| The best withdrawal strategy in retirement |
| 06/08/25 | | Retirement |
"According to this report, only 1 in 7 retirees (14%) end up touching their principal during retirement. The rest live on their income (or less than their income) in their golden years. When I first read this statistic I couldn't believe it. The financial industry spends so much time and energy doing all this complicated math and planning on how to spend money in retirement and, yet, the vast majority of retirees ignore it."
|
| Generational wealth vs. enough |
| 06/02/25 | | Retirement |
"The concept of enough is perhaps best explained by Joseph Heller. Authors Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller were at a party given by a hedge fund manager on a fancy island in New York. Vonnegut pointed out that the host had made more money in a single day than Heller had made with all of the sales of his popular book Catch-22 in his entire lifetime. Heller responded, 'Yes, but I have something he will never haveā"enough!' I'm pretty sure that speaker had never heard this story, or if he had, he thought, 'That's nuts, why would someone not want more?'"
|
| Will you need long-term care? |
| 05/20/25 | | Retirement |
"A recent update of these data show that only about a fifth of retirees will need no assistance at all during their lives and a fifth will need extensive services. The remaining 60 percent of seniors will have either low (25 percent) or moderate care needs (37 percent)."
|
| Tasting retirement |
| 04/27/25 | | Retirement |
"I'm trying my hand at retirement. It isn't going so well."
|
| Set for life? |
| 04/04/25 | | Retirement |
"Under what circumstances could you be 'set for life' with $2M at age 23, and under which circumstances would you not be. Let's dig in."
|
| Never root for a recession |
| 03/15/25 | | Retirement |
"Ultimately, recessions aren't opportunities to celebrate, they're challenges to overcome. And while such events can provide unique investment opportunities, the broader economic damage they typically cause outweighs such benefits. Therefore, instead of hoping for a market crash, make sure you are prepared for one."
|
| Spending it |
| 01/13/25 | | Retirement |
"Retirees can pick from a host of withdrawal strategies, including the five popular choices listed below. You'd likely fare just fine with any of the five strategies - but that doesn't mean you shouldn't pick carefully."
|
| Before you quit |
| 10/26/24 | | Retirement |
"Here are five notions that I'd encourage those approaching retirement to ponder."
|
| Jonathan Clements' financial plan |
| 09/15/24 | | Retirement |
"Personal finance master Jonathan Clements is turning his recent terminal cancer diagnosis into an important teaching opportunity on money and life." [video]
|
| Laying down a floor |
| 09/15/24 | | Retirement |
"What if we could create an inflation-indexed guaranteed pension from half of our savings - one that wouldn't involve any annual investment expenses, aside from paying taxes on the amount we take out every year?"
|
| A guide to semi-retirement |
| 08/24/24 | | Retirement |
"Do you like the idea of early retirement, but you don't want to have to save every penny? Do you seek financial independence, but you don't want to permanently leave the workforce? Then Coast FIRE might just be right for you."
|
| Turning on a dime |
| 08/10/24 | | Retirement |
"We make forever plans - and often end up shredding them in a few short days."
|
| Unasked questions |
| 08/04/24 | | Retirement |
"But what about the questions we aren't asking? Here are seven crucial questions that I don't think get nearly enough attention."
|
| No slowing down |
| 07/27/24 | | Retirement |
"I thought I had my financial affairs in good order. But in the two months since my cancer diagnosis, I've made countless financial tweaks, mostly with a view to making things easier after my death for my wife Elaine and my two children."
|
| Inflation impacts retirement |
| 07/06/24 | | Retirement |
"As much as I love running retirement scenarios using the 4% Rule, this is where they fall short. The 4% Rule assumes that retirees are robots who indiscriminately increasing their spending with inflation each year. Unfortunately, all the empirical evidence suggests that this isn't how retirees behave. If anything, retirement spending tends to go down over time, not up."
|
| Looking different |
| 07/06/24 | | Retirement |
"But suddenly, I am the oddball. I'm a 61-year-old with perhaps as little as a year to live, and that means my financial life today doesn't look like that of anybody I know - in seven key ways."
|
| Life after cars |
| 06/22/24 | | Retirement |
"Unless you want to end up as a celebrity to taxi and Uber drivers, you might take steps to ensure that your post-driving days allow you as much access to the world as possible. To be honest, the problem of life after cars isn't an easy one for most senior American suburbanites to solve."
|
| The C word |
| 06/15/24 | | Retirement |
"We can control risk, but we can't eliminate it. I've spent decades managing both financial risk and potential threats to my health. But despite such precautions, sometimes we get blindsided. There have been few cancer occurrences in my family, and it's never been something I had reason to fear. Chance is a cruel mistress."
