A few weeks ago I wrote a post on increasing your level of happiness and how achieving financial independence might just be the greatest source of happiness. Not because money makes you happy but because it can buy you the freedom from things that irritate you like work and its related stresses, commutes, financial stress, etc. In this post I’m going to breakdown in very simple form how you can reach that financial independence.
Everything starts with your lifestyle (i.e. how much you want to spend each year). All that you need to do in order to retire is to accumulate enough sources of passive income to match the amount of money you spend. A financial asset is defined as something that generates an income – like a bond that pays interest, a rental property that generates rental income and stocks that pay dividends. So, the goal is to accumulate financial assets through saving and investing. This leads us to what is typically the most common question I hear regarding retirement – how much (savings/portfolio) is enough?
Again, the answer is based on how much you spend because we need to generate an equivalent amount of income. To be conservative, a general rule of thumb for a traditional investment portfolio of stocks, bonds, etc. is to remember a 4% distribution rate. This means that if you only withdraw 4% of your portfolio value each year your money should last forever. This is the simple concept of live off of the income and never touch the principal. 4% is 1/25 so we can flip this and say that you need to accumulate assets that are 25x your annual spending, adjusted for taxes. Now, there are ways to boost this so I generally use a 5% distribution rate as a rule of thumb when planning for my clients, which equates to 20x withdrawal needs. Once you reach this point, you have “won the game” and things like growth and volatility no longer matter. (I will use a 5% distribution rate for examples in this post (20x spending)).
If you have other sources of income like a pension, annuity or social security income, then you can factor that in and only need to make up the difference with your investment portfolio. Or maybe you like to stay active so you’re going to work at the local (insert favorite activity here) 2 days a week to make an extra $8k or $10k a year. For younger people, pensions aren’t as common anymore and who knows what Social Security will be like down the road so if you do not want to count on these then there’s a greater reliance on building your personal portfolio.
A Simple Example of Mr & Mrs Jones
Let’s say a couple has paid off all of their debts (no mortgage, etc.) so they’re spending is comprised of required expenses like healthcare, food, insurance and utilities, plus all discretionary spending like shopping, entertainment and travel. Let’s say their total spending averages $5,000 per month ($60,000 per year). To some people this lifestyle might seem impossible to live on and they would require double that amount or more. To others, they might say “yeah, I live a simple lifestyle and I actually spend less than that.” Again, it all comes down to the lifestyle you want to live. The more you want to spend, the more you need to save.
Mr. and Mrs. Jones have $30,000 per year of Social Security Income after taxes which means they need another $30,000 per year of after-tax passive income from their investment assets. Let’s use an average tax rate of 20% (blending 15% rate on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends with 25% average ordinary income tax rate on IRA withdrawals) to say that we need $37,500 of taxable passive income from our assets. At 20x, their magic number of retirement happiness is $750,000. And this number applies at any age – even 30 or 40!
How so you ask? Perhaps the two biggest risks in retirement are inflation (a rising cost of living) and something that is called sequence of returns risk, which simply means that the order of returns (i.e. when bad years hit) matters when you’re taking distributions from a portfolio. The easiest way to eliminate both of these risks is to invest your portfolio in assets that do well over time with inflation. Two of the best historically have been real estate and stocks. While more volatile, they tend increase in value overtime with inflation. They also tend to increase the amount of income they pay each year giving you an automatic boost to your annual income which you can think of as a built-in inflation adjustment.
For stocks, a very common investment strategy for retirees is called dividend growth investing. This simply means focusing your investments on quality companies that payout a decent portion of profits each year as dividends and, more importantly, have the ability to increase that payout over time. Many companies boost their dividend at a rate of 6% or 8% per year – some higher! So we have our automatic inflation adjustment built-in which blows away bonds that pay fixed income. If we’re able to generate enough income (yield) from the investments then we theoretically never have to touch the principal and thus we have eliminated sequence of returns risk because we will never be forced to sell at a low price. This is actually an interesting dynamic that once you cross the threshold of your magic number (20x your annual distribution needs) that you can become more aggressive by having your entire portfolio in assets that tend to boost payouts like stocks and real estate.
Volatility? Ups and downs in the stock market? Who cares!? You don’t need anything more than the amount of income that they generate. Regardless of whether a price goes up or down, the company still pays you the same dividend. And next year that dividend income will be even higher. And the year after, higher again. Plus, given enough time, the price of the stock should trend higher in value.
