UghFIRE

A few days ago I posted a link to my FIRE calculator on Reddit. I had posted it a few months before, but didn't get much interest. Most of the traffic to the calculator came from posting about it in the comments section of Strong Money Australia's post about where you should put your money . Over the nearly 6 months since I first posted the calculator, I had 822 visitors to the page. I was really happy with how many people had seen it, and had received a lot of really thankful and encouraging emails. Nevertheless, visits had dropped off. Enter me,  posting about the calculator on Reddit again. In a couple of days, the 822 visits exploded to 3,110! OK, so it might not have gone 'viral', but for someone who is just doing this for fun, I was really blown away by the interest it generated. Along with some really awesome feedback, I got a lot of suggestions of features to add to the calculator. For the most part, these were awesome suggestions. Lots I had already ...

Franking credit refunds are a hot topic this election. It got me wondering about what exactly these changes would (financially) mean to the early retirement crowd. Obviously, everyone's situation will be different, and I doubt many people are aiming for a retirement income based on 100% fully franked dividends only. But to keep things simple, the below calculator assumes a single income earner wants to know their net income with and without franking credit refunds - assuming no other income. The calculator also assumes all dividends represent 4% of the portfolio size. Perhaps most importantly, the below refers to individuals who are pre-retirement age. As I understand it, most of the perception of 'unfairness' around the use of franking credits as a mechanism to avoid double taxation are when full refunds are paid on large retiree portfolios who do not pay income tax. That's a different problem though. Sure, abolishing franking credits completely will 'fix...