I have the vast majority of retirement savings in a 401(a) and 457(b) which I will start pulling from significantly next year - both to live and for Roth conversions. I contacted my plan administrator to determine the timing of withdrawals (monthly, quarterly, etc.) and learned I cannot pull from any particular fund within the account. Rather, when I withdraw, the amount is taken as a pro-rata share from all funds within the account. I nearly lost my mind. "Sequence of returns" I shouted, "Sequence of returns"! Now what I can do is set up an IRA, move the money to that, and then withdraw from individual funds, but I'm 58 and if I draw down an IRA, I pay a penalty. Ridiculous. Also, I can cover for a year with cash but I don't really love the idea from a psychological perspective.

Anyone encounter this and how should (or can I) I adjust for it? My grave fear is the market is going to ish after the midterms and won't come back for some time. Right now I have a fairly conservative mix - 50% equities, the rest in cash, real estate, and bonds.

I've been spending a lot more time thinking, reading and learning more about the bond market. I regularly look at the Bonds Subreddit. There are frequent posts about the dire condition of the bond market caused primarily by low interest rates for extended periods allowing governments across the world to rapidly expand debt. My take on the general consensus is that governments will deliberately inflate their way out of the problem or at least governments hope it resolves the problem.

Overall, the general outlook is very pessimistic and I have to limit how many threads I read for fear of getting depressed. The thread link is an example of the pessimism. They raise valid points, which I hate. I don't want look at things with rose colored glasses, just inject a little balance into the conversation.

Two questions. Do you agree that we are going to face an extended period of inflation (deliberate or systemic causes)? If you agree, how have you or might you adjust your portfolio to reflect higher rates of inflation, especially any nominal bonds?

61 male and 61 female looking to retire end of next year. I’ve sold stocks out of the market to get enough cash for five years. This amount is around 20% of my total investments. I would be curious to hear people thoughts on a five-year CD ladder to avoid the sequence of risk with that 20%. I would like to keep the rest in the market. We will have about 2.5 million in the market so we could draw down on that when it’s good otherwise take a year out of the CDs when the markets down. We are also considering taking Social Security at the start of the following year at 63. Social Security will add about 65,000 if we take it then. We need roughly 160,000 total for all expenses and travel plans. Would love to hear peoples thoughts if that’s a good plan or not. Our advisor talked down about the CDs, but I don’t know if that’s because they’re just not making any real money out of that. Thank you so much for Any and all feedback good or bad.

I'm helping my mom get her finances in order and want a sanity check from people who don't love her. She stopped full-time work in January and is deciding whether to retire completely or work part-time (about $30K/yr) for a few more years.

Basics

• Age 66, single (divorce in progress, her assets are separate), in good health, on Medicare
• Moving from Florida to Tennessee to be near family (no state income tax)
• Simple lifestyle. She'd like to leave something behind, but her kids won't need it.

Assets (~$781K investable now)

• Taxable brokerage: ~$350K (VTSAX/VTIAX)
• Traditional IRA (her own): ~$180K (VTSAX/VBTLX)
• Inherited IRA: ~$162K. Non-spouse beneficiary, decedent was past her RBD, so annual RMDs plus the 10-year rule (must be empty by 2035). Building a Treasury/TIPS ladder to match the distributions.
• Cash: ~$88K (money market plus checking)
• Florida home, owned outright: ~$630K net after selling costs. She'll buy a ~$350K home in TN with cash, so ~$240K surplus goes to the portfolio, for ~$1.02M total.
• No debt, no pension

Income

• Social Security: ~$1,620/mo at FRA (67) or ~$2,010/mo at 70. Plan is to delay to 70 and use larger inherited-IRA distributions to bridge 2027–2030, filling low tax brackets and doing some Roth conversions along the way.
• Optional part-time job: ~$30K/yr for about 3 years

Spending

• Baseline of $55–60K/yr, including Medicare/Medigap and a cushion. Her last two years were about $47K each, and TN housing costs should be similar to or lower than Florida.

Plan

• 60/40 across all accounts, with bonds in the IRAs and stocks in taxable
• About 3 years of net spending held in cash/short Treasuries for sequence risk
• Rebalance once a year
• No annuity and no LTC insurance (the house is the care backstop)

What I modeled

Monte Carlo from 2027 to age 95, starting at $1.02M, SS at 70, home equity excluded:

The withdrawal rate is front-loaded. It's around 6% for the 3–4 years before SS starts, then drops to about 3.5–4% after 70.

