Financial Planning Analysis
Taking Portfolio Spending Into the Real World for Retirees
There has been too much emphasis on the portfolio and spending conservatively to keep failure rates low. This is not the whole story for retirement income. Certain circumstances, which we will explore, may allow retirees to accept a higher probability of “failure,” and spend more aggressively from their investment portfolio.
Read MoreWhat Can the Retirement CARE Analysis™ Tell You About Your Retirement Plan?
The Retirement CARE Analysis can help you figure out your asset allocation and an appropriate spending rate for retirement.
Read MoreHow Should Your Asset Allocation Look in Retirement?
Asset allocations come in many shapes and sizes, but they’re never more important than when you enter retirement.
Read MoreThe Possibilities of Broader Diversification in Retirement
Often, retirees are limited to accepting whatever a researcher assumes about market returns in order to obtain guidance about sustainable spending rates. I proposed a general framework for determining a safe withdrawal rate for a given retirement duration, acceptable failure probability, asset allocation, and capital market expectations.
Read MoreShould You Use a Rising Equity Glide Path in Retirement?
Retirement income comes in many forms. Wade Pfau considers the pros and cons of a rising equity glide path.
Read MoreThe Dangers of Putting Our Faith in Statistics
Statistics are great and all, but just because the numbers say something will happen doesn’t make it the gospel truth.
Read MoreWhich Makes More Sense for Retirees: A Total-Return or Income Portfolio?
Total-return investing focuses on building diversified portfolios from stocks and bonds to seek greater long-term investment growth.
Read MoreUnderstanding the Funded Ratio
Everyone wants to know where they stand with their finances – Will I be able to have the retirement I want? Do I have enough? Roughly how far do I have to go? Am I overfunded (believe me, it happens)?
Read MoreYour Retirement Number Is Meaningless
Retirement is this big unknown for so many folks, that when someone offers to nail it down to a concrete number, of course people will line up. The only problem is, it’s meaningless.
Read MoreDynamic Programming Methods For Retirement Income
In addition to other methods we’ve discussed, a third type of variable spending model uses dynamic programming methods. These methods rely on complex computing power and mathematical equations to integrate spending and asset allocation decisions more completely over the life cycle.
Dynamic programming provides a road map at each point in time for optimal spending and asset allocation, which have been determined by first considering optimal future behavior stemming from today’s decisions.
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