I’ve shown this graph in prior posts (download full view here), but the purpose of this post is to look at this graph in more detail and to better understand the implications for our financial retirement plan. 

This is the plot of cumulative

I always like to think of future financial returns in terms of inflation-adjusted dollars, generally called constant dollars. These are dollars stated in the same purchasing or spending power of some base year. Current dollars are the nominal count of the pieces of paper

My Investing Cost (my net cost reduction from market returns I assume in my financial retirement plan; and it’s really for Patti and me) has just dropped about 30%. Wowee. I thought it was as low as it could get, but I was wrong. We

The last post shows that you LOCK IN SAFETY – the number of years you want with no chance of depleting a portfolio – with three key decisions: Spending Rate, Investing Cost, and Mix of stocks vs. bonds. Different decisions on those three can lead

The top objectives for our financial retirement plan are Safety, Safety, Safety. We don’t want to run out of money if we face HORRIBLE future financial returns. And then at our chosen level of safety, we want to maximize a potential Pile of Money we

FIRECalc wins. FIRECalc gives us retirees the right data for the key decisions we must make for our retirement plan. My independent calculations agree with FIRECalc’s and not with those from the 4% Rule. I am more confident that Patti and I have a solid

The SPIVA® report, “Does Past Performance Matter? The Persistence Scorecard” answers the question. Don’t count on an excellent track record of performance of an Actively Managed fund to extend into the future. Excellent performance does not persist. Only a very small percentage of

I read this article this week, “6 Portfolio To-Do’s for Retirees at Midyear”.  I don’t do ANY of the six. This post describes what I don’t do mid-year and why.

Here are the steps in the article:

1. Check your year-to-date

Unfortunately, the answer is Yes. What? Lose 20% of your nest egg and feel good about it? Well, most investors effectively lose 20% of their nest egg or the biggest portion of their nest egg (stock portfolio) over time and feel good about it. This