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...I don't think Glass Steagall would have prevented this after all.... Under Glass-Steagall, until 1999, it was illegal for a bank to have branches in more than one state. That certainly would have had some kind of effect in limiting the size of banks, and preventing the existence of banks "too big to fail." It would also have made banking less appealing to ambitious people wanting to built national financial empires. I believe that the regulation specifically limiting the geography of branches was the 1927 Mcfadden Act, not Glass Steagall, and the deregulation actually occurred a bit earlier, in 1994 through the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act which allowed them to operate interstate starting June 1,...

In February of 2020, ARKK had over $50 billion in AUM. How do you feel about that as a rational investment? Could those investors have been wrong?

It's a bit different than this though. The Fed is offering to lend at OIS + 10 bps. OIS is not a market interest rate for a term loan. OIS is a derived rate based on the overnight market rate. In times with ample liquidity in the banking sector, OIS + 10 bps has been a good approximation of a market interest rate for a fully collateralized loan. But these loans are not fully collateralized, and we may be entering a time when liquidity in the banking sector is in short supply. So, to the extent that this facility is used, it generally will be asking for something below a full market interest rate. Generally, a below market rate loan can viewed as being a partial gift. In other words, you could recast the below market rate loan as a market i...

Paraphrasing Matt Levine: Bank A has a $100 bond and $10 of cash and depositors want $70, immediately. The bank is solvent because it has sufficient assets right? Well, it doesn't have enough cash so it has to sell the $100 bond to pay depositors. All is well. Oops, interest rates changed and the bond is worth $50 today. The bank is dead because it can't fund the deposits if it is forced to sell at the price of $50, even though it has an asset with a certain value of $100 in X years. This is why bank runs are bad, and this is why people say "don't sell stocks while they're down" - you lock in a loss, and when the loss is locked in, the bank is insolvent. If it hasn't sold yet, it still has the same assets at a known future price ...

I think there is a mismatch between people saying they expect 0% real from gold and then forming conclusions from backtesting data with 6% real returns. Other than that, I believe gold has been a good diversifier over the last 40 years. If I had 8 figures ($10 million) gold would almost certainly make up at least 10% of my portfolio. I'm not there yet so its a soft pass for now. I do enjoy the gold threads. I'm interested in what will be said here. What changes when you go from $8M to $12M? Not much that I know of. Something change in your personal life? Seems like it would do just as much good or bad at $8M as $12M. There's not some magic amount where it starts making a dramatic difference in a portfolio. As people get wealthier, their ne...

not sure why people don't think this is a bailout lol the feds set up a program sunday night called BTFP that allows banks to borrow against their underwater treasuries at par. FDIC says there are $620b worth of underwater bonds on bank balance sheets today, so the program essentially plugs a $620billion hole. if you are only focusing on the FDIC expansion of insurance cap for depositors, you are very obviously missing the bigger picture. this is the beginning of QE5 under a different name. What’s the interest rate to borrow against their bonds? The interest rate for loans under the BTFP (which cannot have a term of more than one year) is "the one‐year overnight index swap rate plus 10 basis points." The rate will be fixed, rathe...

not sure why people don't think this is a bailout lol the feds set up a program sunday night called BTFP that allows banks to borrow against their underwater treasuries at par. FDIC says there are $620b worth of underwater bonds on bank balance sheets today, so the program essentially plugs a $620billion hole. if you are only focusing on the FDIC expansion of insurance cap for depositors, you are very obviously missing the bigger picture. this is the beginning of QE5 under a different name. What’s the interest rate to borrow against their bonds? The interest rate for loans under the BTFP (which cannot have a term of more than one year) is "the one‐year overnight index swap rate plus 10 basis points." The rate will be fixed, rathe...

Parkinglotracer wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 8:44 am Surprised me Vanguard owned so much. I guess it should not have. Like the lessons of the 2008 crisis I re-realize our financial system is quite fragile and we are all connected in this together.

The Fed waited too long to raise rates and now is in a tough position and required raising rates quickly to control inflation. Banks failed to deal with the duration risk of bonds in a rising interest rate environment. Bank runs occur.

What can this personal investor do? Have a diversified portfolio and go get a life.

[Off-topic comments removed by admin LadyGeek]

Silicon Valley Bank was a U.S. publicly traded company. Vanguard is the largest shareholder of most U.S. publicly traded companies (see, e.g., here).

