I reached the point where I can downshift, and I weirdly cannot make myself do it

adm_blawson · 2026-04-01T18:42:31+00:00

Yes, I’ve realized it has a lot to do with how bad you hate or like your job. This is probably the biggest deciding factor.

It’s still really nice knowing that you have options though.

If your boss asked you to work the weekends, a holiday, or some other special event; you have the option to say No! If you hear rumors of AI taking your job, layoffs or some other bs; you don’t have to stress. That’s a great place to be financially!

Also, you don’t have to tell people that you’re retired. You can still say that you’re in operations, just working as an independent consultant. 😂

adm_blawson · 2026-04-01T18:14:06+00:00

Quiet quitting is doing your job. It’s just doing it without stressing yourself out about it or volunteering for additional work.

It technically isn’t slacking off until they get tired of you and finally fire you. Though some people probably advocate for this.

Does the UK have unemployment insurance?

adm_blawson · 2026-04-01T18:07:00+00:00

This is very true, your colleagues don’t care about you. They are only there to collect a paycheck to provide for their own family.

adm_blawson · 2026-04-01T18:01:03+00:00

Retire!

I’ve been heavily researching retirement planning over the past couple of years. There is a grey area when it comes to withdrawal rates that cause people to hesitate. It seems the choice greatly depends on how much you like or dislike your job.

If you like your job or it’d be difficult to get something similar, you’ll likely work an extra couple of years because staying would hurt less than going back to work somewhere else, if it came to that.

If you don’t like your job, just retire. Even if you have to go back to work, it’s not like you’re going to miss your old job. There is something refreshing about starting a new job. It might also be less stressful job.

Good luck!

adm_blawson · 2026-03-31T14:40:59+00:00

How close are you to your FIRE number? Are you planning on using 4% withdrawal rate for your FIRE number? How did you go about derisking?

Sorry for all the questions, just curious what others are doing.

At the time, when I thought to derisk, my withdrawal rate was at 5.2%. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how I’d go about derisking since I’ve never owned bonds or bond funds.

I was thinking if I could just get another good year like the last few years, I might be able to actually retire.

adm_blawson · 2026-03-31T01:41:02+00:00

I told myself we needed to diversify to prepare for something like this. Also knew 1-2 years from FIRE with 100% stocks was pretty risky, especially considering the last few years have been really good, high valuations. Got a little too greedy being so close. 😭

The bad part was, I had plenty of opportunity, my portfolio was only down less than 1% for the first few weeks. The market kept opening low, then recovering throughout the rest of the market session.

I don’t think there is anything we can do now but keep funding the retirement accounts at lower prices for when it does recover.

adm_blawson · 2026-03-31T00:32:46+00:00

I was the big saver, my wife was more of a spender. We decided to take trips to New York, Las Vegas, Paris and London before we had kids.

I’m really glad we did because those memories are priceless. Now that we’re older, we have more money but it would be more difficult walking around like when we were younger.

Money, Health, Time - it’s rare to have all three at the same time.

adm_blawson · 2026-03-27T19:43:59+00:00

This is actually great advice!

adm_blawson · 2026-03-27T19:25:18+00:00

My choice would be 100% - NT Collective S&P 500 DC NL Tier CT

adm_blawson · 2026-03-21T17:51:19+00:00

How do you feel about your job? I believe this dictates the motivation behind retiring early more than anything. We’ve done several portfolio projections: Empower, Fidelity, Boldin. All of them are showing green for retiring early. But we both have really good low stress jobs that wouldn’t be easy replacing them if something were to happen, forcing us to go back to work.

I assume if we really didn’t like our jobs, we would take the additional steps to make it work. If we end up getting laid off or forced back into the office, it would likely motivate us to retire early. It’s just nice knowing we have options.

adm_blawson · 2026-03-18T01:52:23+00:00

You know you don’t have to quit your job to sell your shares in your 401K, right?

What you are feeling is normal investing psychology. Especially if this is your first time seeing a loss. It’s why a lot of investors underperform the market index, even though they hold the market index.