What About Large Unexpected Expenses?
What about big expenses that aren’t part of your normal monthly budget, you ask? That’s where planning and insurance come in. For any bigger ticket expenses that you can plan for, like a new car or a big vacation, it’s best to know well in advance. The earlier the better. That way you can choose when to sell something (presumably at a nice gain). Since all of your stocks are owned for the dividend income, any price gains are extra which can be used for these bigger expenses.
Unknown expenses should also be accounted for in your lifestyle spending. I always work in a spending category that I call “Other” for all of the random things that pop up every year. And for any really large expenses from accidents, medical bills, a tree falls on your house, etc., that’s what insurance is for. You don’t need to go crazy with insurance, trying to cover every risk out there because it’s easy to be over-insured but you’ll sleep well at night knowing these random risks will be covered after a deductible is met. The type and amount of each insurance coverage is something that should be reviewed as part of your overall planning to determine the right structure while taking into consideration your ability to self-insure with assets/income.
How Long Does it Take to get There?
Here is a simple table to illustrate when you will reach your magic retirement number based on your savings rate, assuming:
- An average annual rate of return of 7% (which is very conservative by historical standards considering that US large cap stocks have averaged about 10% per year)
- Average tax rate of 20% on investment income (withdrawals)
- Maintaining the same standard of living
- Starting from $0
- Assuming full reliance on your investment portfolio for retirement income.
Earning a higher average rate of return, having any additional sources of income and reducing your spending in retirement will accelerate the timetable.
I think the biggest mistake that a lot of people make is that they adjust their lifestyle upwards over time as their income rises. When someone gets a $10,000 dollar raise at work they tend to think that they now have all this extra money that they can spend instead of viewing it as extra money they can save to accelerate the point at which they can retire. It’s totally fine to celebrate something like a raise and to reward yourself for hard work. I just think it’s important to understand that spending today delays spending tomorrow (especially if it’s an annually recurring expense like a new car payment) and by adjusting your lifestyle higher, you’ve just increased your required portfolio size by 20x today’s increase in spending! Also, people find it very hard to cut back after they’ve become accustomed to a certain type of lifestyle so it’s probably best not to fall into the trap in the first place. I know there is a fine line between saving every penny and enjoying life today, but this should help you make more conscious decisions about spending money so you don’t foolishly waste it on things that aren’t necessary and won’t increase your happiness.
How to Make a 5% Withdrawal Rate Work
I love investing in stocks for two reasons:
- The owners of a company make the most money and being a shareholder of a publicly traded company means you get to share in profits for doing absolutely no work. You just sit back and let the dividends roll in! And, as discussed above, that income isn’t fixed. You get a raise almost every year as the company increases the dividend.
- A stock is a financial asset (again, defined as something that generates an income) in another sense. Any investor can use their shares of stock as collateral to sell covered call options which allows you to generate additional income. It’s like creating an extra dividend.
Here is an actual example of a stock I recently purchased for clients with the focus on generating income:
In February, we purchased Tupperware brands (TUP) at $60.50. TUP currently pays an annual dividend of $2.72 per share, equivalent to a 4.5% dividend yield. Each call option represents 100 shares of stock so for all clients that have at least 100 shares I also sold a July call option with a strike price of $70 for 75 cents per share (or $75 for every 100 shares). $75 on an investment of $6,050 is another 1.25% so my total yield for the year is already 5.75% (4.5% dividend + 1.25% of extra income from selling the call option). By selling a call option with a strike price of $70 I give up any potential upside above 70 between now and July. But that would be a 15% gain in 5 months. At a 5% distribution rate, that’s 3 years worth of income! Either way we win. But what if the stock drops to say $48 per share (a 20% drop)? Oh well, we don’t have to sell it because it generates enough income we need and at that price it would now have a 5.67% yield which might be more attractive than another investment we’re holding that we could sell and reinvest in Tupperware. Once you have your income covered, price volatility literally does not matter. At that point it’s actually your friend because it can create opportunities to either sell at a really high price and lock in fantastic gains or give you the chance to switch money into more attractive investments with higher yields.