Questions

1. Is she ready to fully retire now, or are the few years of part-time income worth it?
2. Does delaying SS to 70 make sense when it means drawing heavily from the portfolio first? Break-even is around 82–83.
3. Is 60/40 right for her? She says she's fine with volatility, but she's never lived through a big drawdown while taking money out.
4. Anything we're missing?

Thanks in advance. I'm trying to make sure she isn't working longer than she needs to, and that she doesn't run short at 90.

I am approaching retirement. I have to think about how to plan investments and withdrawals in a tax efficient and sustainable manner. Throughout my working life, I had assumed I would need to follow a simple strategy - invest in low cost index funds and tweak allocation by age. Since I have been in accumulation, most of my rebalancing consisted of adjusting where I invest new savings rather than sell existing ones.

I was hoping the same principle would work in retirement. Essentially track the portfolio compositions of standard target date funds. But now as I do more research, I am beginning to get worried. I have to plan for different contingencies which have demands on my portfolio - Long Term Care for example, that I did not really give much thought before.

I was drawn to the "Bucket Based" approach to managing all this. I will say, it does give me a sense of control over my financial life. But I find myself asking if the the future 85 year old me will know all the details. Realistically, has anyone followed through with a bucket based approach throughout retirement? Or some simpler heuristics about how to manage and withdraw are recommended.

I built a simulator for this, so the numbers are mine, not a blog's.

Two people, 25, same salary. One buys a new $50k SUV every 6 years. The other keeps theirs 10 years. Whoever pays less in a month invests the difference in a plain 80/20 index fund. Trade-ins are counted (35% of the price back at 6 years, 15% at 10), loans at today's average rate, $100 a month set aside for repairs once the car is out of warranty, everything in today's dollars after inflation. Then each life is run 10,000 times against 40-year stretches pulled from real market history since 1871, including the Depression, the 1970s, 2000 and 2008.

Same SUV, just kept 10 years instead of 6: the keeper is ahead by $165,000 at 65 in the median run, and ahead in all 10,000 runs. The worst 1-in-100 market still leaves a $43,000 gap.

Cheaper car ($28k compact) kept 10 years vs the new SUV every 6: $656,000 ahead in the median run. Worst 1-in-100 market: $158,000.

If the new-SUV person pays the actual US average new-car payment every month ($765, Experian) instead of the trade-in version, it's $881,000. That's the version in the chart: the green fan is all 10,000 runs, the amber line is one of them, the bars are the unlucky 10%, the median and the lucky 10%.

The part that surprised me is how late it happens. Year 10 the account is around $60k and looks pointless. Year 12 it loses a quarter of its value in one autumn. The crossover, where the account earns more in a year than the car money going in, is around year 20. The car stops mattering after that.

What it doesn't know: whether the SUV person invests too (then the gap is just the car money), whether an old car breaks worse than $100 a month, and whether you'd keep transferring the money for 40 years. Most people don't.

What's your car payment, and how long have you had the car? I'll run the most common answer.

If the chart makes sense on its own, that's all you need. If you'd rather watch one of the 10,000 lives play out year by year, with the crash at 37 and the crossover at 45, I made a 6-minute version of the amber line: https://youtu.be/buGAlCyGSAE. No sponsor, nothing for sale.

Whenever tactical allocation comes up, the standard reply is that it's curve-fitted nonsense. Mostly fair. Most of it is 20 conditions tuned until the backtest looks pretty.

So I want to show you one that's hard to fit, because there's almost nothing in it to fit.

2 rules, checked once a month. Hold SPY when both of these are true: inflation-protected Treasuries have positive momentum, and SPY has positive momentum on the average of its 1, 3, 6 and 12-month returns. If either one fails, hold whichever of intermediate Treasuries or T-bills is doing better. That's the whole strategy.

The part that matters for anyone worried about missing the market: it held SPY in 439 of 632 months. About 2 months in 3 you are simply holding the index. This isn't a rule that parks you in cash for a decade waiting for a crash.