It looks like the big changes to one-day yields for Fidelity Municipal Money Market Fund are always on Thursdays. Presumably this correlates with the SIFMA index being updated on Wednesdays and then interest rates on 7-day municipal VRDOs held by the MMFs resetting. It seems that a good choice would be to check Thursday's one day rate each Friday morning and then decide whether to swap on Friday. Would seem to give quite good accuracy for the timing. That looks actionable and simple and most likely more valuable than most other approaches. Yes, that seems smart. But it makes it even more important to test out how settlement works (test, not just rely on what might be stated somewhere). Ie do you get interest starting Fri, or not until Mond...

Institutional pages for all(?) of Fidelity’s MM funds are here: https://institutional.fidelity.com/app/item/RD_13569_21709.html I look up yields from each fund’s institutional page on the "Fees & Distributions" tab and selecting a date range under "Historical Prices, Distribution & Yields". Thanks, I should have known to look at the Institutional page, I don't know the Fidelity site all that well. I think We can do something here! Fidelity also has a dedicated history page like Vanguard's https://institutional.fidelity.com/app/funds/hpdy Look up FZEXX and see the jump on 2/9/23 and how far behind the 7-day column is. So the comment of precision and accuracy is still important. We need good input data for the res...

What kind of results would you get for a District of Columbia resident? My federal marginal rate is 38.8%. My DC marginal rate is 8.75%. In DC, all municipal bonds (regardless of the location of the issuer) are exempt from DC income tax. I think DC is the only jurisdiction with an income tax where this is the case so that a high marginal rate DC taxpayer has just about the largest possible incentive to hold munis. I recently wrote a tool to look at optimizing MM choices based upon current yields, historical patterns and personal rates. You can be my first victim :-) Here is a link to a Google sheet that allows you to enter your jurisdiction (I have already put in a first stab at DC), tax rates and see what is best today and what would have...

We have not seen much, if any, relationship between what we earn and what we spend. Instead, we spend what we want and then save whatever is left over. As our incomes have increased, our spending has not changed very much at all, as we were already spending what we wanted to spend. This has meant our savings rate has been increasing. In the early 2010s, we were saving about 40% of gross income. In 2020, 2021, and 2022, we saved 53%, 53%, and 60% of gross income. I expect that we will have some career changes in the coming years, but that our spending will again remain relatively steady, so that we will probably be falling below 40% and maybe as low as 20%.

anon_investor wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 4:12 pm

preach wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 1:17 pm Municipal MMF indexes are already closing in on 4% that were 1.8% just a few days ago. This swing upward is going to be even harder than the drop downward from a couple months ago.

I personally am expecting to see actual muni mmf 7-day yields to be above 3% within a week or so.

Me too. You can look at one day yields from other company's muni MMFs (Fidelity, Blackrock, Federated Hermes) and see a spike of about 1% betweem 2/8 and 2/9 for all of them.

Wow, yes. It looks like VMSXX TEY (5.62%) already crossed over VUSXX TEY (5.17%) for me today 2/10.

This is a good plan and similar to what we plan to do when the time comes. My only concern would be whether the withdrawal rate is "too low." This is not a problem, per se, but perhaps a sign that you are not be getting the most out of the tradeoffs that are available to you. If I were in your shoes, I would try to think about whether there were things (more travel? more luxurious travel? home improvement projects? giving to children or charity with a "warm hand"?) that I would rather use the money for while I am in my 50s and 60s than after I am dead, and can no longer experience the benefit of the resources being expended. None of these things needs to lead to any permanent "lifestyle inflation," so if it tu...

This is a good plan and similar to what we plan to do when the time comes. My only concern would be whether the withdrawal rate is "too low." This is not a problem, per se, but perhaps a sign that you are not be getting the most out of the tradeoffs that are available to you. If I were in your shoes, I would try to think about whether there were things (more travel? more luxurious travel? home improvement projects? giving to children or charity with a "warm hand"?) that I would rather use the money for while I am in my 50s and 60s than after I am dead, and can no longer experience the benefit of the resources being expended. None of these things needs to lead to any permanent "lifestyle inflation," so if it tur...