|
| Buying freedom |
| 06/01/24 | | Retirement |
"The five ideas above help explain why we should save early in life to prepare ourselves for later, when we might want to change how we spend our days. But that still leaves one question unanswered: Why, come retirement, should our days necessarily involve working part-time?"
|
| What global withdrawal rates teach us |
| 04/14/24 | | Retirement |
"One thing that I think withdrawal rate sceptics have right is their suspicion that over-relying on the performance of one country isn't necessarily the best approach for risk management. The top global withdrawal rate portfolios all have heavy allocations to foreign markets either through stocks, bonds, or global real assets. Small bias to the home stock market can be productive, as well as a healthy dose of domestic bills. But if you want to protect yourself from the home economy tanking, global diversification is the way to go."
|
| Back to work |
| 04/14/24 | | Retirement |
"Call it the great unretirement. Hit by rising living costs and unexpected feelings of boredom, one out of eight retirees plan to return to work this year, according to a recent survey."
|
| A quiet life |
| 03/23/24 | | Retirement |
"For me, retirement isn't all that different from childhood. There have been very few other times when life felt relatively carefree. These days, I solve puzzles on my phone, rather than in a magazine, and I write my life stories using a Chromebook, not a notebook. The quiet life isn't for everyone. But it suits me just fine."
|
| Seven reasons to work |
| 03/17/24 | | Retirement |
"Before you dive into the world of endless vacations and gardening, consider that keeping a toe - and perhaps your whole foot - in the workforce might be the secret ingredient to a fulfilling retirement."
|
| A Protestant retirement ethic? |
| 03/03/24 | | Retirement |
"Moshe Milevsky and Marcos Velazquez have identified one area where there is an advantage to being a Protestant, or at least living in a heavily Protestant society. They document a statistically significant relationship between the share of Protestants living in a country and the quality of the pension system in that country."
|
| Faulty assumptions |
| 02/24/24 | | Retirement |
"Many people put a lot of faith in planning software, betting their financial life on assumptions, projections and past performance. The assumptions are usually theirs, but are they accurate? Do they reflect the reality of how they'll live in retirement?"
|
| Fire meets ice |
| 02/16/24 | | Retirement |
"While I think our current concept of retirement could do with some tweaking, I wouldn't want to discourage folks from saving aggressively for their later years. At the same time, I think it's instructive to think about a different model of retirement, one where we continue to earn at least some income well into our 70s and perhaps beyond."
|
| Lifecycle Investment Advice |
| 12/15/23 | | Retirement |
"Given the sheer magnitude of US retirement savings, we estimate that Americans could realize trillions of dollars in welfare gains by adopting the all-equity strategy."
|
| Withdrawal symptoms |
| 12/08/23 | | Retirement |
"After more than a year of working part-time, I fully retired two months ago. Without a paycheck, our bank account balance soon fell to a level where we needed to transfer funds from savings to pay the monthly bills. The amount I transferred was equal to just over half of my fulltime monthly paycheck. The mental anguish was palpable."
|
| Years left to live |
| 12/08/23 | | Retirement |
"A key takeaway with life expectancy is that it increases as one gets older."
|
| Retirement roulette |
| 11/26/23 | | Retirement |
"What about the 4% rule? I might use it as a guideline to make sure I'm not overspending. But I'm going to be flexible about how much I spend each year, taking my cues from my portfolio's performance. At the same time, as a cushion, I plan to keep five years. worth of expected portfolio withdrawals in high-quality short-term bond funds, so there's scant risk I'd ever need to sell stocks during a market downturn."
|
| Safe withdrawal rates |
| 11/19/23 | | Retirement |
"This is where Dave Ramsey went wrong when arguing for an 8% withdrawal rate. This only works as long as you don't get unlucky during the first 10 years of retirement. Given that the probability that you run out of money over a 30-year timeframe is only a little worse than a coin flip (42%), Ramsey's advice is far riskier for a retiree than he might have initially imagined."
|
| Best-laid plans |
| 11/12/23 | | Retirement |
"I spent a lifetime planning for a happy financial ending, never considering that my health might derail those plans. Today, I'd urge others to follow their dreams as best they can while they can."
|
| Bracing for evening |
| 11/05/23 | | Retirement |
"Not much rattles me. I'm unperturbed by stock market crashes and I don't worry whether tomorrow will come. But I must confess, I look ahead to the no-go years with trepidation. But I'm hoping that, as with so many things, thinking about the future - and planning for it - will ease those fears."
