There’s been a lot of chatter recently about asset valuations, in particular US stocks and US bonds, and their impact of future returns. This is nothing new. It just seems to get louder at the start of every new year. I’ve discussed this topic before on the blog. Last time Read more…
Time for another one of those yearly updates. In this post I’ll update the data for the worst times in history to retire by adding 2014 data to the 4 worst retirement portfolios in history. See here for last year’s update. The worst time to retire since 1929 turns out Read more…
This post has nothing to do with asset prices, valuation, or timing the market as the title may have led you to believe. It has to do with investor psychology and behavior. Over the years I’ve wondered if certain types of people would be happier if they didn’t invest in anything Read more…
Today I wanted to talk about the forecasting of future returns and more importantly what implications future returns have for SWRs (Safe Withdrawal Rates). As I showed in my last post, the first 10 year period real return in retirement is the best predictor of SWRs for 30 year retirement Read more…
The starting year of retirement makes a huge difference in the success or failure of a retirement plan. This is the key difference between the accumulation phase of investing and the withdrawal phase of investing. Yet the majority of investing writing does not take this key difference into account when 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…
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…
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…