Current age: 35

Current portfolio value: $1.6M

Target for retirement: Current home is paid off, but we will upgrade in a few years and will want to pay that off before retirement; will have SS+pension+TIPS+I bonds to provide lifelong, federal-government-guaranteed, inflation-protected income to provide for baseline needs and wants; the remaining risk portfolio will be whatever it ends up being

Target retirement age: no earlier than 42, probably no later than 62, but don't really have a fixed idea at this point

AnnetteLouisan wrote: ↑Fri Jan 27, 2023 5:29 pm

Darth Xanadu wrote: ↑Fri Jan 27, 2023 10:35 am Today marks my 5 year anniversary since joining Bogleheads. It's no exaggeration when I say that the information and guidance on this forum has been an integral part of securing my family's financial future. Thank you all so much!! In that 5 years, my investable assets have more than doubled!

This month, my household net worth eclipsed $2m (for the 2nd time, haha )

Same here! High five! (first time for me, and two are better than one… although I don’t think that’s what that saying meant).

We also hit $2M net worth for the first time this month, and we (coincidentally) paid off the mortgage more or less the same day.

Thanks for both of these posts, which I think are accurate. My original post was general in nature and perhaps could have been more specific. But I guess I should have defined "semi-retirement" as "still having enough income to cover expenses," which is what I think it is, at least on this forum. The 20x and more responses simply make no sense if you have income that is largely covering expenses, because it dramatically reduces and likely eliminates the withdrawal rate. With that said, what I was trying to get at in this thread was how big of a nest egg do you need to pull your foot off the income gas? As much as I want to semi-retire, I am well aware that a dollar earned when you are 35 is more valuable than a dollar e...

And there we have it. Even at 38.8/5.75 rates, Muni MMF is yielding less right now than it did at the last trough. 2.84% vs 2.87 That's a BIG drop compared to what we've seen in the last year's worth of cycles. Very interesting indeed. It's also interesting that the slope of VUSXX has clearly flattened since the 1st week of December. https://i.postimg.cc/HnVp2DQD/Capture.jpg What kind of results would you get for a District of Columbia resident? My federal marginal rate is 38.8%. My DC marginal rate is 8.75%. In DC, all municipal bonds (regardless of the location of the issuer) are exempt from DC income tax. I think DC is the only jurisdiction with an income tax where this is the case so that a high marginal rate DC taxpayer has just about...

Does anyone have insight as to why the VTWAX (Total World Stock Index) fund, which currently consists of 41% international stock (59% US), does not show any foreign taxes paid for 2022? All the other funds holding international equities show up in the just-released "2022 Foreign tax credit information for eligible Vanguard funds" document except Total World Stock Index. Cannot account for its omission. Because the international holdings are less than 50%. It's one reason many recommend holding VTSAX+VTIAX in the appropriate proportion if you have larger holdings in taxable. That is interesting. Could you explain more what 50% has to do with the paying of foreign taxes? Btw, the STAR fund has around 19% international equities but ...

Here's a start to a quantitative analysis. Assume the OP has a separate $146,919 that would be allocated to fixed income. (These are reasonable assumptions for a couple with no heirs in their 50s, but this specifically is needed for an apples-to-apples comparison.) Seems like an important assumption, and we need to know more about the rest of OP's fixed income assets and/or fixed liabilities (e.g., mortgage) to evaluate. OP, do you have $147k in munis or other readily available fixed income assets sitting around that you don't really need to be holding for liquidity/emergency fund/avoiding or paying off some other high interest rate debt/etc.? If so, paying the loan off quickly could be a good idea, and then you can decide what to do with ...

When I looked into this, I found that, at least in my circumstances, it was a bit difficult to calculate precisely, that it may change from year-to-year, and that the net difference was unlikely to be more than a few basis points. I concluded from this that I should worry about other things instead.

Ten years ago, my (now) wife and I were a little over $300k in debt and had very little in the way of assets. I moved to a new city by putting everything I owned in two backpacks and walking to the train station. On the way, I met up with a friend and went out to dinner. He had to pay for me, because I was not sure there was enough money in my bank account to cover both the meal and my next two weeks of expenses. Fortunately, I did have a good job lined up (as did DW), which I started exactly ten years ago and have stayed in since. Our approximate progression since then: Age Net Worth 25 -$310k 26 -$240k 27 -$120k 28 $0 29 $100k 30 $270k 31 $480k 32 $750k 33 $1.1M 34 $1.53M 35 $1.68M It hasn't always been the easiest decade, but it is nice...

