Spent over 30 years developing leading-edge software technology before getting 'involuntarily retired' several years ago. Still interested in software architectures, and personal research in advanced ontology architectures (I have rather idiosyncratic views on how these should be developed).
Having failed to pay attention to my retirement portfolio prior to 2008 (it was all in stock funds at the time), waited until early 2010 to get the main rebound. Then started to actively engage in my own financial planning and portfolio management. Started treating this as a 'full-time job' in 2011. Started to get comfortable with my portfolio management approach in 2012 - and managed to get almost 14% last year (2012) in my ...More main IRA with a basically 'conservative' 65% bond funds to 35% equities model ;-)
Sadly, two smaller portfolios didn't do anything like that well, and I am working on understanding why - I believe it is largely because they were much less diversified, despite being nominally more aggressively allocated.
Started drawing pension this year, but still need to draw down the portfolio by around 15-20% a year (assuming no return) until I draw social security (target in around 4 years), at which point I should finally become cash-flow positive - yay!
Having failed to pay attention to my retirement portfolio prior to 2008 (it was all in stock funds at the time), waited until early 2010 to get the main rebound. Then started to actively engage in my own financial planning and portfolio management. Started treating this as a 'full-time job' in 2011. Started to get comfortable with my portfolio management approach in 2012 - and managed to get almost 14% last year (2012) in my ...More