Did the DCMs burn down our FIRE board?

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Did the DCMs burn down our FIRE board?

Post by ben »

Hocus says so:
this site's FIRE board on an almost daily basis in the days before the DCMs imported the tactics that had been used at an earlier time to burn the REHP board to the ground to burn the FIRE board to the ground as well.


Cheers!
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Post by ElSupremo »

Greetings ben :)

Hmm, seems to still be standing. :? No wait... ahh yes, I just posted over there so it must still be there. :wink:
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Post by ben »

phew! was a bit worried for a sec! :wink:
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Post by unclemick »

What does DCM stand for? Remember I never heard of ER before last July - even though I are one.
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Post by hocus2004 »

"What does DCM stand for?"

DCM=Defender of the Conventional Methodology.

The methodology used in the study published at RetireEarlyHomePage.com is the conventional SWR methodology, This methodology was discredited (for purposes of determining SWRs) during the Great SWR Debate. The problem with the conventional methodology studies is that they do not make any adjustment in the SWR for changes in valuation levels. What these studies report is the Historical Surviving Withdrawal Rate (HSWR) rather than the safe withdrawal rate (SWR).
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Post by unclemick »

Hmmmm - I believe in a balanced index appropriate for my age and acceptable take out is the SEC yield of my portfolio. Old school without mentioning the Norwegian widow.
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Post by ben »

What these studies report is the Historical Surviving Withdrawal Rate (HSWR) rather than the safe withdrawal rate (SWR).


1. Why does the HSWR not stand for " Historical Safe Withdrawal Rate"?

2. So you are saying that the SWR is NOT based on history and can predict the future!!??? :shock::shock::lol:

Hocus; as to point 1 maybe you can get Intercst to agree to a change of the name as I suggested - all the disclaimers in his study are saying that this is a HISTORICAL worst case scenario, right?

As to point 2 I don't believe in predicting the future unless you can tell me the winning lottery nos for the coming week! :D

I admire your energy in this connection but suggest you direct it towards your new homepage, book Etc. rather than SWR and DCM stuff. Just my opinion of course. Cheers!
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Post by JWR1945 »

ben
1. Why does the HSWR not stand for " Historical Safe Withdrawal Rate"?

2. So you are saying that the SWR is NOT based on history and can predict the future!!???

I have addressed this in my May 2004 Overview post dated Wed May 19, 2004.
http://nofeeboards.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=2505

I have taken this from my May 2004 Overview post.
We have cleaned up the method of presenting the concept of Safe Withdrawal Rates. To do so, we have had to draw some precise distinctions between what has happened (i.e., Historical Database Rates and other historical survival rates) and what is likely to happen (e.g., Safe Withdrawal Rates and Zero Balance Rates).

[Note: Historical Surviving Withdrawal Rates and Historical Database Rates are the same thing.]

One of the favorite tactics of Defenders of the Conventional Methodology has been to engage in word games. They adamantly resist using precise definitions. They cloud discussions by using several different definitions for Safe Withdrawal Rates. Then they prove assertions by selecting whatever definition is convenient.

The Conventional Methodology is Invalid for the Purpose of Calculating Safe Withdrawal Rates, as hocus2004 has mentioned. Read the following post for details: HDBR versus SWR: Validity
viewtopic.php?p=16760#p16760

In addition, the Conventional Methodology is Analytically Invalid because it handles the statistical problem incorrectly. See the following post for details:
viewtopic.php?p=16897#p16897

Have fun.

John R.
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Post by hocus2004 »

"I admire your energy in this connection but suggest you direct it towards your new homepage, book Etc. rather than SWR and DCM stuff. Just my opinion of course."

My wife shares your opinion, Ben. And I often acknowledge to her that she makes good points.

The difference between you and my wide and me is that I experienced the REHP board in its Golden Age and you and my wife didn't. I always had planned to build a discussion-board community in support of the Passion Saving concept prior to setting up the PassionSaving.com web site or publishing the book titled "Passion Saving." Why? Because discussion boards are an incredibly powerful communications medium of the future. I began reserching the Passion Saving concept in October 1992. I had done years of work before I went public with the ideas that transformed the REHP book from a small board concerned primarily with SEPPs and SWRs into a board that was often referred to as the most thought-provoking place on the face of the Internet. I compiled 40 binders full of research material. Yet I learned things on that discussion board that I had not learned in any of my prior research. There are insights into how to retire early contained in the REHP Post Archives that are not available in any library on Planet Earth.