Thank you very much for your work on this. It is already an excellent tool with a very user friendly interface, and you seem to be continuing to make improvements. I hope to use this a few years from now.

We just save whatever is left after the credit cards and other expenses are paid for the month. For me, that is the simplest method. We generally save around 50% of gross income each year using this method, so it seems to work fine.

It's nice to see that this thread has evolved in a way where folks are talking about things like the Kelly Criterion, lifecycle investing, and the risk management and irrational-path-dependence problems of holding separate "funny money" accounts that are not rebalanced with your "main" portfolio. However, it may be worth acknowledging that the original (and "Part II") HFEA explicitly rejected these kinds of "rational" approaches to setting and then gradually reducing your leverage over time. The idea was to have a separate fund of investments that would maintain their very high leverage even as it (hopefully) came to dominate your entire portfolio with either no exit strategy at all or a cliff-based s...

Main thing is just to save a bunch. Second thing is to find a niche where you can stick around a while without being unhappy. Both of these things mean focus on playing your own game, not someone else's. The other things discussed above do matter, but not nearly as much. I've been in at a Big Law firm for a little over a decade, consistently saving around 50% of gross income. It all adds up pretty fast. Most of my peers don't seem to have focused on either of those two big things, so they spend a lot for a few years and then leave without much to show for it.

Main thing is just to save a bunch. Second thing is to find a niche where you can stick around a while without being unhappy. Both of these things mean focus on playing your own game, not someone else's. The other things discussed above do matter, but not nearly as much. I've been in at a Big Law firm for a little over a decade, consistently saving around 50% of gross income. It all adds up pretty fast. Most of my peers don't seem to have focused on either of those two big things, so they spend a lot for a few years and then leave without much to show for it.

For 2022, my time weighted rate of return was about -17% (70/30 portfolio), my Beardstown accounting return, including contributions from salary but excluding a one time windfall, was about +3%, and my Beardstown accounting return, including all contributions, was about +16%.

We did. Two maxed backdoor Roths straight into VTWAX, as we do every January.

I believe Vanguard relies on the CRSP growth and value indexes. You can read a pretty detailed explanation of the methodology used by CRSP to update these indexes starting on page 33 of their index methodology guide.

Does that apply to you? You are asking about being a FERS annuitant, but the WEP simply doesn't apply if you were only covered by FERS. If the WEP doesn't apply, why worry about the exceptions? Because I was not only covered by FERS. That's the issue. I'm covered, or will be covered, by FERS, a foreign government pension, and SS. And yes I did read the entire brochure. However, the section you quoted does not answer my question or clarify the confusing "exception." Basically an "exception" means that "all the other stuff we talk about in this brochure doesn't apply." So what constitutes a "federal worker" and therefore an exception to WEP? I would guess that it means that WEP does not apply to your s...

So there is zero chance I will do this math myself, but I think it is interesting to occasionally browse through the analytic backup for a typical Target retirement fund. It is often quite sophisticated in that it takes into account different possible sources of disutility if actual returns vary from expected returns in different ways, and attempts to optimize the asset allocation plan in light of those different forms of risk and different possible asset scenarios. This of course doesn't mean any particular glide path is right for every individual, but again it is an uncontroversial observation that almost all these efforts produce some sort of glide path as optimally balancing out the risks associated with different forms of disutility g...

Typical glidepaths works well for the goals and circumstances of typical people. If you are very far from typical in your goals and circumstances, then a typical glidepath may not be a good fit for you. For example, if you care more than most about making the most likely outcome an earlier retirement, but care less than most about the potential (but not overwhelmingly likely) chance of a significantly delayed retirement, then a sharper glidepath than typical can make more sense. In the extreme case, where you care entirely about the most likely outcome and not one jot about the possibility of an extended delay, the glidepath could become a cliff (although hopefully the cliff is before you put in your notice, rather than the day you get your...

The late Lee E. Marshall, CLU, wrote a chapter of The Bogleheads' Guide to Retirement . It begins We believe that permanent life insurance should not be used as an investment vehicle and elaborates on that. But the answer is "no." He describes two specific situations in which he thinks whole life insurance might make sense: Insurance for pension maximization ...The insurance industry developed a marketing concept called pension maximization. The idea suggests that [instead of a join-and-survivor annuity] the retiree take the higher payout of the straight life annuity and use the difference in retirement benefits to help pay for a permanent life insurance policy.... Disadvantages include that the premium to buy enough life insuran...