|
| The retired kid |
| 11/05/23 | | Retirement |
"Back at work. At age 78, partly by game plan and partly by chance, I've arrived at a productive and meaningful partial retirement."
|
| Coming of age |
| 10/14/23 | | Retirement |
"Inspired by the experiences of my patients, I'd like to illustrate several of the hurdles men encounter while navigating their retirement years."
|
| Starting late |
| 10/07/23 | | Retirement |
"What would our financial situation be if we retired and our only income was Social Security? That was entirely possible. My employer's pension plan had been woefully underfunded when I began working there. Future pension benefits were far from certain. Meanwhile, my wife's employer had recently been sold, and the new owner had no pension plan."
|
| Getting ready |
| 09/16/23 | | Retirement |
"I underestimated how much cash I should have on hand. I thought of myself as a 'rational person.' I could just sell investments when my cash cushion got close to zero, right? Wrong. It turns out I needed a larger cash buffer to sleep well at night. In my defense, it's hard to predict this number without living through a year or two of retirement spending, and watching your dollars dwindle. The lesson: Err on the conservative side."
|
| What we lose |
| 08/27/23 | | Retirement |
"If we're to be happy retirees, we need to think hard about how we'll cope with these losses. For some, what's lost won't seem all that bad. But for me - someone for whom work has been so central to my life - the seven losses below loom large."
|
| Less money than you think |
| 08/20/23 | | Retirement |
"The median household in this study simply spent the income from their portfolio and avoided taking from the principal portfolio balance."
|
| Financial superpowers |
| 08/20/23 | | Retirement |
"The lower your fixed living costs, the easier the rest of your financial life will be. You'll have more for discretionary 'fun' spending, for savings, and for giving both to charity and to loved ones. In addition, if your fixed monthly costs are low, you'll be in better shape if your financial life takes a big hit, such as losing your job or needing to pay for a major home repair."
|
| Modest, but enough |
| 07/29/23 | | Retirement |
"It's easy to be intimidated into thinking you need a lot of money to retire comfortably. The media is full of stories and advertising promoting luxury lifestyles. That can lead you to believe you need to spend six figures to get the most out of your golden years. The truth is, plenty of typical middle-class Canadians live comfortable and satisfying retirements on much more modest budgets."
|
| How much to retire? |
| 07/29/23 | | Retirement |
"Now we tackle the tricky question of figuring out how much you can draw from your savings at a sustainable rate that involves little risk of outliving your wealth."
|
| Visiting death |
| 07/29/23 | | Retirement |
"The difference that stands out to me is that such old folks no longer seek nor expect personal transformations. They are comfortable and secure in their personalities, styles, views, relations, and accomplishments, and rarely seek big changes to such things."
|
| Why I retired |
| 07/02/23 | | Retirement |
"Ken, why are you here on a Sunday if you can retire? This isn't a dress rehearsal for life. This is it. You don't get a second chance."
|
| How we unretired |
| 06/25/23 | | Retirement |
"One recent trend among newly minted retirees: unretirement. According to an AARP study, some 3% of retirees are back in the workforce one year later, taking on either fulltime or part-time jobs. Often, unretiring wasn't part of the retiree's original plan - but we shouldn't assume it's necessarily about needing money."
|
| Key to work-life balance |
| 06/11/23 | | Retirement |
"80 percent of semi-retirees say they're employed because they want to be; working after retirement is actually more common among workers with higher socioeconomic status. Though some of them might appreciate the extra income, many seem to also find these jobs enjoyable and fulfilling."
|
| When to retire |
| 06/03/23 | | Retirement |
"I found it's a good idea to make a list of financial benefits you want to take advantage of before you retire. You should also consider any expenses that could influence your decision. What follows are nine financial situations that might determine your retirement date."
|
| Automatic enrollment |
| 04/16/23 | | Retirement |
"In 2006, nearly one-quarter of participants ages 18 to 24 had no equity exposure. In 2021, 97% of automatically enrolled Generation Z participants had an equity allocation between 41% and 99%." [pdf]
|
| No going back |
| 03/18/23 | | Retirement |
"But there's a downside to making the emotionally safe choice. The problem: In some cases, the path that promises least short-term regret - by, say, claiming Social Security right away, taking the pension lump sum and avoiding immediate annuities - could end up hurting us financially over the long haul."
|
| The Other Enough |
| 03/12/23 | | Retirement |
"Many folks are happy to get off the career treadmill. But for others, including me, calling it quits doesn't come easily. We humans are inherently restless. We want more stuff, more money and, yes, another success. And when we get these things, we quickly grow dissatisfied and start hankering after something else. We never achieve that final, fully satisfying triumph that we crave."
