The Retirement Funding Problem—And How Real Estate Solves It

“I saved a million dollars—and all I got was $40,000 a year.”
That’s it a metaphor A t-shirt worn by a retired person.
Actually, it’s worse than that. Average retirement he is old between 65 and 74 he doesn’t have a million dollars saved as a nest egg. They have it $609,230and that’s an average, not a median. You can be sure that the median is very low.
Based on tradition 4% is the rulethe typical retiree takes an annual income of just $24,369 from that nest egg. Don’t hit the party kazoos all at once.
All this means that the traditional model of retirement just it doesn’t work well. To put it bluntly, the math is confusing.
I can do better—you can too.
The Root of the Paper Asset Problem: Flexibility
Over time, stocks work he is beautiful and the asset class. The S&P 500 averages about a 10% annual return during the last century.
But “average” does not mean “stability,” “reliability,” or “predictability.” In some years (and decades), it was done badly, losing huge sums of money.
When Bill Bengen first developed the 4% rule. back in the 1990s, he did it by looking back at stock and bond returns every 30 years in modern history. He honed in on the worst 30 years of that time and calculated how much retirees could withdraw in the first year of retirement without taking out their nest egg in those worst 30-year periods. (There was more to it than that, but you don’t want to read a book on economic theory.)
Important point: He decided that 4% was a safe withdrawal rate based on worst-case scenarios. Retirees who withdraw 4% of their nest egg in the first year of retirement and adjust for inflation each year thereafter have almost no risk of running out of money in a 30-year retirement (assuming historical gains continue to play out).
The Result for Many Retirees: Oversaving
Think about that: Retirees get an average of 10% each year in their stocks but withdraw 4%.
To avoid any risk of bankruptcy, retirees plan for the worst. This means that most of them die with much more money than they do actually the need.
I don’t want to hustle to save up a million dollars just to get just $40,000 for it. I guess you don’t either.
How Real Estate Can Help
In our real estate investment club at SparkRental, we meet and review the different passive investment every month. We aim to earn 10% to 12% interest on our mortgage investments and 15%+ annual returns on our equity investments.
We collect interest in real time every month. The benefits of investing in real estate equity are a combination of income (distribution) and a profit at the end of the sale.
“Yes, but what about the risk of those funds? Doesn’t high return come with high risk?”
That’s not the case. Actually, there is a time for investment funds with high returns and low risk: asymmetric returns. Experienced real estate investors know what I’m talking about.
Ask someone who has turned on 300 homes in danger of their flipping restoration. Actually, I did. The user replied, “Our win rate on flips is between 93%-95%. Sometimes, one misses because you can’t see all the problems. But if you do 70-90 turns a year like we doprofit margins are unavoidable.”
Our Co-Investing Club invested in that company with a note paying 10% interest. The note is backed by a personal guarantee from a multi-millionaire, a corporate guarantee from his company that owns more than 15 million real estate properties, and a first-rate mortgage at less than 50% LTV.
Does that sound like a high-risk investment?
A retiree can live off that 10% income (as part of a diversified portfolioof course). And that changes the retirement equation. Instead of saving $1 million to generate $40,000 in income, you’ll only need to save $400,000.
Avoidance of Recovery Risk Sequences
I the greatest of all the risk from stocks comes from a market crash shortly after retirement. If a crash happens too early in your retirement, you end up selling too many stocks while prices are low, and there isn’t enough left to restore your portfolio even after stocks start to rise again.
Financial experts call this “risk-return sequence:” Crash timing is just as important as your long term average returns.
You can avoid it by easily not to sell shares if the accident occurs before your retirement. That means you need enough to live off of other sources for the first few years of retirement event of bear market.
My Way: Real Estate Now, Late Life Stocks and Inheritance
You get it: Stocks do for great long-term funds, but you can’t predict what they will do in any given year. I can tell you with certainty that my stock investment will have done well 30 years from now, but I couldn’t tell you how it will do in the next three years.
I will feel free sell shares later in my life life to cover my living expenses. And they will make a direct inheritance for my daughter when I kick the bucket. But I also want to build income and wealth that is possible in the short and medium term.
Our Co-Investing Club invests in it a mixture of independent relationshipnotes, debt funds, equity funds, and real estate transactions. Others pay strong immediate income, such as a specified note. We recently invested in a real estate exchange fund that pays 16% annual income.
The majority of syndromes pay a steady distribution per quarter, with cash refund between 4%-8%. Some will sell to take out our profits in the next few years; others will refinance to return our initial investment while continuing to pay us distributions. A few growth-oriented mutual funds do not pay distributions for the first year or two.
I the end result: I don’t worry about “safe withdrawal rates” or the 4% rule. I’m getting higher returns than that now, in real time.
And “now,” that includes the volatile market in which we live at this time. The past two years have been bearish for many real estate investors—and we’re doing just fine. Think about how you can do in the decent market.
Strategy: Low Risk Avoidance
If we look In investing together as a group, we strive to take risks.
There is no shortage of real estate investments that promise 15%+ returns. But others of them they come with high risk, while others have low or moderate risk.
If you want to build a portfolio you can live off of, go for it additional risk protection. From there, your retirement planning opens up in a way that people following the 4% rule would envy.
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