My mini fake unrealistic economy

Basic idea: valuation is discounted cash flows, aggregate value is a fake economy

Question: what happens if you kill a couple close-in periods of cash flows, take some time to ramp up, discount rates rise over the interval, there is a 20% extinction rate, and no new entrants?

- 40 periods
- 10 independent cash flows
- $100 cf
- discount 3-->6% over first 10 per, then steady
- first 2 periods of cf get vaporized
- next 7 periods ramp up 0 --> 100; linear
- 2 cash flows go extinct

aggregate difference:  -49%

None of these assumptions are remotely realistic except maybe the cash flow, rates and extinction

My inadvertent pandemic hedge

I was catapulted semi voluntarily into early retirement in 2009 at ~50. This was before I knew a whit about retirement or life-cycle finance which, in the end, would have confirmed my behavior anyway. The behavior in question was my very very conservative spending early in my retirement.  The basic idea was:

My Indolence in Quarantine

From age 50 to 61, under the full force of life's un-quarantined pressures, I embarked on a process of self-ed for reasons that only Richard Dreyfus in "close encounters" might understand. Even though I'd had a full career and a very old MBA with special recognition in finance, it was not enough. I don't know if it was intellectual boredom or insecurity or the need to feel challenged that drove it but I powered through stuff like this below, which is all I can remember. There were no doubt other topics. There's always something. Here is what I remember, though:

On Redundancy, Robustness, and an Interesting Chart I Once Did

In a blog post long ago and far away I made the case that early retirement -- one with only systematic withdrawals and no life income -- needs the redundancy and inefficiency of "extra" capital early in a retirement cycle in order to be robust and immunize itself against the life-cycle uncertainty that can't always be modeled (plague?). The basic idea is that spend rates in the literature often seem over-optimized in a way that is a little like skating too close to open water...because you can and because you can't imagine anything happening except what you expect.  I've struggled with this socially in terms of others because I tend to be cautious where others are not. Every partner I've had over the last 30 years has tried to shame me for my caution and my attempt to build in financial robustness.  I'm guessing that they are not laughing now. I'll take a stab at explaining why I think they were wrong.