|
| Riding the rails |
| 03/05/23 | | Retirement |
"Each strategy has some merit. The 4% rule is a great shorthand tool because you can often do the math in your head. Guardrails, on the other hand, may be more complex, but the way it responds to changes in the market makes it more realistic. Many school endowments, it's worth noting, use a hybrid approach: They withdraw a fixed percentage of their endowments, but that fixed percentage is often set in relation to a three-year moving average of the endowment's value."
|
| No need to guess |
| 02/25/23 | | Retirement |
"Since so much of personal finance is beyond our control, it's important to control what we can - in other words, to know which questions can be answered without reference to a crystal ball."
|
| A place to start |
| 01/15/23 | | Retirement |
"The 4% rule may be making a comeback. But it's just a starting point - and you shouldn't necessarily follow it precisely."
|
| It is not a bad time to retire |
| 12/17/22 | | Retirement |
"I've seen a number of articles suggesting that it is a bad time to retire at present, because the market value of portfolios has declined. I'm here to tell you that the opposite is true."
|
| Going the distance |
| 10/09/22 | | Retirement |
"The average American spends the last 12+ years of life with their activities at least partially and often seriously curtailed by illness, injury, or cognitive impairment"
|
| Beginning badly |
| 09/18/22 | | Retirement |
"You might view sequence-of-return risk as the opposite of dollar-cost averaging. Instead of buying more shares when stock prices are down, you're selling additional shares at lower prices to generate the same amount of income. This year, unfortunately, provides a good example of how market forces can affect retirees' savings - and their plans."
|
| Changed by the trip |
| 08/14/22 | | Retirement |
"Humans are hardwired both to worry and to strive. But looking back, all our worries - to the extent we can even remember them - appear to be a colossal waste of mental energy, while the goals we struggled to achieve now seem of little import."
|
| Retirement riddles |
| 08/01/22 | | Retirement |
"I spend significant time reading the viewpoints of people who are planning for retirement or who are already retired. My frequent reaction: What are they thinking?"
|
| After you leave |
| 02/20/22 | | Retirement |
"I'm sensitive to this issue because, during my working years, I received many calls from new widows asking about their survivor pension. Often, there was none because their husbands had selected to receive income only over their life, with no survivor benefit. Times have changed, of course. There are new laws to protect spouses, plus many couples have dual incomes. But at the same time, retirement is more the individual's responsibility than ever before."
|
| Use it or lose it |
| 02/04/22 | | Retirement |
"My contention: It's a mistake to let the fire go out when we retire. Transitioning from a mentally challenging job to a sedentary lifestyle, where you spend a lot of time sitting around watching TV or on social media, is going to cost you."
|
| Life's not a beach |
| 01/22/22 | | Retirement |
"For the past 50 years, retirement commercials have been showing the couple on the beach or the golf course. But this is nonsense. Not every retiree wants to live like that, nor can every retiree afford to. Watching such commercials causes retirees a lot of stress. Deep down, most retirees know that most retirements - including theirs - won't look like that. In fact, most of them have no idea what their retirement will look like."
|
| Is it now the '3.3% Rule'? |
| 12/19/21 | | Retirement |
"Recently a highly respected financial publisher issued a research paper claiming that the 'safe' withdrawal rate from tax-advantaged retirement portfolios could be as low as 3.3%, due to the high valuations of financial investments. As you may know, as an outcome of ongoing research, I recently increased my estimate of the 'worst-case' withdrawal rate to 4.7% (for a 30-year time horizon). How do we make sense of these two widely disparate results?"
|
| Nonportfolio strategies for retirees |
| 12/12/21 | | Retirement |
"Strategies that reduce expenses or boost non-portfolio income, like delaying Social Security or employing annuities, can be even more impactful than adjusting a portfolio or withdrawal-rate system and therefore should precede withdrawal rates in the retirement-planning process."
|
| The state of retirement income |
| 11/30/21 | | Retirement |
"Because of the confluence of low starting yields on bonds and equity valuations that are high relative to historical norms, retirees are unlikely to receive returns that match those of the past. Using forward-looking estimates for investment performance and inflation, Morningstar estimates that the standard rule of thumb should be lowered to 3.3% from 4%."
|
| 44 years studying retirement |
| 10/30/21 | | Retirement |
"I got up this morning without much to do and I hadn't finished it by the time I went to bed."
|
| CDs and cemeteries |
| 10/03/21 | | Retirement |
"'A year to live.' That's the name of a class I've been teaching on and off for the past 20 years. My hope: Participants will gain more understanding, acceptance and peace about one of life's few guarantees - death. This year's class members have a little over five months left to live."
