Retirement Insights

Don’t Leave Home Without Your Financial GPS

By McLean Asset Management

Every financial plan is wrong. They’re all shots in the dark. It’s impossible to predict the future, and there’s an almost infinite number of moving parts that will impact your financial life. Also, even if you were to make the best predictions possible, your plan is out of date the instant you finish creating it.…

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Dynamic Programming Methods For Retirement Income

By McLean Asset Management

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…

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What are Longevity Goals?

By McLean Asset Management

Of all of the different goal types, longevity goals are probably the least intuitive. Your longevity goals are based on the possibility that you will live longer than you expect. That sounds great, but your income plan needs to be able to fund those years of retirement (unless you plan on hustling Pinochle when you’re…

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Review: Younger Americans embrace value of unbiased financial advice

By McLean Asset Management

The fiduciary rule has been in the news again lately, as some members of Congress have been trying to “delay” it so they can “study” its impact. In other words, kill it. But there’s some interesting data that suggests that, at least in the long term, this is moot. Cerulli Associates has found that young…

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Review: Great retirement planning looks at spending, not income

By McLean Asset Management

Planning for retirement is hard. There’s a lot to think about, and so much of what you need to prepare for is uncertain. But as this article points out, everything starts with trying to figure out how much you’ll spend in retirement. Once you know that, you can figure out how you’ll get there (or…

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InvestmentNews Names Our Own Wade Pfau Among The ‘Icons & Innovators’ Of 2016

By Bob French, CFA

Our Director of Retirement Research, Dr. Wade Pfau, was recently named one of InvestmentNews’ Icons & Innovators of 2016. According to IN, the list recognizes the people who have “shaped and transformed the financial advice profession.” All told, the list includes 20 people – 18 innovators and two icons. Dr. Pfau was listed as an innovator, which…

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The Current Market’s Effect On Retirement Spending

By McLean Asset Management

Last time, we compared retirement spending rules using historical data, but I believe we can arrive at a much more realistic picture for today’s retirees using Monte Carlo simulations. To that end, today I want to simulate these strategies with Monte Carlo simulations for stock and bond returns using current market environment as a starting point.…

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Review: Why Dow 20,000 Is a Meaningless Milestone

By McLean Asset Management

People like round numbers. Investors really like round numbers. But just because a number has a lot of zeroes at the end doesn’t mean anything. We’re seeing this all over again because the Dow Jones Industrial Average is closing in on 20,000 (by the time you read this, it may very well have already surpassed…

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Review: Most investors didn’t come close to beating the S&P 500

By McLean Asset Management

Shockingly, the average investor lost to the market. It happens most years, yet the financial media acts like it’s Truman defeating Dewey every time. Looking at the data from Openfolio, a platform for individual investors, their average investor was up about 5% on the year. That’s around 7% worse than the S&P 500 Index. On…

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