Early Retirement Now - You cant afford not to retire early! December 10, 2025 – Welcome to another post on the ERN blog This is the third installment in the “How to Lie with Personal Finance” series (please also check out Part s 1 and 2) As always, this is not an instruction manual for deception, but precisely the opposite: it points out the misunderstandings circulating in personal finance Think of it as an homage to the classic book “How
Start here - Early Retirement Now Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Mr Corporate Refugee”: How to deal with a large portion of the net worth tied up in a house in a high-cost-of-living area Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Mrs Wanderlust”: Substantial supplemental cash flows due to buying an RV and then selling it later
Options Trading - Early Retirement Now The strategy in a nutshell I’ve written about this strategy in previous posts, most recently in Part 10, Part 11, Part 13, and Part 14 (the 2025 CY summary and strategy updates) But briefly, here is what I’m doing: Why does this work? Implied Volatility (normally) exceeds Realized Volatility Of course, the central limit theorem … Continue reading Options Trading
About - Early Retirement Now Welcome! I hope I don’t disappoint anyone by revealing that my real name isn’t Ern Or Big Ern But I am a big guy, at 6’6″ (just under 2 meters), which explains why the name “Big Ern” stuck! My real name is Karsten I am originally from Germany but came to the U S in 1995 Initially … Continue reading About
Safe Withdrawal Rates Archives - Early Retirement Now Unfortunately, the actuarially correct way is more complicated But Big ERN to the rescue, I have another Google Sheet to help with that, and I share that free tool with you Let’s take a look… Continue reading “Evaluating Annuities, Pensions, and Social Security – SWR Series Part 56”
The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 14: Sequence of . . . Sequence of Return Risk, sometimes also called Sequence Risk, is the scourge of early retirement Or any retirement for that matter So, here we go, finally, we have a designated post on this topic for our Safe Withdrawal Rate series (check here to go to the first post and also make sure you download Big Ern’s SSRN working paper on the topic)
Building a Better CAPE Ratio - Early Retirement Now CAPE ERN 2 is the new adjusted CAPE taking into account corporate tax rates and earnings retention ratios I also throw in the 12-month trailing PE Ratios Here’s the same chart as in the blog post header again, the CAPE time series since 1925 The adjustments didn’t make a large difference in the 1920s and 1930s
The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 19: Equity . . . That’s where the Big ERN simulation engine comes in handy! Simulation assumptions: Monthly data from January 1871 to July 2017 A 60-year retirement horizon Retirement dates from January 1871 to December 2015 (with extrapolations using conservative return forecasts for bonds and stocks beyond July 2017)
Pre-Retirement Glidepaths: How crazy is it to hold 100% equities until . . . March 2, 2021 – A while ago, I wrote about the challenge of designing pre-retirement equity bond glidepaths (“What’s wrong with Target Date Funds?“) In a nutshell, the main weakness of Target Date Funds (TDFs) for folks planning an early retirement is that if you have a short horizon and a large savings rate then the “industry … Continue reading Pre-Retirement Glidepaths: How