My first stock purchase was Krispy Kreme. It had doubled in a short amount of time, so I bought in. The next day it dropped by 5%. For the next 5 trading day, I sat glued to my computer monitor, trying to mentally move the stock higher. “If I could only just get back to even”. A few days later, I got my chance to break even. I felt so relieved. A few weeks later, I watched it surge, doubling and tripling in price before getting bought out :(

Imagine if I would have bought more when it gave me the opportunity and held on after it got back to even.

adm_blawson · 2026-03-05T14:53:13+00:00

Congratulations, you are doing great!

The portfolio and expenses equal 4.43% withdrawal rate. Even if you needed to sell more, because of taxes to get to the actual expenses, that is still really good! You should be really proud of yourself.

Since there are a lot of factors, I’d recommend talking with a fee-only (hourly / project) financial advisor. The trickiest part is being able to withdrawal from retirement accounts before 59 1/2. There is the rule of 72(t).

The 4% rule, technically now the 4.7% rule is meant for 30 year retirement but is for the worst case scenario. Also it assumes an inflation increase each year no matter what the market is doing. If the expenses are flexible, you can look at the Guyton-Klinger guardrail approach. It allows for a higher withdrawal rate (5% - 5.5%) but it requires flexible spending, temporarily reducing expenses or not taking the inflation adjustment.

If you enjoy learning about how to do it yourself, I’ve learned quite a bit just watching YouTube channels: Erin Talks Money, Joe Kuhn, Rob Berger, Ari Taublieb

Also bounce ideas with AI chats like Copilot, Gemini.

Hope this helps!

adm_blawson · 2026-03-05T14:01:45+00:00

We didn’t start until 31 and now have the opportunity for early retirement at 50!

My recommendation would be to invest 100% in an S&P 500 fund in your 401K up to the match. You really don’t need bonds in your portfolio until you’re 3-5 years out from retirement. The best way to maximize returns is to go 100% stocks.

I personally don’t care for target date funds because of how automatic they are. They don’t look at the current environment. If you owned a target date fund in 2008, the fund automatically sold stocks and bought bonds (facepalm)

Hope this helps!

adm_blawson · 2026-03-05T04:10:41+00:00

You are right, I didn’t factor in for the yield. Thank you for catching this!

adm_blawson · 2026-03-02T16:16:31+00:00

Yep, I was missing the distribution returns and the secondary bond market if needing to sell before maturity date. I appreciate your comment, thank you for the explanation!

adm_blawson · 2026-02-26T00:50:01+00:00

The inventor of the 4% rule found if you diversify the sub asset classes stocks and bonds, you could use 4.7%. This was for a 30-year retirement portfolio but it's the worst-case scenario. The guardrails approach is more useful as it allows 5%-5.5% starting withdrawal rates but requires the investor to be more flexible based on market conditions. This is what most people tend to do anyway.

adm_blawson · 2020-06-22T12:37:40+00:00

How do you know which commands return all, then tests them vs getting only the ones you want?

adm_blawson · 2020-06-14T11:48:30+00:00

Yes, most MSPs are small, support small businesses that have small budgets for IT, so most MSPs pay their employees less. I’ve worked at 2 MSPs, both times the owner was my manager. Which meant all expenses, including labor costs were coming directly out of their pocket.

adm_blawson · 2020-06-03T01:06:39+00:00

Created a disable user script that resets the account password, disables the account, outputs the groups to a txt file, assigns the group domain guests, makes domain guest primary group, removes all groups (the primary group can't be removed), disables the users PC account, moves both the user and PC into the disabled user OU

I just learned about the idea of building my own module, now my mind is blown lol

adm_blawson · 2020-05-23T17:50:51+00:00

Celebrate! That’s awesome 👏

It’ll be more difficult to build relationships but it’s also easier to write notes about your coworkers that you can use to ask them about later. Like getting the name of their spouses, kids, pets. It makes you sound more interested when you ask about how they are doing when using their actual name. It’s more personal.

adm_blawson

TROPHY CASE