Hiking in Norway
2018 was our 6th full year of early retirement and world travel. It is nice, I highly recommend it.
It was also a year of many firsts – first visit to the Baltic countries, first time to pay rent in 2 places at once, first time traveling around a school calendar, and… the first year without expense tracking.
This week, a fairly common question from the inbox:
Hey Jeremy, thanks for the great blog! I’ve read all of your stuff. Like you, I’ve put a lot of our retirement portfolio into VTI / VTSAX. VTI pays about 2% which is only half of what the 4% rule allows us to spend. How can I live off just dividends? What about the other 2%?
The answer is simple: don’t live off just dividends.
There are a lot of great comments on this site and on the forum. Here is one of them that deserves a longer response:
“Hey GCC, thanks for sharing your tax returns each year. How do you decide in a given year whether to do a Roth IRA conversion, harvest capital gains, or both? How do you prioritize?’
It is all a function of other income, long-term tax minimization progress, and short term spending needs.
I sometimes hear from respected members of the Go Curry Cracker Community that traveling internationally can be a daunting prospect.
“I wish I was as confident as you guys, to go off into the great unknown and have grand adventures! I’m too worried that I’ll make a big mistake.” – nice person from a GCC meetup
Mistakes? Oh yeah, those definitely happen. Let me tell you – I am an expert at making travel mistakes.
