But what a start to my retirement, the market is crashing, inflation and interest rates are rising, war has started, and never ending doom seems everywhere - it's very exciting! So what I am doing to meet these unexpected challenges, and believe me I didn't expect any of this!
The answer is very little, not much and pretty much nothing, I don't know what will happen or when and neither does anyone else.
I'm not selling, not trying to reposition my portfolio, not paying much attention to the news and definitely 100% not planning on ever going back to work.
Some decisions I made prior to pulling the trigger have helped and I'm concentrating on enjoying myself and focusing less on the markets, leaving them to do their thing; stress is a killer don't you know
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon_e_wink.gif)
Things that have helped:
1) Having an entire years income upfront, our Income Float; taking a monthly salary from it and replenishing it from dividends as they come in means I have 12 months worth of income at any time and have plenty of time to plan or adjust if necessary.
2) Living off the natural portfolio yield; I would be less certain had I needed to start selling down any of my portfolio, especially with the market being extremely volatile at the moment, that would be scary! Hopefully this will ensure I also miss out on the lovely sequence of returns risk (yes, I know dividends can get cut).
3) Continuing to Invest during the worst part of Covid; this meant that our retirement portfolio valuation increased by 26% over 2020/2021, and dividend income increased by just under 20% over that time.
4) In addition to the Income Float mentioned above, we also have 1 year of spending as an Income Reserve should things go horribly wrong, but hopefully we'll never need to touch that!
5) Safety Margin, I felt very uncomfortable retiring without a decent Safety Margin, at present our essential spending is 45.5% of our monthly budget, with the remainder being discretionary.
6) 20% of our total monthly "salary" is being used to build up reserves further and will shortly be switched over to being reinvested to help boost income for the future.
It could all go horribly wrong of course, but if I wanted to ensure retirement had no risks at all then I would have stayed working for another 20 years, and that was never going to happen.
Anyway, just wanted to give an update that may or may not help anyone thinking of retiring early and who may be concerned about the World we currently find ourselves in; remember you are dead for a very long time, make sure you have some time for fun when you are alive and work is not everything!
Am I right not to worry too much?, who knows but I'm not stupid and know things can get very ugly indeed, but you can't spend your life worrying otherwise what's the point... back to the gin and tonic!
Memento Mori,
Darka