. Since both my tax refunds arrived in my non-interest bearing checking account today, I decided to double my principal-only payment on the car loan to $500.
I came across an interesting different way to determine your spending in retirement if your goal is to die with zero (or as close to zero as possible). It's super simple. At the start of each year, you take your current portfolio balance and divide by your remaining life expectancy based on life expectancy tables.
Say you have $1 million at age 65. Using this strategy, you'd have 22.9 years left so you would spend $44,668 that year. The next year, you'd again take your current portfolio balance and divide it by your gradually declining life expectancy. Assuming the stock market was more or less stable, what ends up happening is that you get to spend more and more money the older you get (life expectancy dwindles), and that seems contrary to what most people want to do: spend more in their younger "go go" years and wind down as they get older.
Most retirement income strategies like the 4% rule are designed to ensure you never run out of money, and in fact for many people, they end up with a bigger balance than when they first retired. But they're dead. So for those for whom leaving massive amounts of money to heirs is not that important, this strategy is designed to maximize your spending while you're alive without running out before you die.
Here's a 16-minute video on it if your'e interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OosIaxPC9Ak
Because your withdrawals in any given year are based on your actual portfolio value at the start of the year, stock market fluctuations may cause your withdrawal amounts to fluctuate, of course, but when you factor in Social Security income, well, they tend to smooth out any differences in withdrawal rates from one year to the next.
So using this formula and my own portfolio value, I could withdraw this year $56,454, but add to that an additional $12,500 of annuity income so my annual income this year could be about $69,000, not including about $5k in dividends and cap gains I usually have from some taxable mutual funds. Which is pretty close to what I'm withdrawing now under my somewhat loosened but still stay-in-the-12%-tax-bracket strategy I'm using.
However, since my 93 year old father is still living, I've been using age 95 as my longevity age, so that would mean another 29 years, so my annual withdrawals this year using this formula would be $42,827 + my annuity = $55,327. It doesn't matter; I'm going to stick to my current strategy for the next few years.
Sometimes as a caretaker to my father, I get kind of wrapped up with staying on top of more practical things like medical appointments and spend less quality time on supporting my father from an emotional and mental point of view. Yesterday I was thinking about that, so I swung by his place unannounced with an order of Chinese food, which we both enjoy from time to time.
We had an extended visit that I know he enjoyed, and I was in the right frame of mind to not feel rushed or pressed for time, and just let him talk about whatever topics popped into his head. The day before, I'd gotten a call (which I missed) from the service that responds when he presses a button around his neck. It's supposed to be for any medical emergencies and when he pushes that button, the service will automatically call my sister, then me, then my brother. The reason why my father pushed the button is because my sister was supposed to bring him his dinner at a certain time, and a fair amount of time had passed and she hadn't shown up. He was worried she had some sort of weather-related accident, so he asked the responder on the phone to call 911, although he didn't know where my sister was anyway.
My sister was fine but got mad at him for doing that and now isn't talking to him. Clearly my sister has a problem expressing herself when anger is involved. When I texted her from where I live and asked her if dad was ok, she responded some time later by texting "Yes." No further explanation. Things are so strained between us that I didn't try to get more information from her, I just resolved to go see my father the next day.
February 12th, 2026 at 12:34 am 1770856474
I wonder what's your sister's issue, but I am glad you are getting more time with your father.
February 15th, 2026 at 02:06 am 1771121167
February 16th, 2026 at 03:41 pm 1771256469