Hard to believe it has been 2 years since I last updated my recipe for a happy retirement. And 2 years before that I had the original post. Every 2 years seems like a nice interval to revisit my thoughts in this area. We are now getting close to completing Read more…
Today I finally get around to doing something I mentioned way back in my first post on quantitative investing. Quant portfolios can help an investor handily beat the market over time and often with even lower risk. If that is the case then how could they impact safe withdrawal rates Read more…
Most of the ink spilled in talking about retirement is limited to the investment side of the equation. How much do you need for retirement? How much can you withdraw from your portfolio in retirement? How should I invest my retirement assets? And obviously, all these questions are critical. But Read more…
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…
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…
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…
Today I wanted to do another yearly update post. This time I’ll refresh the worst times to retire in history with data from 2013 which adds another year in the retirement story of the 5 ‘unluckiest’ retirees in history. See here for last year’s update. As I said in last Read more…
Is it possible to achieve higher safe withdrawal rates, compared to a stock/bond portfolio, from a 100% bond portfolio? With bond prices at historical highs? That’s what I wanted to find out. I started thinking in this direction after my look at bottoms up retirement planning and calculating what low Read more…
Back in 2010 I posted on an alternative retirement withdrawal approach that allows for higher safe withdrawal rates (SWR). Back then I didn’t have a detailed model of this approach to provide much more insight. Now I do. Its very worthwhile revisiting this strategy and discuss the great benefits it Read more…
Today I want to touch on a little understood aspect of safe withdrawal rates (SWRs) in retirement. Using the historical method to determine SWRs (as opposed to Monte Carlo analysis) means that the maximum SWR (approx 4%) is singularly determined by one 30 year period, the 30 year retirement period Read more…