Hello everyone. We will be RE in about a month’s time, in our 40s (just shy of 50 in my case). We will be setting up home in Canada, with 2 young children.
We have estimated our annual expenses will be around CAN$100,000, and this is being quite lavish by our standards in terms of vacations, and also throwing in conservative estimates to replace and maintain the home, vehicles and appliances, as time goes by.
If I use the ‘safe withdrawal’ rate of 4% this would suggest we should have a nest egg of around CAN$2,500,000. In actual fact we will probably have closer to $3M, after buying a house and a car.
However, my wife is very conservative by nature and is still having doubts that this money will be enough. To my mind we could make $3M last the rest of our lives if we had to, even without making a penny of interest.
Right now there is bad news every day from investment markets and she tends to focus on that. We have lost US$50k ‘on paper’ in the past couple of weeks for example. I keep reminding her that in the long term markets have always recovered but right now she is quite anxious and I wonder if anyone else is going through this kind of issue right now, either themselves, or their spouse?
Any advice for me to help calm her down? Or for that matter, does anyone agree with her and want to tell me I am being too cavalier about money?