|
| Rule your world |
| 09/12/21 | | Retirement |
"I'm still wary of rules of thumb, but Gigerenzer makes a useful point. It's good to be analytical where appropriate. But sometimes, employing a rule of thumb might be better. Below, for example, are five questions that might be better answered with a rule of thumb than a spreadsheet"
|
| Not a law of nature |
| 08/02/21 | | Retirement |
"The first thing to understand about the 4% rule is that Bengen never intended it to be a rule per se. In his paper, he's clear that 4% is just a recommendation - and only under certain circumstances."
|
| Ask the question |
| 07/25/21 | | Retirement |
"We should ask ourselves all kinds of tough financial questions. But many of the toughest never get asked - because we know answering them will involve agonizing choices, difficult conversations and unthinkable amounts of dollars. Consider these four..."
|
| A better retirement |
| 06/13/21 | | Retirement |
"Among the unhappy retirees I've talked to, most are bored because they don't have anything to do. That can usually be fixed."
|
| Work in progress |
| 05/23/21 | | Retirement |
"Thanks to the pandemic, most of us have discovered there's plenty of fat in our budget. Think about how much you saved over the past 14 months by not going on vacation, cooking at home and avoiding the shopping mall. During retirement, if your nest egg looks a little depleted, perhaps you should adopt a 'pandemic budget' for six months or a year."
|
| Built for Ease |
| 05/09/21 | | Retirement |
"My father loathed the idea that he would spend his final years in a nursing home. In the end, he never had to confront that possibility: At age 75, while riding his bicycle, he was struck and killed by a speeding car. Still, I think often about his reluctance - because I share it. Despite exercising every day, I know I'm not as flexible or as fast as I once was, and it takes longer for the stiffness in my muscles to ease each morning. Meanwhile, I'm well aware that two of my four grandparents had dementia at the end of their life."
|
| Sustainability of withdrawal strategies |
| 04/18/21 | | Retirement |
"The most important financial issue retirees have to deal with is whether their strategy will be able to sustain all the withdrawals they expect to make in retirement, as well as a bequest they aim to leave. For this reason, it is critical to periodically monitor the evolution of a financial plan in order to detect early signs of trouble, which may lead a retiree to introduce dynamic adjustments to a strategy. To that purpose, this article features two tools, a sustainability test and the sustainable withdrawal, and shows how to apply them. It also discusses the empirical evidence on both tools based on a comprehensive sample of 22 countries over a 120-year period."
|
| What scares me about getting old |
| 04/11/21 | | Retirement |
"The truth is that even for a guy who's spent a vast majority of his waking hours helping others imagine the best way to age, there's a lot that scares me about getting old."
|
| Don't get burned |
| 04/03/21 | | Retirement |
"Financial independence. Retire early. FIRE. It's the dream, right? No one to report to. Nowhere you have to be. You live life completely on your own terms. But as much as this movement has been revered by some in the personal finance community, it also has its downsides which are discussed far less often."
|
| Family money |
| 03/08/21 | | Retirement |
"getting both partners involved has meant pushing back when the investment advisor tells her to follow up with the husband. "I'm like, wait, what about the wife? And they'll say, 'Oh, she doesn't do the money.' All the more reason because if something happens, she needs to have a resource."
|
| Variable percentage withdrawal critique |
| 02/14/21 | | Retirement |
"The main assumptions behind the VPW tables are that you'll live to 100, stocks will beat inflation by 5%, and bonds will beat inflation by 1.9%. These figures are average global returns from 1900 to 2018 taken from the 2019 Credit Suisse Global Investment Returns Yearbook."
|
| CPP at 60 |
| 12/12/20 | | Retirement |
"The average Canadian who takes Canada Pension Plan benefits at age 60 rather than 70 can expect to lose more than $100,000 of income over the course of their retirement"
|
| CPP timing |
| 12/12/20 | | Retirement |
"The 'standard' age to take CPP is 65. If you take it early, your benefits are reduced by 0.6% for each month early. This is a 36% reduction if you take CPP at 60. If you wait past 65, your benefits increase by 0.7% for each month you wait. This is a 42% increase if you wait until you're 70."
|
| Boring |
| 11/27/20 | | Retirement |
"So that's my verdict after four years of early retirement: boring."
|
| Delaying CPP |
| 11/22/20 | | Retirement |
"Delaying CPP and Quebec Pension Plan (QPP) payments is the surest way to secure lifelong income, MacDonald said, but very few Canadians are taking advantage. More than 95% of Canadians start taking their CPP/QPP benefits at 65 or earlier, and fewer than 1% wait until they're 70."
