u/Harmonic-Hyena

I have been in the same job for over 15 years and have not been promoted despite better than average reviews, numerous accomplishments, etc. I have inquired about promotions in the past but just get blown off. I am getting burned out and I think the lack of recognition is a big factor. I am towards the end of my career so switching to a different corporate job is not really an option and I think my employer knows it. Early retirement would be tight but I could possibly make it work. I would prefer to work at least 5 more years to have enough to do fun things in retirement. However, I won't make it 5 years at the present rate. So I am considering demanding a promotion and if I am rejected (again) just resigning right away. Or I could do the minimum since there is little incentive to climb the latter if the next rung wont be reached before my planned retirement date. I guess a third option is to do less than the minimum and wait to see if they can me, but I am not sure I could do that.

What would you do if in a similar position?

Is the chance of success just overly pessimistic or is there a flaw in its calculation?

I have a scenario that assumes a 40 year retirement with an average withdrawal rate of 2.9%/yr. Withdrawals peak around 5% in the first decade due to Roth conversions, which Boldin still treats as a withdrawal for some reason. Then after the Roth conversions are complete, the withdrawal rate drops to about 3% and eventually down to about 1.5%. So the actual spending rate is probably closer to around 2%. However, with average inflation and returns, Boldin says this scenario has an 80% chance of success.

This just does not pass the sniff test. Wade Pfau's study in 2011 showed that a 2.8% withdrawal rate over 40 years, in conservative market conditions, only failed 1% of the time. In other words a 99% success rate.

Don't get me wrong, I would prefer Boldin error on the side of caution, but this estimate seems way to pessimistic to the point where I think it may be an error. The AI agreed it should be higher. It told me that the low success rate was due to a high legacy goal. I remove that and it had no impact. Next it said it was because of my roth conversions. I removed those and the percentage went down. Then it told me I had a liquidity problem because my brokerage account would be empty before I could pull from the roth, which is nonsense because I am already well past the 5 year rule. Even still I switched to a traditional withdrawal order and the chance of success dropped to 75%.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2544656