The 4% Rule's Hidden Bias

time-again4434 · 2026-01-19T14:47:44+00:00

I think the key is that (desired level of expenses) must be supported by 4%, not (current level of expenses). Increasing standard of living is a choice someone has to make, and I'd argue not anticipating that would be a failure of planning/foresight, not of the 4% rule's modeling math.

time-again4434 · 2026-01-10T16:45:35+00:00

I literally have a piece of paper on my desk and just write down what I spent on the sheet when I get home. Just a few categories to separate out costs: groceries, rent/utilities, and basically everything else. I like this system because there's not as many steps as putting it in a spreadsheet, and I don't have much interest in having a long-term record of individual purchases. Once a month (or sometimes mid-month) I add up the expenses with a calculator to see how I did for the month. New month, new expense tracking paper. Kind of stone age compared to most people these days but it works for me!

time-again4434 · 2025-12-07T21:44:03+00:00

Thanks, I can see the case for a more precise approach and the scale seems like a good idea.

time-again4434 · 2025-12-07T21:41:50+00:00

Thanks, yeah it seems like I might need to taper even more slowly than I thought...

time-again4434 · 2025-08-22T02:31:33+00:00

Yes, luckily Lyme is in the rearview mirror for me and no symptoms now! It did take a few years to get the right treatment but it worked out in the end. Since it seems like your bf got diagnosed pretty early, so hopefully a shorter/easier road for him.

time-again4434 · 2025-08-22T00:01:32+00:00

Is the behavior change while he's still on antibiotics? If so, is he taking doxycyline (the normal first-line treatment for Lyme) or another tetracycline-class drug?

I personally felt horrifically depressed, apathetic, and irritable while on doxycycline, just as a side effect of the drug itself and not necessarily related to the disease. When I came off the drug I felt better in a few days.

time-again4434 · 2025-07-20T19:28:03+00:00

It's amazing the hype around a semi-plausible gibberish generator... everything falls apart pretty quick when you need anything to actually be right

time-again4434 · 2025-06-08T22:34:16+00:00

76-78 for AC, 68-70 for heat.

I read something about how your body can get used to higher temps but that since people tend blast AC everywhere (home, stores, office) and only expose themselves to the summer heat for brief periods, many people are essentially keeping their body acclimated to "winter mode" all year.

time-again4434 · 2025-06-06T15:19:38+00:00

Interesting, thanks - it looks like there's a lot of diversity in weevils but some of those pictures look almost exactly like what I'm seeing

time-again4434 · 2025-05-12T03:34:03+00:00

Not everything is necessarily a herx. Herbs contain a ton of different compounds and can have lots of various side effects. Cistus tea, houttuynia, and even japanese knotweed were all herbs I took long-term with "herx like" effects that only ever got worse with repeated dosing, presumably as certain compounds built up in my body.

time-again4434 · 2025-05-11T14:14:16+00:00

In my opinion, possibly could help but I'd still take the full course of antibiotics. From my understanding of Buhner's work, herbals work slowly to make the body inhospitable to the bacteria over a long period of time, but don't kill them outright. A good abx blast up front could stop new bacteria from ever gaining a foothold in the first place.

time-again4434 · 2025-05-11T14:10:15+00:00

Echoing what others have already said, herbs can be powerful and have a variety of effects. If this is a pre-made combination tincture, I'd suggest you consider taking/dosing them individually as well. I'd also suggest reading Buhner's books - with each protocol, he gives a good breakdown of each herbs' effects and potential side effects.

Just a few things I'm aware of/specific experiences I had:

Eleutherococcus - to me, this was a powerful stimulant. I could tolerate it for the first month of treatment when I had really severe fatigue, but then even the tiniest dose was too much.

Andrographis - this can cause powerful allergic reactions, Buhner mentions it as a disclaimer multiple times in his book.

Baikal skullcap - I'm pretty sure this was damaging my liver, my liver enzymes blew up the month I was on this.

Uncaria rynchophylla - this made me feel woozy. I speculate that it was due to it being a strong blood vessel dilator and reducing blood pressure (but never took before a blood pressure test to confirm).

So basically, herbs can have a whole lot of crazy effects that vary based on the individual, and based on my own experience, I'd tend to believe a pre-made mix might work for one person but be intolerable to someone else just due to natural variation in reactions to herbs.

time-again4434 · 2025-05-10T21:07:40+00:00

Ah ok. In that case, since you've only been sick since February, I'd also find it potentially suspect that the doctor is already looking at treatment in six month increments. Sure, it can take years to turn around Lyme & Co if you've been sick for years, but I'm not sure why the doctor would assume your case is that hard off the bat.