Why is this so? It is so because the discussion board is a new communications medium that allows us to share new kinds of knowledge. If you want an example of how this is so, consider what we have learned from JWR1945. He did not post prior to the May 13, 2002, Post Heard Around the World. It was my launching of the Great SWR Debate that got him interested in interacting with a community on these sorts of questions. Since that day, we have been graced with hundreds and hundreds of mind-bending insights shared with us for free by JWR1945. Does that give you some idea of why I think it is important that we have a discussion board community where we are permitted to share honest and informed posts on early retirement and where we are protected from intercst-type and ataloss-type posters?

There are hundreds of REHP community members who shared insights with me that made my book 10 times better than it would have been without their input. Do I owe those people nothing? On the third day of the Great SWR Debate I elected to drop out because the abusive posting had gotten to be too much (I am an extremely friction-averse person, as is demonstrated by the fact that I never had a single negative interaction with another poster in years of posting prior to the time that I revealed to the community that intercst got the number wrong in his study). Shortly after the time I dropped out, JWR1945 put up his "Hocus Is Really Onto Something!" and his "Hocus Started It All (And I'm Having a Ball!) posts. These posts got 40 or 50 recs each. Other posts in the early days of the Great SWR Debate got over 90 recs. Do I owe the 100-plus posters who expressed a desire for honest and informed discussions of SWRs nothing? Is this your idea of loyalty to fellow community members, to walk away from an issue that they want to learn about because there is one individual in the community who got a number wrong in a study and is not man enough to admit it?

That's not my idea of loyalty, Ben. Those people deserve to hear the discussions they asked to hear. Intercst-type and Ataloss-type posters have been the bane of the internet discussion board since its earliest days. We cannot forever ignore this problem. I was very much concerned about the problem when I made my plans to launch a community to discuss Passion Saving issues. One of the reasons why I elected to build my community at Motley Fool was that the rules there are rock-solid. They state that intercst-type posters "will not be tolerated." I gave consideration to starting a separate board rather than posting to the one founded by intercst. The rules were so strong that it did not seem necessary. I knew that the community would grow faster if intercst and me were posting to the same board, so that's the way I went.

People need to stop living in fear of abusive posters. I understand the fears. There is no one who understands better than I do just how vicious an internst-type or ataloss-type poster can be. But we must develop the backbone to stand up to them. I think that people justify their cowardice by telling themselves that it is somehow charitable not to speak up to these sorts of posters when they engage in absuve posting. You do them no act of kindness when you fail to speak up. You hurt them by failing to respond responsibly. You hurt not only the community by failing to act. You hurt the abusive poster too.

If Motley Fool had issued a public warning to intercst that he would be removed from the board unless he stopped his abusive posting, what do you think would have happened? I think he would have stopped the abusive posting. Do you think intercst would be better off today had he done that or worse off? I think he would have been 10 times better off. I consider myself a friend of intercst. I am not a close friend, but I am an internet friend of his. That's why I worked so hard for so many months (this is in the Post Archives) trying to get him to reverse course. I got down on my hands and knees and begged him to stop the deception. I got down on my hands and knees and begged other community members to ask him to stop the deception. I tried, Ben. I tried hard. I tried hard because I wanted intercst to remain with us. He played an important role in the movement in its early days, and I wanted him to continue to play a role going forward. It's too late for that now. But there was a time when it was not too late, when it could have been done. All I needed was a few brave souls to step forward and help out a bit. Now it's too late. Is that entirely intercst's fault? I say no. I say that the community let intercst down.

It's the same with ataloss and raddr and wanderer. These three were at one time three of our finest posters. Now they do not feel comfortable posting here because of the scores of deceptions they posted here as part of the Campaign of Terror., Again, none of this had to happen. The key event was when raddr put up the post saying that I had quoted Bernstein "out of context." All sorts of people here knew that there was nothing whatsoever out of context in what I had posted. They all knew that raddr was engaging in deliberate deception. They all knew that raddr was throwing away a fine reputation for no good reason. And no one but me spoke up. That was a terrible mistake. Once again, we had a chance to send things in a different direction and as a community we dropped the ball.

