I recently FIREd, and am enjoying every minute of it. I thank this (migrated?) community for their stories, struggles, successes, and wisdom. Adaptation to a life of FIRE has been pretty easy, except for one thing. Prior to FIREing, I kept a close eye on my portfolio, the markets, and everything financial. As you know, if you’re driven to FIRE, it takes a bit of effort to keep things fresh in your portfolio. To some, managing your own portfolio can be a hobby, or other form of enjoyment. Not me. I get no joy in monitoring the markets. I would now prefer to focus on living and not financial management. Question: do you have any suggestions on the best way to put a portfolio on autopilot? What I’m seeking is something bot-like that monitors my holdings, applies a variety of policies, and alerts me when action is needed. Some factors:
- I’ve looked at managed account options. They all seem to be pricy offering little in return. This option seems viable to those with > $10M.
- I’m reluctant to go with “target” funds. They don’t seem to be very efficient, and are not at all tunable.
- There seem to be some promising software packages out there that go beyond mere monitoring.
- I don’t think ChatGPT is quite ready for this task :).
I mean, if you’ve been FIRE’d a few years, you’ve lived at/below your SWR rate, and your portfolio has grown at all, you’re pretty much past the worst of the SORR. Leave your bonds (if applicable) in a bond index fund and your stocks in VTSAX or similar.
If I met the above conditions, I’m setting my portfolio to < 5% bonds, turning off reinvesting dividends, and then the only thing really left to do is withdraw monthly, quarterly, twice a year, or annually to meet your spending needs and/or target income level for healthcare subsidies or whatever.
Maybe it’s more complex then that (can’t speak from experience) but there isn’t really a ton to do. Live your life.
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Why turn off reinvesting dividends?
It’s typical if you’re in the draw-down phase: better to spend the dividends than to sell (more) equities.
Roboadvisors basically do this for very minimal fees. Depends where you live what the options are. Even cheaper are ETFs that track your target portfolio.
Honestly you’re probably right in that window where you want to be looking into family offices and/or managed strategies like you’d find on Darwinex or Collective2, depending on your country.
I retired 2 years ago and wanted to do the same thing. I consolidated all of my financial holdings to Fidelity. I already had a four fund portfolio set up so it is just a matter of once a year rebalancing to my desired allocation. I’ve been doing my withdrawals on an annual basis when I rebalance and manufacture income for ACA purposes. I use my cash management as a checking account so I don’t have to transfer money when I need it. I use a credit card for all purchases so it’s just a matter of logging in once a month to pay off the credit card. That’s about as hands off as I could get it. So far it’s working well.