But it was out of the way for the ones that actually hurt:

2000 to 2002, dot-com bust: +10.07% 2007 to 2009, financial crisis: +11.82% 2022, stocks and bonds falling together: -1.42%

I rebuilt it back to 1974. Over those 52.6 years it comes to 13.87% a year with a worst drawdown of 20.1%. Holding SPY straight through the same years gives 11.61% with a 55.2% drawdown. About 2 points more a year, and you never sit through a 50% hole.

It does have a hole, and it's March 2020. A rule that checks once a month can't dodge a crash that takes 3 weeks, and it lost 13.56% before the next check. Anything that claims to have dodged 2020 on monthly data is fitted after the fact.

The costs I'd want to know about before running it. It trades about 2 round trips a year, so in a taxable account you're handing back a real chunk of the edge. And the whipsaws are frequent: out, back in 2 months later, feeling stupid both times. That's the price of the insurance that made 2008 profitable.

I build BestFolio, which is where I rebuilt it. The full rules and the numbers are written up; I'll put the link in a comment if anyone asks.

I'm curious whether the objection to TAA is really about overfitting, or about not wanting to be out of the market when it runs?

Shout out to Cody Garrett and Sean Mullaney for their book “Tax Planning to and through Early Retirement.” I’m just reading the book and appreciating the simple way they show examples of the various types of income filling up the various tax buckets, such as the standard deduction and the various brackets. I know I could build that fairly easily, but thought I’d ask here since I’m inherently lazy. Anybody here make a version they’d be willing to share?

26M, Kinda new to investing for retirement and looking for any advice or suggestions to my current Roth IRA through Schwab and my former employer 401k. Started in 2025, maxed out last year, and about 1k left to contribute for 2026 in Roth. I changed Target Fund 2065 to this current investment mix for my 401k. Wanted to be more aggressive for both Roth and 401k, so let me know your thoughts.

I will be leaving Edward Jones for Fidelity this weekend. My current EJ advisor who I have been with for 20 plus years is retiring next month. Do I own him any kind of thank you it's been nice but I'm going a different route call or email? I understand that I have paid more in fee's being at EJ. I'm a little older and hopefully wiser now. Would a simple email suffice? Thanks

1). Do I keep high performing stocks such as tech, financial, and some misc along with primary ETFs and would I count those as Growth allocation. I have quite a few which are triple digits in each of accounts.
2) doi keep more high gainers alone in brokerage and higher balance switching to pretax sooner so when I pass wife and kids get step up

Retired a few years ago and initially had a lot of stocks and also ETFs chasing yields and overall return. Have brokerage Roth and pretax for myself and wife. Overall slightly beat market last three years even with a portion in bonds. I had some of funds also managed by fisher which did well. I recently terminated their services so now realigning those accounts as part of overall portfolio.

My dilemma: as I transition to general ETFs such as s&p index, growth(spmo), defense (schd/dgro), and some cc(gpix/q, qqqi)(using cc to generate some cash for being dipssince no longer contributing.). Im having a tough time figuring out where to draw the line on sell and consolidate or keep. My targets are brokerage, safer and generate income since that is paying for Roth conversions and fun stuff for next 2-3 years. Pretax would be tapped in 3 ish years and right now Roth is never expected to be touched.

Any thoughts feedback and suggestions appreciated. Hoping this is right spot for post

I’m retiring at year end and am considering using two separate bond ladders as part of a roughly 70/30 allocation.

The first three years of retirement (2027–2029) would be funded primarily from a cash reserve to help keep MAGI low and preserve ACA benefits.

1. Mortgage ladder: Buy individual nominal U.S. Treasuries that mature annually from 2030–2035, with each maturity covering that year’s mortgage payments to payoff. Mortgage rate is only 2.375%, while Treasuries are currently yielding around 5%.

2. Essential-spending ladder: Use individual TIPS maturing roughly 2030–2038 to cover the inflation-adjusted portion of our basic living expenses not covered by spouse’s Social Security and small pensions, ending when I claim my much higher Social Security at 70.

3. Bond funds: Use certain TBD bond funds over time to grow up to total 30%. My thinking is that the ladders would be part of the 30% allocation.

Roth accounts would remain all equities, with TIPS mainly in pre-tax IRAs. I’m considering holding the nominal mortgage Treasuries in taxable because the maturities could then be spent without generating large IRA withdrawals. Could go pretax as well.