What ultimately matters is the price you pay when you make the investment, meaning the yield that you lock in at purchase. It doesn’t matter what valuation metrics you look at, whether that is a dividend yield, earnings yield, free cash flow yield, etc. If you buy stock in a company with a 3% dividend yield and they increase the dividend by 6% every year (which is conservative for what we’re seeing today), you’ll be receiving 33% more in dividend income after 5 years which makes your yield-on-cost now 4%. Here are the numbers to illustrate:
- $10,000 investment
- 3% dividend yield = $300 of annual income today
- 6% annual increase after 5 years equals just over $400 dollars of annual income (4% on initial $10,000 investment) and if the stock tends to maintain a 3% dividend yield, then the price will have increased by the same 33% to maintain the yield. So your investment value is up 33% but your earning a 4% yield on your initial investment (3% yield on current value). If you hold stocks like this long enough, you can have investments yielding 8% or 10% per year on initial cost! So if you can find quality companies with stable businesses (cash flow) that tend to increase their dividend payments over time, you will make very good money over time. As long as the company is stable/growing, you don’t ever have to sell and fluctuations in the price do not matter!
Every investment should be viewed as buying income. How much income will you receive and what does it cost you? Even stocks that don’t pay a dividend can be viewed in this light since a stock is simply a claim on all future profits that the company makes. Whether they’re paying out some of those profits as a dividend or not is irrelevant. Investing is 100% about yield – the current yield today as well as future expected yields from growth of the underlying business.
After years of focusing on accumulating and growing their portfolio, I’ve noticed that most people have a hard time transitioning their mindset from “Growth” to “Income/Yield.” That is, changing their focus from wanting to see their portfolio rise in value to a focus on how much income their assets can generate. It’s not about wanting “stocks to go up,” as I so often hear. High stock prices equal low yields. In fact, for a retirement income focused investor, you want prices to remain low forever so you have a whole slew of high yielding investment options from which to choose.
Other Ways to Accelerate Retirement
Needing 20 times your annual spending is based on a 5% distribution rate. What if you can accumulate assets with higher yields, like rental properties? It’s not uncommon to find rental properties that yield 8% to 10% or higher! Even if you can accumulate a bunch of properties within 8% yield then you only need 12.5 times your income needs.
We also assumed an average tax rate of 20% on your passive income/investments. But saving in a Roth IRA or Roth 401(k) offers tax deferred growth and tax-free withdrawals after age 59 1/2. So having a combination of taxable money and tax-free Roth money also lowers our magic retirement number.
Is it Possible to Retire with a Portfolio of Less Than 20x Income Needs?
Of course. For a more traditional investment portfolio, 20x income is the amount needed to sustain your lifestyle while ensuring you won’t run out of money. For anyone closer to retirement that doesn’t think it’s possible to get to that point, you can still retire with less but understand that you will run the risk of drawing down your portfolio by withdrawing more than 5% per year. At that point, you need gains to make up the difference where the yield falls short and gains are certainly not guaranteed each and every year in the markets. It’s still possible to retire comfortably but things needs to be tracked closely and the way you manage your investment portfolio changes. I typically recommend to my clients that they vary their spending year to year based on portfolio performance to avoid the risk of pulling too much after a short-term drop from the markets.
Implementation
When working with my clients, we don’t just completely flip an entire portfolio into higher yielding investments like REITs and dividend paying stocks once the value passes the 20x annual spending mark. It’s a transitional process that often takes a few years, with the actual length of time determined by what the stock market gives us. For example, in today’s market yields are very low and since the price you pay at time of purchase determines everything, I would not flip an entire portfolio to lock in a bunch of low yields. It’s more about finding individual opportunities as they arise over time to lock them in one by one (as in the case of Tupperware above). And if we’re transitioning from having a good chunk of “Growth” investments in the portfolio, I’ll look to sell each one when we have a nice gain and then flip that chunk of money over to the “Income” side of the portfolio with the goal of eventually transitioning most of the portfolio by the time we need to start drawing income. After the portfolio has been transitioned, it’s simply an ongoing process of evaluating current investments against other potential options in terms of their yield today as well as future expected yields (i.e. the company’s ability to raise the income payout over time).
So there you have it! That’s what it takes to achieve the happiness of financial independence. When you get there is totally up to you. It’s not rocket science, just the right mindset toward investing with a simple focus on saving early and often and living within your means. Good luck and thanks for following!
-Nick
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Great Blog. Great Info. Thanks Nick.