Fractional retirement year

[GDK]

Hi Jim -- Thanks again for providing such a viable tool. I find myself in a situation where I may need to retire in the middle of a year. It appears you've had this similar question before. And in your response you indicated that it would be really hard to incorporate fractional years and the uncertainty associated with a lot of the input is so large that it may not be justifiable to do so. You recommended to a user to do bounding analysis by assuming first that they retire today and then they retire one year from now to see how much of a difference it would really make. I have done so and indeed the difference is quite substantial from one year to the next at my late stage.

If for example one intended to retire at 61 but may find themselves needing to retire 6 months earlier, I suspect that the FRP retirement age could be set at 61 and investment contribution inputs could be changed to reflect the financial situation 6 months earlier. Do you see any drawbacks to this?

[jimr]

I'm curious how substantial the difference in probability of success between retiring now and retiring in 1 year?

As a rough approximation, I'd guess you could probably split the difference between the 2 probabilities for now vs in 1 year as an estimate for retiring in 6 months.

Another approach would be to adjust the inputs so the plan starts in 6 months instead of today. You'd need to guesstimate the portfolio value in 6 months and then start from there, setting your start age equal to your retirement age.

[GDK]

The difference is about 10%, and it takes me from the 70 to the 80 %s.

Thank you