After tax yield = (Yield to Maturity)*(1-Tax rate) so for this example... 5.75 * (1 - .37 - .038) = 3.404% Taxable Equivalent Yield = 3.404/(1-.37-.083-.0875) = 7.4% So my TEY on a 5.75% agency bond that is state and local tax exempt is 7.4%? I feel like I did something wrong here. There is a typo where you have .083 in the TEY calculation where it should be .038. The NIIT is 3.8% not 8.3%. Subtracting out only federal and not SALT is correct for the after tax yield calculation because you are paying federal but not state taxes on this bond. You subtract out both federal and SALT on the TEY calculation denominator because you are looking for an equivalent bond that is subject to all of these taxes (federal plus SALT), so Kevin M had things...

If someone panic sells, it pretty much has to be because of fear of a future further fall, rather than because of what has already happened by the time they sold. By definition, selling after a drop cannot insulate you from that drop. This is one reason I don't think people should ever pick some specific number (e.g., a 50% drop in stocks) and tell themselves "as long as it is no worse than this, I will be OK." By picking some number that you think is realistic, you think that there's a good chance it may actually occur during your investing lifetime. If it does end up occuring, or even getting close, it is pretty hard to avoid--in real time--speculating about how much worse things may get. Once you are worried about breaching wha...

Is there something I missed - your personal reasons - that's not covered in some way by what I listed? I have explained my personal reasons for not factor tilting in another thread Here is the bottom line on factor investing for me: There is strong evidence that the portfolio that is most likely to maximize the Sharpe ratio (i.e., have the best trade-off between "risk" and return where "risk" is, for this purpose, defined solely in terms of variance) over sufficiently long periods of time (>30 years) will have a substantial tilt towards small and value factors. It is likely that this "superior" performance results in significant part from a trade-off between "risk" in the narrowly defined sense of va...

Ten years ago, my (now) wife and I were a little over $300k in debt and had very little in the way of assets. I moved to a new city by putting everything I owned in two backpacks and walking to the train station. On the way, I met up with a friend and went out to dinner. He had to pay for me, because I was not sure there was enough money in my bank account to cover both the meal and my next two weeks of expenses. Fortunately, I did have a good job lined up (as did DW), which I started exactly ten years ago and have stayed in since. Our approximate progression since then: Age Net Worth 25 -$310k 26 -$240k 27 -$120k 28 $0 29 $100k 30 $270k 31 $480k 32 $750k 33 $1.1M 34 $1.53M 35 $1.68M It hasn't always been the easiest decade, but it is nice ...

Yes, if a 50% gross income savings rate at 38x expenses has a negligible chance of failure then this metric is a "good enough" plan. Uh-huh. Can you estimate your "chance of failure" without reference to expected returns? Given the amount saved and the savings rate, if he is fairly flexible on what the "x" will actually end up being, and is willing to put a decent chunk into TIPS, and has a paid off house, and will get decent Social Security benefits, then he should be able to make things work enough to not be called a "failure" even with a -100% drawdown in stocks (although of course other things can always go wrong in conjunction with large stock drawdowns and a plan cannot have no assumptions what...

Here are TIPS real rates at the beginning of this year. Date 5YR 7YR 10YR 20YR 30YR 01/03/2022 -1.58 -1.25 -0.97 -0.55 -0.36 Here are the most recent TIPS real rates Date 5YR 7YR 10YR 20YR 30YR 09/06/2022 0.87 0.86 0.85 0.99 1.11 Ma and Pa Kettle plan to retire in about 10 years and their benefits then will be about $70,000 in today's dollars in the first year. Finding the PV of those benefits on (1/3/22) using some combination of current TIPS yields will result in a much higher PV than when they redo the same calculation an hour from now. This will result in lowering their stock allocation today significantly below their allocation to stocks in January simply because the PV of their SS benefit has changed significantly. And this change in...

JackoC wrote: ↑Wed Sep 07, 2022 10:37 am My point is about using an estimate, 95%-tile based on the historical distribution . . .

Ok, I agree that is not a worthwhile pursuit.