|
| Sequence risk |
| 11/14/20 | | Retirement |
"Financial planners are keenly aware of, and routinely warn clients about, sequence risk; that is, the possibility of facing a sequence of low returns early in retirement that may force retirees to scale down the plans they had made. This really is a scary scenario, but one that the evidence here shows that retirees are not very likely to encounter. A new and refined definition of sequence risk is advanced in this article, linking this type of risk to the sustainability of a withdrawal strategy. Furthermore, three ways of assessing sequence risk are proposed, among them one that enables a retiree to monitor the sustainability of his withdrawal strategy periodically and to introduce adjustments when necessary. The ultimate message of this article is that retirees should be informed, but not obsess, about sequence risk."
|
| One-page plan |
| 11/08/20 | | Retirement |
"Going through the one-page plan process helps you shift your mind into this idea that it's about setting a course and having tools to course-correct."
|
| Enough |
| 10/18/20 | | Retirement |
"While I continue to invest for a retirement that grows ever closer, I am no longer focused on trying to increase my net worth. There is nothing more I want."
|
| The 5% Rule? |
| 10/18/20 | | Retirement |
"I wouldn't be recommending 4.5%, I'd probably be recommending 5.25%, 5.5%, something like that, which is even going to enrage people even more because it's higher than the 4.5%. But that's what history has demonstrated."
|
| The F-150 retirement crisis |
| 10/03/20 | | Retirement |
"The difference between the monthly payment on a $45,000 vehicle and a $20,000 vehicle is basically enough to max out your IRA in a given year. The monthly payment difference between a new $70,000 truck and a $20,000 used model would be enough to fund nearly 60% of the way towards maxing out your 401(k). And a new vehicle depreciates the minute you drive it off the lot while your retirement savings grow over the long-term."
|
| Wealth discipline |
| 08/09/20 | | Retirement |
"This is a measure of your financial discipline through both savings and investing. It's not just your savings rate, because it also incorporates how you use your savings to invest and increase your wealth."
|
| My four goals |
| 07/26/20 | | Retirement |
"I also want some income I'm guaranteed not to outlive. Research suggests our ability to manage money deteriorates as we age. Research also suggests that retirees with predictable income tend to be happier."
|
| Fred Vettese interview |
| 06/26/20 | | Retirement |
"Today, we get into a masterclass on retirement planning with a true expert in the field whose perspectives are distinctly evidence-based, Fred Vettese." [video]
|
| Michael Kitces on the 4 per cent rule |
| 06/06/20 | | Retirement |
"Michael Kitces on early retirement - and how the recent stock market movement affects the FIRE Community and the 4% rule." [video]
|
| Never retire |
| 03/15/20 | | Retirement |
"If you want to live a satisfying, long life, neuroscientist Daniel Levitin has some advice for you: Stay busy."
|
| Sequence risk |
| 02/15/20 | | Retirement |
"Sequence risk is the risk that investment returns happen in an unlucky order. It can make or break portfolios"
|
| Age-invariant asset allocation |
| 01/17/20 | | Retirement |
"In the present environment, the stock market is poised to deliver 2.52%/year over the next ten years. You can do better with an investment-grade portfolio of bonds."
|
| Count the cash |
| 11/26/19 | | Retirement |
"Once we have a handle on our cash situation, we're free to invest the rest of our portfolio as we wish - including potentially stashing much or all of our money in stocks."
|
| What number |
| 09/25/19 | | Retirement |
"In retrospect, I learned that the idea of a single number is compelling, even if it isn.t realistic. After my initial failure at communicating the results, I tried a different tack. I took a narrative approach. I explained to my wife that we were on track for a comfortable retirement."
|
| Get busy living, or get busy dying |
| 09/06/19 | | Retirement |
"Waiting for 75% of life to pass by before doing stuff you enjoy is a pretty dumb strategy."
|
| Inflexible spending rules |
| 07/31/19 | | Retirement |
"Moving from a rule-of-thumb to a dynamic model is like moving from analog to digital. While we may pine for the simplicity of the good old days, the fact is today we have much better tools to get the job done."
|
| Cash reserve strategies don't work |
| 06/21/19 | | Retirement |
"Cash reserve strategies that hold aside several years of spending to avoid liquidations during bear markets are a popular way to manage withdrawals for retirees. In theory, the strategy is presumed to enhance risk-adjusted returns by allowing retirees to spend down their cash during market declines and then replenish it after the recovery. Yet recent research in the Journal of Financial Planning reveals that the strategy actually results in more harm than good; while in some scenarios the cash reserves effectively allow the retiree to .time. the market by avoiding an untimely liquidation, more often the retiree simply ends out with less money due to the ongoing return drag of a significant portfolio position in cash."
