Happy New Year Everyone!!!

I hope 2011 is a great year for you. I know with the irons I have in the fire, it will be a better year for me.

How are your investments doing? My former 401k retirement account, which I rolled into a IRA last year when I retired, is up this year 19%.  Originally I had planned on getting a 10% return and taking a 6% withdrawal rate.

This would have allowed me to increase my account by 4% each year to help smooth out good years and bad. On January 4th, I’ll start taking a .00833 withdrawal each month (10% per year) and leaving 9% to grow the account. 9% is over double what I had planned to be able to grow the account.

I sold all of my equities on Monday, December 27th, and expect that stocks are headed for a tumble next month. And, despite what I said in my last post about bonds, I have invested in a short term (3 year maturity) bond fund yielding just over 10% right now. Using the interactive charts on Yahoo Finance, I will be watching this fund weekly like a hawk.

If I have to leave the IRA in the bond fund all year, the 10% will bring me back to my original plan I mapped out in 2009 when I retired. But I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I can get back into equities by the 2nd quarter of 2011.

I’ll make a video in the next few days showing you how I will use the charting program on Yahoo Finance to watch the fund so I be sure not to get caught on the wrong side of the market.
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For Taking Early Retirement (TER), I hope you are enjoying a great retirement or are close to that day!

Jeremiah John

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