In today’s post I want to explain and demonstrate how modern retirement calculators work. There are two basic ways to calculate how much you can safely withdraw from your portfolio in retirement; looking backwards using historical data for past retirees and looking forward using possible future investment returns. On this Read more…
Contrary to the overwhelming consensus at the beginning of the year, bonds have done remarkably well year to date. With that in mind I wanted to update the SWRs for the 100% US TIPs retirement portfolio I presented last year. With rates down, SWRs will be down as well but Read more…
This is a simple house keeping post on a quant portfolio from last year. In the comments section of my post last year on the Trending Value portfolio I linked to a Trending Value portfolio I created as of Aug 9 2013 to help some readers compare holdings in their Read more…
“True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.” Socrates When I read the Socrates quote above I can’t imagine what he would have said about today’s world. We live in a highly complex non-linear world with Read more…
There’s been couple of recent announcements in the portfolio management industry which show the extent of technology’s penetration into the industry. The announcements further continue the rise of such automatic investing companies like Betterment and Wealthfront which are using modern technology to automate and drive down investment costs for individuals. First, Read more…
It’s kind of hard to believe but almost a year ago I introduced the trending value quant portfolio. Since I’m coming up on a rebalancing and I’ll start work on the new portfolio this weekend I wanted to take a look back and see how last year’s portfolio performed. Also, Read more…
I am a huge believer in do-it yourself investing. I believe that any one can learn to manage their own investments effectively given the time and the inclination. And it has never been easier or cheaper to manage your own investments. But there are many investors who do not have Read more…
In a post last week I showed that for the majority of retirees the standard recommended spending model in retirement does not match reality. Spending in retirement actually grows by less than inflation over time. In this post I want to show you how using a more realistic sending model Read more…
Today I wanted to take a look at how you can use quant investing to build a better stock market index. For my previous posts on quant investing see this series of posts. In a way stock market indices are quantitative models. And due to history and other factors they Read more…
It’s usually worthwhile to question conventional wisdom. At the minimum you usually learn where that wisdom came from. Often you learn the conventional wisdom is not the best approach. This happens to apply rather well to the topic of retirement spending. Lets take a look at the conventional wisdom regarding Read more…
What’s the hardest part of the retirement decision? For many its taking the leap of faith that financially what’s worked in the past will continue to work in the future. And often the start of every single year, during those early years of retirement, brings the anxiety right back again. Read more…