I am in the camp of "if you can look at something in two different ways, then it is fine to look at it in either way or both, but you need to be careful in being consistent." If someone finds it helpful to view the future stream of Social Security benefits as an asset for some purpose that is OK. But being careful means making appropriate adjustments when you switch from one lens to another and not letting changes in framing trick you into changes in conclusions. One important aspect here is that you should avoid relying on any kind of "rule of thumb" about asset allocations that is based on viewing things in one way while simultaneously using a different perspective. So, for example, you should never use some rule of th...

C. Unfortunately, no. Again Stats 101, if the mean of the future distribution is lower and variance/higher moments same, the outcome which fell at the 95%-tile will fall at a lower %-tile, but also outcomes which fell beyond the left tail of the finite historical distribution will now fall within the future distribution's left tail. There's nothing special about 100%. It does not make using the past of distribution of returns for future planning, when the expected return is so clearly lower than the midpoint of the past return distribution, any more valid. It makes a difference relative of course, 100%-tile by past distribution is more conservative than 95%-tile by past results just like 95%-tile by past results is more conservative than 9...

As I said, only a person at the edge case would need to make *no* assumptions about the future return distribution. It follows obviously that there are matters of degree. I don't base my plans very much on my views of the future return distribution, of course a given person can arrive at a combination of age, natural spending appetite and financial resources where the return assumption isn't as important at least in terms of 'running out of money'*. But again I or anyone could give 100's or 1000's of links to posts on this forum using '% probability of success' from tools like FireCalc in discussing their plans. If the situation were correctly understood results from models like that would seldom be mentioned at all IMO, yet they are menti...

As I said, only a person at the edge case would need to make *no* assumptions about the future return distribution. It follows obviously that there are matters of degree. I don't base my plans very much on my views of the future return distribution, of course a given person can arrive at a combination of age, natural spending appetite and financial resources where the return assumption isn't as important at least in terms of 'running out of money'*. But again I or anyone could give 100's or 1000's of links to posts on this forum using '% probability of success' from tools like FireCalc in discussing their plans. If the situation were correctly understood results from models like that would seldom be mentioned at all IMO, yet they are menti...

Just to illustrate my point. March 2020 was the most recent down turn that looked scary. It was actually a pretty good time to invest. I did some modest rebalancing to maintain my target AA. But, here is an example of the point i am trying to make about the behavioral issues being a big factor that will often over ride what the dispassionate analysis might indicate, (on March 12, 2020): True, and when things reach a certain point you might have to come to grips with the fact that you're not roboinvestor, as most of us aren't. You may feel disproportionately bad about losses on buy trade you do now, even to 'rebalance', even if months or years from now it looks great. And right, spouse/partner, they might get even more upset by that than ab...

2. This IMO is back to the false dichotomy that there's a way to plan retirement savings over a 30 yr period without predicting, and the problem is all these pesky people trying to predict things. There is again no way to plan retirement saving except at the boundaries (save the absolute literal max, work till you no longer can; or 'don't worry about retirement') without making some assumptions about the return distribution. If you accept that the mean of the future return distribution is lower than that of the past return distribution yet still assume the past left tail events will represent the same %-tile outcomes, you've made the assumption/prediction the variance/higher moments of the future distribution are lower/more favorable than ...

That said your response tends to go off again on the theme of whether high valuation now implies lower valuation in the future. The yield based measures of E[r] as the pg 19 graph *DO NOT* assume that. I've belabored that point I realize, to anybody without the kneejerk reaction that mention of 'valuation' means proposing *mean reversion of valuation*, but the debate keeps shifting back to that, ignoring that expected return declines when valuation increases *WITHOUT* assuming valuation will decline. Which is again 100% obvious with bonds: a lower yield means you get...a lower yield, a lower return. It doesn't depend on any assumption that buying at today's low yield makes you a sucker because 'yields have to go back up'. You're not and th...

I think a 5% constant percentage method from a risk portfolio can be a reasonable choice if you: (i) have a preference for a formulaic, rather than ad hoc, approach to withdrawals; (ii) have a baseline of income and consumption from other sources like a paid-off house, Social Security, a pension, a TIPS ladder, a SPIA, etc., so that a significant depletion of your risk portfolio will not put you in dire straights; (iii) do not have a strong preference for low volatility in your withdrawals because a relatively large portion of your expenses will be discretionary expenses (especially things like travel, gifts, charity, etc. that are easy to scale up and down from year to year); (iv) have a preference for using your assets for productive use ...