Comments on: Overconfidence and Better Investing: Weekend Reading

By: Larry

Larry — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 15:35:30 +0000

That’s why I’d really like to see you get into Otar, Mike. Seems to me there’s lots of advice about how to accumulate assets prior to retirement, very little about how to deal with assets during retirement. Otar debunks a lot of the conventional wisdom, but he’s not a crank and he deals with the problems you’re discussing head on, including a very strong tilt towards annuitizing if your assets are limited.

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 03:39:54 +0000

I wish I had some answers for you, but I really don’t.

The idea of adjusting allocation as a function of valuation levels makes some sense to me. But how under or overvalued does the market have to be before you adjust? And how much to adjust by? And what happens if, for instance, you just end up DCA’ing into stocks and the market keeps going down? At what point do you have to bail out?

To me, I see a lot of value in sticking with the other possible solutions: a lower withdrawal rate and the use of single premium immediate fixed annuities to increase one’s safe withdrawal rate.

By: Larry

Larry — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 02:33:31 +0000

I think the Conventional Wisdom post has a lot of provocative things to say. You sound a bit like Otar here. But my problem is: how on earth do you know if you’re at the start of a bull or a bear market when you retire? Since we probably all agree that market timing is impossible, how do you plan for the optimum time to retire?

By: Jim Blankenship, CFP®, EA

Jim Blankenship, CFP®, EA — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 02:21:38 +0000

Another great list of reads, Mike – thanks again for putting the effort into finding these great articles!

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:47:08 +0000

Thanks again for hosting it.

By: Financial Samurai

Financial Samurai — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:42:20 +0000

You’re guest post is up! Whoo hoo.