|
| Retirement plans |
| 03/04/19 | | Retirement |
"Saving for retirement means navigating a potential minefield of high fees and bad advice." [video]
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| Retiring on low income |
| 02/13/19 | | Retirement |
| The retirement age is too low |
| 02/05/19 | | Retirement |
| Conventional retirement advice may fail |
| 01/22/19 | | Retirement |
| Retirement finance |
| 01/01/19 | | Retirement |
| Risk and reward in public sector pensions |
| 12/10/18 | | Retirement |
| 5 million to retire |
| 12/03/18 | | Retirement |
| Retiring at a stock market peak |
| 11/26/18 | | Retirement |
| Retiring at a stock market peak 2 |
| 11/26/18 | | Retirement |
| How to retire in your 30s |
| 09/06/18 | | Retirement |
| The worst time to retire |
| 05/07/18 | | Retirement |
| Deferring CPP |
| 04/02/18 | | Retirement |
| Unraveling retirement strategies |
| 03/12/18 | | Retirement |
| Second childhood |
| 02/05/18 | | Retirement |
| How Malcolm Hamilton prepared for his own retirement |
| 01/08/18 | | Retirement |
| Time to rethink the RRSP contribution limit |
| 11/12/17 | | Retirement |
| Safely withdraw funds in retirement |
| 10/07/17 | | Retirement |
| Rule of 300 |
| 09/03/17 | | Retirement |
| Retirement makes you miserable |
| 08/07/17 | | Retirement |
| 3 retirement planning tips |
| 07/23/17 | | Retirement |
| How to motivate yourself |
| 07/02/17 | | Retirement |
| The hardest problem in finance |
| 06/11/17 | | Retirement |
| Safe vs. optimal |
| 06/11/17 | | Retirement |
| Retirement without trepidation |
| 05/28/17 | | Retirement |
| Hope triumphing over experience |
| 05/07/17 | | Retirement |
| Work longer to retire earlier |
| 04/16/17 | | Retirement |
| Get serious about retirement ages |
| 03/19/17 | | Retirement |
| Rich or free |
| 02/26/17 | | Retirement |
| The retirement spending smile |
| 02/05/17 | | Retirement |
| The global 4 per cent |
| 01/15/17 | | Retirement |
| The pension warning bell |
| 01/01/17 | | Retirement |
| Retirement - golf |
| 12/17/16 | | Retirement |
| Semi-retirement is more fun |
| 10/29/16 | | Retirement |
| The looming pension crisis |
| 10/16/16 | | Retirement |
| Retirement glidepath |
| 10/02/16 | | Retirement |
| Putting it all on red |
| 09/18/16 | | Retirement |
| Plenty of stocks |
| 09/11/16 | | Retirement |
| Saving, investing and parting thoughts |
| 09/04/16 | | Retirement |
| Most retirement accounts never run dry |
| 08/28/16 | | Retirement |
| Re-evaluation of pension returns |
| 08/28/16 | | Retirement |
| The reality of retirement |
| 08/21/16 | | Retirement |
| New retiree withdrawal rate |
| 08/14/16 | | Retirement |
| Am I saving enough for retirement? |
| 07/31/16 | | Retirement |
| CPP Memo |
| 06/25/16 | | Retirement |
| Life of Riley Index |
| 06/25/16 | | Retirement |
| Fortunes you can't control |
| 06/11/16 | | Retirement |
| Many unhappy returns |
| 11/21/15 | | Retirement |
| Retirement planning |
| 11/08/15 | | Retirement |
| TFSAs and OAS |
| 09/20/15 | | Retirement |
| How has the 4% rule held up |
| 08/16/15 | | Retirement |
| False assumptions by Ontario pension planners |
| 06/06/15 | | Retirement |
| New math for retirees |
| 05/09/15 | | Retirement |
| The paradox of success |
| 04/25/15 | | Retirement |
| The Financial Freedom Index |
| 02/20/15 | | Retirement |
| Achievable retirement planning |
| 02/20/15 | | Retirement |
| Can't stay retired |
| 12/06/14 | | Retirement |
| Managing money for retirement |
| 10/11/14 | | Retirement |
| Dreaming of a cheap tropical retirement? |
| 09/19/14 | | Retirement |
| Canadians can afford retirement |
| 09/05/13 | | Retirement |
| The hidden DB in DC plans |
| 05/12/13 | | Retirement |
| Meet the man who retired at 30 |
| 04/27/13 | | Retirement |