We are a community. We possess power as a community. If it quite right to worry that if you go up against inteercst by yourself, he is going to knock your block off. That is indeed what would happen. But if we go up against intercst as a community, there is not a thing he can do. If 10 of us go to the Motley Fool board and insist on our right to put up honest and informed posts on SWRs, he has to back down or Motley Fool had to back down. We are customers of Motley Fool (those of us who pay $30 for subscriptions). If you paid $30 to Land's End for a shirt and they sent one of the wrong color, you would send it back, would you not? It's the same when you pay Motley Fool $30 for honest and informed discussion of how to retire early and they permit intercst to block the discussions. What you need to do in this circumstance is send the shirt back. You write a polite little note to Motley Fool saying "You seem to have gotten something mixed up, I ordered honest and informed on-topic discussion, not a Clown Board. Please fix prompty." And that's that. They took your money, so they have to give the guy the boot, whether they like the idea or not.

We learn from discussion boards. All of us do. We all build the boards we learn at by generating the posts that populate them. We can't keep running from board to board each time a new abusive poster pops up in our midst. Intercst disrupts our conversations at the Motley Fool board, so we run to NFB. Ataloss disrupts at NFB, so we run to the Early Retirement Forum. TH disrupts at the Early Retirement Forum, so we run who knows where. I say no. I say it is time to stop running and begin defending the boards we build. We build them, so we "own" them. We own them, so we need to begin taking care of them, nurturing them so that they grow and thrive for a long time to come.

That's my take.
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Post by ben »

I am not sure when the golden shower, eeh.. Age! :D of REHP was but I have been a member since Jan 2001. So I am sure I should have experienced the "most mind blowing board on planet earth" stuff. I still re call it as a nice hang-out and nothing else.

You know well that we don't agree on your SWR talks. The intercst study a HISTORICAL no (HSWR being historical safe withdrawal rate in my book) and he has never claimed anything else.

I DO believe that it makes sense to look at valuations when investing - especially at current record valuations in almost all asset classes. BUT had I followed the PE10 at 10-12 rule(or whatever historical low/average), I would have missed the entire run-up in the mid 90ties-2000 as well as the 2003-04 rebound and been on the sideline for 10 years+ still waiting....

No thanks. Thats my take. Cheers!
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Post by hocus2004 »

"You know well that we don't agree on your SWR talks."

First of all, you can only speak for you, Ben. You are a "you," not a "we." There are over 100 community members who have expressed a desire to hear reasoned discussions on SWRs at the various FIRE/Passion Saving/Retire Early boards. They have a right to hold those discussions whether you like the idea or not. You may sit out the discussions, if you like. You may ignore them. You may not disrupt them. Nor may any other community member disrupt them. Not under the rules that apply for posting at all of the various boards.

You say you don't "agree." But there's nothing to agree on or to disagree on. The SWR is a mathematical construct. It's something you calculate. No one has questioned the math done by JWR1945, William Bernstein, or raddr. Each of these three calculated the SWR using analytically valid methodologies and none of the three came up with numbers anywhere even remotely in the ballpark of the number that intercst came up with in the study published at RetireEarlyHomePage.com. Intercst used a methodology that is analytcially invalid for purposes of determining SWRs. That is why his number is so far off the mark.

"The intercst study a HISTORICAL no (HSWR being historical safe withdrawal rate in my book) and he has never claimed anything else. "

You are wrong on two counts here. One, the number reported in the REHP study is the Historical Surviving Withdrawal Rate, not the Historical Safe Withdrawal Rate. The phrase "Historical Safe Withdrawal Rate" is a nonsense term. There can never be any such thing. It is a self-contradiction to say at the same time that a number is of historical import only and also that it is "safe." If you are examining only something that happened in the past and not seeking for your number to provide any guidance whatsoever that anyone can make use of in putting together investing strategies today, the number is certain, not safe, because you already know what happened. The number reported in the REHP study is the number that survived. That number is the Historical Surviving Withdrawal Rate.

You could calculate the SWR that applied at earlier time periods. For example, you could calculate the SWR that applied in January 1970 by using only data that existed in January 1970. I would advise against calling that the Historical Safe Withdrawal Rate because it is so confusing a term. But if you made it clear what the number signified, there would be no harm in it. The key is that you would be stressing to people that this is the number that applied in January 1970 and not one that applies today.