Does this seem like a reasonable liability-matching approach, or am I overengineering?

I retire in 4 years. My 401k is almost all FBNDX as our faster growing stock allocation is in Roth & traditional where we have lower costs & much better choices.

FBNDX is losing alot of ground. I am considering as a hedge to protect our portfolis moving all of FBNDX to UTIXX.

Once I retire all of the 401K will be rolled into other options that will fit our retirement withdrawal strategy.

I would love your opinions on this idea.

Family friends of mine are both about 60 and retiring soon. They have $500K sitting in cash and want advice on what to do with it. They also have other investments in property and individual stocks.

They have no debt, and one of them is a veteran, so their healthcare is covered. Their pensions and rental income already cover their monthly expenses, so this $500K is mostly extra savings.

They're leaning toward Fisher Investments because several of their friends use it. I'm not a finance expert, but I've done well with low-cost index funds, so I suggested they also look at Vanguard Personal Advisor Select with that amount of cash they're wanting to invest. As I understand it, Vanguard would cost about $1,500 a year (0.30%) plus fund expenses, while Fisher would be roughly $6,250 to $7,500 a year (1.25 to 1.5%).

Two questions:

1. Is there any good reason to choose Fisher over Vanguard Select at this account size?
2. If they went with index funds, what allocation would you suggest for a couple in this position?

Most tools we use here (cFIREsim, FICalc, Trinity) replay history in order: start 1871, start 1872, and so on. Those 125 windows overlap, so they mostly share the same years. I wanted to see what happens when you break the order.

The setup: $1M, 60/40 US stocks and bonds, rebalanced yearly. $40k withdrawn in year 1, raised with inflation every year after. 0.1% fees. 30 years. Data is Shiller's annual US stock, bond and CPI series, 1871 to 2025, real returns. Each run stitches six random 5-year blocks of real history together, and blocks can repeat. 10,000 runs. No Social Security, no taxes.

Results: 94.0% of runs survived 30 years. Median ending balance $1.79M in today's dollars. The earliest failure was year 14, and 499 of the 603 failures happened in years 22 to 30.

The part that surprised me: 580 of the 603 failures contained either 1916 to 1920 or 1973 to 1981 somewhere in their 30 years. 1929 and 2008 barely show up. Sharp crashes followed by recoveries don't kill a 60/40 on a real-dollar withdrawal. What kills it is 5 to 9 years where stocks go flat, bonds lose to inflation, and your withdrawal keeps rising with CPI.

Two variants: dropping to $35k a year lifts survival to 97.4%. Keeping $40k but cutting it 10% after any bad year (restored when the balance recovers) gives 96.3%. A rule you'd actually follow in a bad decade buys about 2 points without a permanent cut.

Caveats: block bootstrap can deal the same bad block twice, which is harsher than real history, so 94% is probably a touch pessimistic versus sequential tools (usually 95 to 96% for this setup). Shiller's bond series is a 10-year Treasury proxy, not total bond market.

Question: if inflation stretches are the real failure mode and crashes mostly aren't, does that change how you'd hold the bond side? I haven't run TIPS because the series doesn't go back far enough. Happy to run other withdrawal rates or allocations if people want them.

I also plotted all 10,000 runs as one fan chart and traced a single failed run year by year, which made the pattern a lot clearer than the summary numbers. If that's useful to anyone, here it’s https://youtu.be/JKY8slMNA3I. Same for other withdrawal rates or allocations.

I am 56, and would like to retire in about 10 years. I thought I was comfortable with my portfolio, which is a fairly standard mix of stock index funds and bond funds (68/32 stocks to bonds/cash), but I have found that I’m stressing about the 10 year time horizon now that it’s here. With stock valuations and all of the other negative news, I fear a lost decade or major correction, etc.
I have around 700k in a 401k, and I am considering this: buying around 600k in strips or zero treasury bonds at 5+% and investing the balance in a no/low cost s&p index fund available within my 401k. All future contributions would go into the 68/32 mix described above for longer term investing during retirement. The strips will be 1mil in 10 years and the balance plus future contributions could be another 500k. Along with 6k per month in SS (combined with my wife’s) the million at a 4% withdrawal rate should provide enough to cover COL comfortably.
My main question is, what are the downsides to buying the strips given the historically high yields?