The S&P has not had any positive return in 10yrs and the DOW has barely moved either in 10yrs. Going forward the best the market can do is 9% annually so why take all the risk in the world just for 9% when you can make 4.5% risk free. You can get 5yr CD now at 3% so by next yr or so, it will get to 4.5%.

This is what i practice and it works perfectly.

The stock market is the biggest lie ever told to the American people. and i realized at early age that it was a gimmick. The first rule to get to retirement is savings !

I think it is actually best to have a part of you portfolio in fixed income and money market in order to withdraw from this part and leave your equities in the market.

However, each year, you will have to transfer a portion of your equities into fixed income and money market funds in order to keep the same asset allocation. The best thing to do is to have a few years of income into fixed income and transfer (sell) more % of equities when the market is high (in 2-3 years for example).

I’m glad to be back too!

In any case you’re likely to end up caught between having inconsistent/negative returns and not having enough to last the rest of your life. There doesn’t seem to be a good solution to this, but unfortunately it’s rarely discussed at all (it’s true that it’s not a problem until you actually get people to invest but it does need to be resolved eventually).

Personally I plan to avoid this problem by working hard to get continuous income that’s not based on how much work I keep doing, recognizing the full price I pay when I spend money on things I don’t need (which leads to avoiding a lot of spending), and then giving myself more free time and security using a combination of work (there’s always something that’s interesting and worth money) to make up for inconsistent investment returns, controlled spending to avoid blowing it all in one year, and investment growth over time (hopefully a long time) to give me more options. I don’t mind what I’m doing now at all but I’m aiming to do this as soon as I can, which means I can plan to be in the market for a long time and I can provide extra income to balance things out. Of course this is very unusual and doesn’t completely resolve the problem in the end so it doesn’t really help anyone but me

So a question, would you then be timing your withdrawls (i.e. depending on the market returns?).

I would have thought that a gradual approach independant of returns would be better because it would be easier to follow and be disciplined on.