Withdrawing from your investment portfolio in retirement is like walking through a minefield. If you don’t take the right path, you’re going to take a large tax hit. Most people don’t think about it, but your distribution strategy in retirement and the resulting taxes can have a significant impact on how long your money lasts…

Millennials began their careers around the 2008-2009 downturn and are understandably gun-shy around stocks. They saw their parents’ losses and want to avoid having the same thing happen to them. As a result, most millennial investors are opting for the security of large cash positions or more conservative portfolios to make sure they don’t experience…

Having spent the better part of the last 10 years in Japan, I have not been all that familiar with Dave Ramsey. Sure, I’ve heard from time to time that there is a radio show financial guru who talks about 12% market returns and an 8% withdrawal rate in retirement, but that sounded so farfetched…

For almost all of my work on retirement withdrawal rates, I’ve assumed a constant inflation-adjusted withdrawal rate strategy.  That is, the withdrawal rate is defined as an amount of income withdrawn in the first year of retirement as a percentage of retirement date assets. This income amount then adjusts for inflation in subsequent years. Since…

If the long-term average real return from the stock market is 7%, does that mean one can safely use a 7% withdrawal rate from a 100% stocks portfolio without worrying about running out of wealth or even dipping into the original principal? The answer is No. But answering yes is a common mistake; one which…

Executive Summary Fixed-income instruments are largely used within a portfolio to reduce volatility and provide a more consistent distribution stream for clients. Holding non-callable instruments backed by the U.S. government offer significant protection in times of financial crisis while reducing the long-term opportunity cost of bonds. U.S. government instruments with maturities from one to five…