I am confused about the messages here. Don't we all agree at least that the historically calculated SWR's are objective and correct
as history? That is, does anyone challenge the accuracy of the historical reporting in
http://rehphome.tripod.com/pestudy1.html? Don't we all agree that in those charts, whether they use Shiller's Price/Earnings ratio based on current earnings or trailing 10-Year average earnings, the historically observed safe withdrawal rates have ranged from at least 4% to at most 11%? Correct me please if I am wrong, but so far as I know there is no quarrel as to what history shows on these matters. The quarrels have to do only with predicting future SWRs, don't they? Has anyone backtested his method of predicting future SWRs against the data? (I may very well have missed it. If the assertion is that present or Year 2000 conditions have never occurred in the data base, isn't backtesting impossible? Are people projecting the regression lines for SWR vs. PE into areas of PE never observed, but not recognizing the hazards of that projection?) Considering the paucity of the data, that is, how few thirty year periods are in the historical data, would that backtesting settle the issue of how to predict SWRs?
You know I have my reservations about the entire SWR enterprise anyway, since it omits so many considerations that are important to me, and I don't enjoy quarreling about it. For my purposes, I am satisfied in testing my withdrawal plans against the worst-case scenario the ataloss mentions. Anything worse that the worst ever observed is necessarily conjectural, by which I mean "permissible, maybe useful, but not convincing or conclusive".
Couldn't we at least agree on what history objectively shows before we disagree on how to make predictions?
<Wondering whether I should hit "delete" or "submit" . . . >
He who has lived obscurely and quietly has lived well. [Latin: Bene qui latuit, bene vixit.]
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