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…
Sometimes it pays to go back to basics. With retirement planning it’s no different. The common, top down approach with retirement planning starts with total net worth and then uses a safe withdrawal rate (SWR), most commonly 4%, to figure out how much one can spend per year in retirement Read more…
Today I’d like to address some of the biggest concerns with the IVY portfolios, in particular the timing versions. Three big concerns with the implementation of IVY are management fees, trading commissions, and taxes and that they may impact performance enough to render any advantage mute. These are truly valid Read more…
Now that I’ve presented several variations and updates to the IVY portfolios, in this post I update all the relevant portfolio statistics and compare them to some commonly held diversified portfolios. I provide the definitions of the portfolio stats and the various portfolios. I conclude with some brief observations. In Read more…
OK, deep breaths, deep breaths….The drivel the passes for reporting on retirement issues never ceases to amaze me. But this time I found a real howler. The “paper of record”, the venerable NY Times, recently published a piece on the 4% safe withdrawal rule, titled “4% Rule for Retirement Withdrawals Read more…
Now that 2012 is behind us I wanted to update my analysis of the worst times to retire in history. See here for the original post. Armed with my own annual return data base I can now show at lot more detail as to the progress of the portfolios of Read more…
All the year end results are in so its time to update the performance of the retirement portfolios that I track. I’ll quickly review 2012 performance for the IVY portfolios, the Permanent Portfolio, and the traditional 60% /40% stock-bond portfolio. Then I’ll put them in context of their long run Read more…
Warning, this is a somewhat geeky technical post! Besides accumulating more wealth by working longer there is one very direct way to increase your income in retirement. Beat the market’s return. Higher returns will lead to higher SWRs (safe withdrawal rates) for the most part. (The other way to increase Read more…