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After that I'll likely do nothing indefinitely. I just cant sit idly by while we're clearly overvalued in broad equities (ok, clearly in my opinion), and while interest rate hikes are practically inevitable. That is my thinking also. My natural couch potato temperament would much prefer to just pop...

My taxable fund is largely in a conservative managed fund at vanguard... I am thinking you mean Wellesley Admiral. I was looking at both this fund and Wellington. Both of them seem like sensibly run funds for the retiree. I may put some of my taxable portfolio into one of them in the future, it is ...

Is it that high net worth individuals time the market well, or that they're high net worth individuals as a result of a couple of lucky market times? Good point, in many cases this will just be luck. However, the fact that the rich tend to get richer argues that at least some of the time real skill...

...'institutional class' the 'managers'... True, but they are just hired hands constrained by legal requirements and the need not to underperform their peers, not people managing their own fortunes. The WSJ article suggested that the rich tend to manage their own personal money better than average....

In dollar terms, however, the wealthy class probably controls as many shares as the middle-class. Actually, they control a lot more than that. The top 5% control 60% of the wealth in the US. The top 10% control almost all of it. The top few have always controlled most of the wealth in this country....

I think my #1 concern with annuities is that they depend upon the health of the issuing insurance company. Will this company still be in business in 40 years, and faithfully paying the 5% simulated inflation adjust? This is not the same as buying a full faith and credit bond from the US government. ...

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, high net worth individuals have as a group been adept at anticipating market movements. They moved into bonds in 2001, and back into equities as the economy started to recover. Studies show that most people seem to be poor at market timing, but mos...

I found out that annuity pay out tends to vary with current interest rates (the insurance company invests the money mostly in bonds), and age. This would seem to make the entry point important, as you are irrevocably locking in the yield at the prevelant interest rates. The lack of a true inflation ...

Also focusing on a large stock portfolio runs the risk that you will suffer greatly if the global markets take a tumble and don't recover for a decade or more. Most people will take a lower return in order to have a more balanced portfolio that enables them to sleep at night. Since my current withd...

My guess is that even things like annuities or, at least, low-cost annuities are better.

Thank you John. Are you thinking inflation adjusted fixed annuities, or a variable annuity with TIPS in it for the tax deferral?

A 100% TIPS portfolio at currently available rates are truly safe at a withdrawal rate of 4.0% more than thirty years. Ok, TIPS solves the IRA portion of the portfolio, but what does a person do if most of his portfolio is in a taxable account? At higher inflation rates, the imputed tax on the infl...

Remember that John Bogle is talking about taxes and taxable accounts. The do it yourself approach helps more in taxable accounts, but it is also more cost efficient inside of an IRA. There are no annual expense ratios to contend with. If you don't trade, your only expense would be a $20 to $30 acco...

With a 1.7% dividend, you only need to sell down 2.3% a year. In the past, people did not need to sell down at all. They just spent the dividend. Keeping the principal intact kept the dividend flowing at the original rate. This was a much more secure situation, and my original plan. I have adapted ...

The point is that it is a very low cost index fund, much cheaper than even Vanguard could offer.

The only way that B's approach could fail is if the last 20 years provided terrible stock returns and it was the big gains that A experienced in the first 10 years that pulled him through." The last 10 years have provided stellar returns for equity. Anyone who retired 10 years ago with an equi...

We could have bad returns for high stock portfolios lasting until 2015 or so. We could have bad returns longer than that, if we have good returns for the next few years that drive valuations even higher than they are now. We have not identified the factors that have driven valuations higher with su...

Dow stocks seem reasonably safe, as the Dow selection committee seems to know what they are doing. They do change them occasionally, so this wouldn't necessarilly be a buy and hold forever type of strategy. I might be inclined to sell if a stock was dropped from the index

Some of the investments mentioned can require quite a bit of research. Otherwise, you could end up with a disaster.

There are always opportunities for those who are gifted with financial wisdom, but the majority cannot outperform itself.

It doesn't follow that a company can pay out 6% and be fine, thus raising the w/d rate. So there is no free lunch. I kind of thought that this would be the case, since the market seldom leaves free money sitting at the table for long periods of time. The TSM is still the best for the majority in ti...

What 15 to 20 stocks would you recommend for a long term buy and hold strategy?