| The retirement gamble |
| 04/27/13 | | Retirement |
| Retirement is cheaper than you think |
| 03/17/13 | | Retirement |
| Small towns can offer big savings |
| 02/03/13 | | Retirement |
| How spending declines with age |
| 06/12/12 | | Retirement |
| Earnings Assumptions and Century Bonds |
| 09/26/10 | | Retirement |
| The cost of retiring at 66 |
| 06/27/10 | | Retirement |
| Optimal withdrawal rates |
| 03/25/10 | | Retirement |
| Low savings are the problem |
| 02/16/10 | | Retirement |
| RRSPs and the GIS don't mix well |
| 11/29/09 | | Retirement |
| The looming retirement crisis |
| 09/18/09 | | Retirement |
| Retirees need only 60% of working income |
| 09/23/08 | | Retirement |
| Spending safely |
| 07/10/08 | | Retirement |
| Your post-subprime portfolio |
| 07/10/08 | | Retirement |
| Study finds pension-plan returns top 401(k)s |
| 06/21/08 | | Retirement |
| Defined benefit vs. 401(k) plans |
| 06/21/08 | | Retirement |
| How long will you live? |
| 06/10/08 | | Retirement |
| Wealthy? Here's some good news |
| 05/27/08 | | Retirement |
| Are you saying no to free money from your employer? |
| 02/17/07 | | Retirement |
| Destitute at 80 |
| 02/12/07 | | Retirement |
| Procrastination will cost you |
| 11/26/06 | | Retirement |
| A 'layer cake' plan for your retirement |
| 09/10/06 | | Retirement |
| Bing's secrets to a happy retirement |
| 07/02/06 | | Retirement |
| Life is less expensive for older couples |
| 06/07/06 | | Retirement |
| The spending question |
| 05/21/06 | | Retirement |
| Stave off old-age poverty |
| 04/23/06 | | Retirement |
| Final paycheck gets ever farther away |
| 04/16/06 | | Retirement |
| The best of the Internet calculators |
| 02/25/06 | | Retirement |
| Divorce can scramble nest eggs |
| 02/19/06 | | Retirement |
| The depressing truth |
| 02/18/06 | | Retirement |
| The myth of the $1 million retirement |
| 02/16/06 | | Retirement |
| 3 rules for a happy retirement |
| 02/05/06 | | Retirement |
| Caveat investor |
| 01/14/06 | | Retirement |
| Retirees: look out below |
| 01/09/06 | | Retirement |
| Healthy planning |
| 12/04/05 | | Retirement |
| In the future, you'll need less money |
| 07/19/05 | | Retirement |
| S&L redux |
| 06/22/05 | | Retirement |
| Reality retirement planning |
| 06/08/05 | | Retirement |
| Confusion dogs foreign content change |
| 02/27/05 | | Retirement |
| A tale of three options for your RRSP dollars |
| 02/27/05 | | Retirement |
| Eliminating foreign limit? It's about time |
| 02/27/05 | | Retirement |
| When not to buy an RRSP |
| 02/11/05 | | Retirement |
| Making RRSP withdrawals is seldom a good idea |
| 02/11/05 | | Retirement |
| Working retirement |
| 04/29/03 | | Retirement |
| U.S. pension agency is sinking |
| 01/27/03 | | Retirement |
| How would you benefit from boost to the RRSP limit? |
| 01/23/03 | | Retirement |
| RRSPs at a glance |
| 01/22/03 | | Retirement |
| Is international diversification good? |
| 01/20/03 | | Retirement |
| Pension managers ask Ottawa to end limit |
| 01/10/03 | | Retirement |
| RSPs losing favour: survey |
| 01/07/03 | | Retirement |
| Portfolio risk in dollar cost averaging |
| 12/29/02 | | Retirement |
| Markets hurt DP plans |
| 11/22/02 | | Retirement |
| On the edge of a credibility gap |
| 09/30/02 | | Retirement |
| Up against the pension headwind |
| 07/23/02 | | Retirement |
| A new personal finance |
| 07/01/02 | | Retirement |
| Simple math of wealth creation |
| 06/24/02 | | Retirement |
| Retirement: Ready or not, hear it comes! |
| 05/15/02 | | Retirement |
| Primer for Canadian Do-It-Yourself Investors |
| 01/04/02 | | Retirement |
| Retirees caught short by stocks return to work |
| 10/01/01 | | Retirement |
| The retirement calculator from hell, part III |
| 09/16/01 | | Retirement |