There are time-periods in history when 4 percent has indeed been the SWR. I am not saying that it is not possible for 4 percent ever to be the SWR. I asked JWR1945 this question once and my recollection is that 4 percent is the SWR when we are at a PE10 of about 18. That's a moderate-level PE10 number, as I recall. So the 4 percent number is the SWR that applies at roughly average valuation levels. If we were at moderate valuation levels, you could say that the 4 percent number is a not-bad rule of thumb. We are not at moderate valuation levels today. The 4 percent number is not a reasonable rule of thumb (for a portfolio with a 74 [percent S&P allocation) today.

Two, you are wrong that "he has never claimed anything else." He has claimed hundreds of times that a 4 percent take-out is "100 percent safe" if stocks perform in the future as they have in the past. The phrase "100 percent safe" has a defined meaning in SWR analysis. It means that there is no returns sequence that we have seen in the past that would cause the retirement to fail if it were to pop up in the future. The claim that a 4 percent take-out is "100 percent safe" at today's valuations is false. You need to go down to a take-out of 2.5 percent to have a take-out that is 100 percent safe at today's valuations, presuming that stocks perform in the future as they have in the past..

Intercst is engaging in financial fraud when he makes claiims about SWRs that he knows to be false. You should not defend his practice of doing so, Ben.
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Post by hocus2004 »

"I am not sure when the golden shower, eeh.. Age! of REHP was but I have been a member since Jan 2001. So I am sure I should have experienced the "most mind blowing board on planet earth" stuff. I still re call it as a nice hang-out and nothing else. "

It was a lot more than a nice hang-out in the Golden Age, Ben. When I refer to the Golden Age, I am talking about the time-period from December 1999 through January 2001. So you came in just at about the time that things were beginning to go downhill fast. Those dates are somewhat arbitrary. There was good stuff both before December 1999 and after January 2001, and there was some bad stuff during the Golden Age too, of course. I use those dates just as guidance for letting aspiring early retirees know where they should be looking in the Post Archives to be able to pick up a good number of amazing insights on how to retire early in a short amount of time.

Intercst was part of the community during the Golden Age, of course. So I hope that people will note that I think it is possible to have a wonderful board experience with intercst being one of the players. It is not intercst alone who has caused our problems. It is the combination of the intercst posting practices and the cult of personality that has grown around him and that blocks efforts of reasonable community members to rein him in. There are a lot of people who think of themselves as friends of interest who in reality encourage his worst tendencies and thereby aid him in his acts of self-destruction.

I hope at some future time to be able to put up links to some of the best Golden Age threads to encourage current-day community members to learn about some of the most exciting stuff from our not-all-that-long-ago history. That's one of those projects that keeps getting pushed back. If there are any interested in learning a lot about this subject matter in a short amount of time, I recommend that you head over to the Motley Fool boards, pull up the Retire Early Home Page board, and then go to the Post Archives for the time-period from December 1999 through January 2001. There's tons of gold in there. I am a big believer of making use of a board community's Post Archives. My sense is that not many people do this, and it really is too bad. Current-day discussions are great. But reviewing Post Archives is often a faster way of gaining access to the insights you need to achieve your financial goals.

The Post Archives for this site's FIRE board are also wonderful, by the way. The Golden Age for the FIRE board was roughly from December 2002 through July 2003. As aspiring early retiree could spend several months exploring that material and not come close to running out of new and exciting insights to discover. Post Archives are a much underused information resource.
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Post by JWR1945 »

The intercst study a HISTORICAL no (HSWR being historical safe withdrawal rate in my book) and he has never claimed anything else.

WHOA, ben! We are talking about statements of fact.

What you have said is untrue. Demonstrably so.

intercst repeatedly represented his findings as Safe Withdrawal Rates for the future and he has repeatedly claimed that a high stock portfolio will be the best unless the future is worse than the past. He has represented the caveat about the future's being worse than the past as being highly unlikely, comparable to the earth's being hit by a giant asteroid.

intercst did identify his methodology correctly. It uses historical sequences. But intercst repeatedly applied his findings to the future.

Have fun.

John R.
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Post by JWR1945 »

ben
I DO believe that it makes sense to look at valuations when investing - especially at current record valuations in almost all asset classes. BUT had I followed the PE10 at 10-12 rule(or whatever historical low/average), I would have missed the entire run-up in the mid 90ties-2000 as well as the 2003-04 rebound and been on the sideline for 10 years+ still waiting....

