most of these answers I find not everyone here invests. Like stock the index fund is biased off of the market, just take a look at your index fund $VTSAX and compaire it to $SPX or $SPY they all correlate the same. But what and how to you expect to make money when the "market" corrects. Many believe this will happen when interest rates go up! So I would learn how to properly hedge either with ultra-shorts or derivatives. Don't just go long the market with all your capital and expect it to go up, people make money when it goes down too "or" hedge to maintain capital preservation in a downturn. I personally move all the time in the markets "set goals" and understand when the market is over bought or sold.

Well I retired from the military at 38 this year after 20yrs of service. I get full medical and life insurance and full pension which is paid for by the US. I recently received a engineer correctional position within my local state and after 20 there; i will receive my 2nd pension from them. I may not need the money but i want to keep getting so that i can continue to not need it.

Do you have medical insurance? If not then you need to work. Its stupid to retire at 45 based on a million dollar portfolio. Do you know when you are going to die?

Its stupid.... Take Care

"Pretty absurd"?

So you FREELY ADMIT that you suck at Math?

The annual yield on VTSAX is 1.7% ( http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=VTSAX&ql=1 ), so if you invested $1,000,000 you could withdraw a maximum of $17,000 a year (before taxes) without depleting your investment...

Can you live on $17K?

I sure as heck couldn't!

The trouble with investing money is that theory and the practice are different.

First, you have absolutely no idea what rate of return you will get wit non-guaranteed products. That is because the markets are impossible to predict, and the investment vehicle is not guaranteed nor predictable. If you doubt this, check the "buy and hold" strategy during certain periods of the stock market throughout history. You might greatly exceed your objective or miss it entirely, depending only on the time period.

As an example, all the investment self-help books of the late '80s to 90s used a target of 10-12% average returns for their predictions. At that time, such returns were achievable for the average person, and many people working during this period followed the hype and used this maker to plan their retirements ("freedom 55").

It will be easy to ask one of these people how that worked out, as many are now working as greeters at Wal Mart.

Second, inflation is underestimated (currently 3%), and it can also change without notifying fancy portfolios, and also, the amount of money you need to survive for an extended period of time without working is underestimated as well.

Finally, you have the greed factor. The financial industry is based entirely on the idea that most people lose money so some people can get rich. Some people=the financial industry rather than the clients.

To conclude, you can never do any better than the market you put your money into, which is unpredictable, professionals promise attractive returns so they can get your money, and you need way more cash than you think in order to drop out of work.

You might retire with those index funds, and I hope you could.

I would plan on working myself. A job is the only guaranteed income......and even that can be lost.

Say you have $1MM and want to retire at 45. You put the money into an index fund like VTSAX. Is it likely that the money will last for at least 30 years, assuming you want to withdraw 4% each year? I've been told it wouldn't even last 25 years, which seemed pretty absurd.