Personal Investments • Living off your brokerage account for 5-10 years

DW are in our late 40’s. We’ve had strong earnings, and saved & invested with purpose to be financially independent by age 50. At this time, I don’t see a lot of scenarios short of global catastrophe where we are working past age 55, let alone making it to age 59.5. Instead, it feels like thoughts of ‘OMY’ will start dancing in our heads once we hit 50. I can see scenarios where I am not working at my current employer within 12-24 months if certain restructuring & offshoring decisions occur.

Total portfolio is close to $4.2M. AA is 75% equities / 25% fixed income. Equities are globally diversified 70% US / 30% INTL. This includes nearly $300K in 529 accounts for 2 kids. We’ve been able to max out all retirement accounts, invest $14K per year into 529’s, and still have enough left over to invest on average >$150K per year over the past 3-years into our brokerage account.

Our brokerage account has grown to $1.2M, all in VTSAX. We also hold $120K in I-Bonds at TreasuryDirect. Tax deferred 401Ks hold all of our international stock & bond funds.

How should I be thinking about future investments in our brokerage account over the next few years? KISS and just keep pouring it on into VTSAX? Add international equities to offset eventual swoon in US Stocks? More safe assets (Munis / Treasuries / TIPS / FDIC)?

I ask these questions because I’ve heard some CFPs advise on having 5-years of safe assets in taxable to weather poor market returns in equities (up to 2x the typical length of market swoons of 2.0-2.5 years) when relying on the brokerage account during early retirement. I know full well that we can rebalance our asset allocation in our tax deferred accounts to offset sales in taxable brokerage account.

Appreciate your thoughts.

Statistics: Posted by Cah — Sat Oct 05, 2024 8:20 pm — Replies 10 — Views 1034