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"...Each received $2,000 at the beginning of every year for the 20 years ending in 2022 and left the money in the stock market..." All of the experiment "parti

"...Each received $2,000 at the beginning of every year for the 20 years ending in 2022 and left the money in the stock market..." All of the experiment "participants" must have Lucky in their middle names. They managed to keep their jobs over those 20 years and kept their cool at the economy downturns. They only Buy (the index shares), except for the one that keeps "cash" aka money market shares. I guess they plan on doing this beyond the 20y, why stop feeding cash into the account, why retire when it can contnue growing? Lucky ones will also retire in upturn. Yet the whole transaction needs the Sell part to realize the gains. Surprisingly, the Schwab experiment did not model this for the "participants". Does one need to "time" the Sells?

throw0101c 3y ago
> Does one need to "time" the Sells? In retirement you need Money more than you need Stocks, so the Sell side of the trade could be someone who is not trying to be clever with trades, but simply needs to pay for their groceries.
TacticalCoder 3y ago
> Yet the whole transaction needs the Sell part to realize the gains. Surprisingly, the Schwab experiment did not model this for the "participants". The FIRE community did model this at great length though. And the example in TFA is just an example: saving $2K a year is basically drinking one or two beers less each day (so I wouldn't look too much into that amount). Most people in the west could save that. At the very least the people at which TFA is aimed could save $2K a year. Try $20K a year: most working people here could save that. Here's a nice "rich, broke or dead" FIRE calculator: https://engaging-data.com/will-money-last-retire-early/ https://engaging-data.com/will-money-last-retire-early/