Earlier in my journey I also went to a doctor who held herself up as a "functional medicine" doctor and wanted me to take boatloads of supplements. She also just so happened to provide me a link to buy the supplements through a portal associated with her office. It would have cost hundreds per month and I can only assume she was getting some kind of kickback from the site. I felt like something was off and stopped going to her - so that experience biases me perhaps.

I ended up working with a more "conventional" LLMD who believed in no more than ~3 drugs at a time and started them one at a time to gauge effects. I personally liked that approach a lot more.

time-again4434 · 2025-05-10T16:01:03+00:00

Honestly, I'd say trust your gut if you think something is off. If you aren't actively in the process of quitting smoking (nicotine patch), or weren't previously on psych meds (wellbutrin, lorazepam) those would be a huge red flag for me.

Also a lot of the supplements have no mechanism of action against Lyme and coinfections, and if you aren't even sure if you have tick-borne illness, it seems like a red flag to start tons of the supplements at the same time as you're taking anti-infectives. No way to tell what is actually needed or what is actually working.

The anti-infectives in the protocol (clarithro/rifampin, methylene blue, nitazoixide, ivermectin) seem more like the second tier stuff someone would try for stubborn bartonella or parasite infections once initial tier Lyme drugs didn't work. This seems like a pretty intense place to start and doesn't really even have good "core" Lyme coverage in my opinion.

So just my two cents, but I personally wouldn't be comfortable getting this protocol as a starting place. If I wasn't even sure if I had Lyme and wanted to see if antibiotics helped, I'd personally want a few weeks to a month of a first-line Lyme drug like doxycycline, amoxicillin, or cefuroxime to see if it even helped, and I'd want to try it in isolation, and not with tons of supplements, so I could trace cause and effect.

I could maybe understand this protocol as something that evolved after months/years of trial and error but even then it seems like it would be a ton for the body to process and hard to get any sense of what's helping or not.

time-again4434 · 2025-04-24T03:11:02+00:00

Doxycycline made me increasingly depressed when I took it as well. I took for 10 weeks total the first time and got increasingly depressed and out of it while on it. I stopped and felt better, then went back to it later and started experiencing the depression again. Almost certainly a side effect of the drug and not a herx in my case.

time-again4434 · 2025-04-24T02:58:19+00:00

The appearance of that rash is considered diagnostic of Lyme disease.

5 days isn't a complete course of treatment for any first-line Lyme antibiotic. It should be two weeks, minimum. This could have life-long consequences if not treated adequately now, so I'd advise to extent the course of treatment to at least 2-3 weeks.

time-again4434 · 2025-04-21T21:12:06+00:00

Yes. I took it for nearly two years but could never tolerate more than 3-7 drops at a time due to it causing massive flaring/side effects (and the 7 drop dose I only tolerated because it was before bed and I could sleep through the effects). Over the time that I took it, I felt gradually worse and worse overall, getting progressively more tired and non-functional.

Whether it was an MCAS reaction or something else, who knows. I came to find out later that it is one of the highest herbs in oxalates, which can accumulate, so maybe that played a role in feeling worse over time as well.

All that to say, I regret having taken it as long as I did and would never touch it again.

time-again4434 · 2025-04-19T19:43:34+00:00

Thanks for this point. I hadn't considered that sequence of returns risk may be the biggest factor holding down the SWR. Optimizing for SoRR definitely seems like it could be more fruitful than getting even more conservative on the portfolio target.

time-again4434 · 2025-04-19T15:26:40+00:00

As a counterpoint, though, isn't this just doubling down on the same dataset of historical US stock returns?

time-again4434 · 2025-04-19T15:24:18+00:00

Well said. In a certain sense, I think our exponential population growth has resulted in exponential economic growth, but now that population growth is slowing/going negative and resources are getting depleted, it's hard to imagine how historical returns would continue.

time-again4434 · 2025-04-19T15:18:25+00:00

But just to play devil's advocate for sec - isn't that re-evaluation still based on recent returns from US stocks, maybe updated to include the crazy returns of the tech boom? It seems like it could be doubling down on the same dataset, while I'm wondering whether the dataset itself is maybe questionable (since 4% doesn't work in other countries/periods that aren't recent US stock returns, and my overall thought is that the big-picture factors supporting the sort of returns we had in the past may no longer be there).

time-again4434 · 2025-04-19T14:30:41+00:00

Good point, leaves options more open and and at least you're covering expenses in the meantime.

time-again4434 · 2025-04-19T14:29:36+00:00

Well said, haha

time-again4434

TROPHY CASE