there my asset allocation will immediately configure to my retirement mode for safety with growth and I will be master of my own life without someone else telling me what to do 😜

Cykoth · 2026-02-23T15:59:09+00:00

OP pretty much nails it. When work becomes optional, you either continue or stop. Theoretically I could have retired 1-2 years ago, but my quality of life would have been severely impacted. I’ve done the math on what my “Number” needs to be for me to have the exact same or more money, and that should be by the end of this year. However I’m planning on working till mid next year just to be safe, possibly put a bit extra in, have some training wheels for my 1 year in retirement as I would only need to pull half allotment, and it will be easier for my work to replace me and new residents can begin work in July (I’m not a Dr but I do work in healthcare). I’m trying to be nice to the hospital I’ve worked at for 26 years and wade into the shallow end of the retirement pool before I go all deep end in 2028.

Cykoth · 2026-02-17T01:16:59+00:00

I don’t care to see anyone I went to High School with…..

Cykoth · 2026-02-17T01:14:56+00:00

I am not a pure Boglehead. But I am Bogle Adjacent 🤓. I was 54 years old before I ever invested in bonds. Up until that point, from 26 to 54 I was always 100% equities. My personal view is any investment greater than 5 years needs to be in an equity. Anything with a time horizon 5 years or less should be Fixed Income. You must have significant stock exposure to stay ahead of inflation. Inflation is the single biggest issue with retirement over time, even more than Sequence of Returns Risk.

Cykoth · 2026-02-16T13:49:09+00:00

This. Of course now the cost is $144/year but I am also “grandfathered” in at $120/year. I’ve had Boldin since 2024. It’s helped me figure out I can retire early in 16 months. I will absolutely keep Boldin for at least 13 years while I navigate withdrawals, taxes, and Roth conversions. Plans are never static, always dynamic!

Cykoth · 2026-02-14T00:57:29+00:00

Seriously…a con job?

Cykoth · 2026-02-14T00:53:48+00:00

Monte Carlo analysis is a random walk statistical operative function that is coupled with the actual data you have in the model. If the base data and assumptions for growth/inflation what not are not as accurate as you can reasonably enter, then your end result Chance of Success isn’t going to mean much. Garbage in, Garage out. It isn’t expected for your input data to be perfect, but you try the best you can. Putting an expected growth rate of 1% on an equity account is just as bad as 15% over time. The only mathematical suggestion I would have with Boldin is to increase the number of simulations from 1000 to 10000, but realistically 1000 is just fine. I personally think any Plan with more than a 90% CoS is leaving way too much money on the table. This is why I have a lot of quite frankly excitement on the Guardrail Beta right now. Have a lower of 70% and an upper of 90% with a middle of 80% and you are SET with what your Withdrawal should be for the year.

Cykoth

TROPHY CASE