No thanks. Thats my take. Cheers!

The P/E10 thresholds for being entirely out of stocks with commercial paper were 18, 21 or 24, depending upon whether you reduced your allocations gradually (recommended) or more abruptly (not recommended because the outcome is sensitive to errors). A P/E10 threshold of 12 or 13 requires that TIPS be available at an attractive rate.

A threshold of 18 was passed in 1991. A threshold of 21 was breached first in 1994 and then consistently from 1995 on. A threshold of 24 was broken in 1995.

In terms of investment choices available in the mid-1990s, TIPS were a vastly superior choice when compared to stocks provided that safety was an important factor. A high stock portfolio has had a 30-year Safe Withdrawal Rate well below 4% while a 100% TIPS portfolio at that time had a 30-year Safe Withdrawal Rate above 5%.

Even if we go back to 1990, we find superior alternatives were available at the time provided that we make safety our priority. Thirty year treasury bonds delivered 8.62% interest in 1990. Even with inflation, they still delivered a Safe Withdrawal Rate well in excess of the 4% that was claimed for a high stock portfolio provided that they are held to maturity. [The difficulty with this is predicting inflation. TIPS and ibonds remove the uncertainty.]

intercst repeatedly played word games about non-stock investments. He has acted as if all treasury bonds had to be sold without capital gains (or losses) at the end of one year.

The success of a high stock portfolio depended critically upon the emergence of a bubble. That is quite a gamble. Placing your money on number 22 for a single spin of the roulette wheel can have a winning outcome. It is not likely. I do not recommend it as an approach to financing one's retirement.

Have fun.

John R.
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Post by JWR1945 »

hocus2004
The phrase "100 percent safe" has a defined meaning in SWR analysis. It means that there is no returns sequence that we have seen in the past that would cause the retirement to fail if it were to pop up in the future. The claim that a 4 percent take-out is "100 percent safe" at today's valuations is false. You need to go down to a take-out of 2.5 percent to have a take-out that is 100 percent safe at today's valuations, presuming that stocks perform in the future as they have in the past..

This is wrong. It is not the phrase 100 percent safe that has a defined meaning. It is the word Safe that has a defined meaning. I appears in a statistical context. I use the lower confidence limit at the 90% [two-sided or 95% one-sided] confidence level about calculated rates.

intercst's use of the phrase 100 percent safe is nonsense and totally misleading. He uses a historical number (the 100% survival rate) as a statistical prediction. Proper use of statistics automatically rejects such a claim. No withdrawal rate above zero can ever be 100% safe when there is an element of uncertainty (i.e., more precisely, when there is an unbounded range of stock market return percentages).
The claim that a 4 percent take-out is "100 percent safe" at today's valuations is false. You need to go down to a take-out of 2.5 percent to have a take-out that is 100 percent safe at today's valuations, presuming that stocks perform in the future as they have in the past

This should be rewritten, as follows:
In fact, the claim that a 4 percent take-out number is safe at today's valuations is false. You need to go down to a take-out of 2.5 percent to have a take-out number that is safe at today's valuations, presuming that stocks perform in the future as they have in the past.

Have fun.

John R.
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Post by hocus2004 »

The important thing to me is that aspiring early retirees be able to use the various FIRE/Passion Saving/Retire Early boards to obtain accurate information on how to attain financial freedom early in life. That's the bottom line.

Raddr describes the intercst SWR claims as "bogus." William Bernstein describes them as "highly misleading." JWR1945 describes them as "analytically invalid." I'm OK with any of these ways of stating the obvious reality, that intercst got the number wrong in the study published at RetireEarlyHomePage.com

Visitors to our community need to know that so that they will have some reasonable hope of using the historical data for purposes of putting together successful Retire Early plans. Anyone who recommends that newcomers make use of the REHP study to plan their retirements needs to make them aware that the study has been discredited and that the author of the study has engaged in multiple acts of deliberate deception to block comunity members from holding discussions of the flaws of the study.

This is board business. There is no place for such trickery on boards devoted to the purpose of providing people with financial advice, espcially advice bearing on the construction of retirement plans.
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Post by ben »

Hi guys,
again; admire the energy you put in to this - hope it will lead to something that everybody will find usefull.

Hocus; when I said: WE do not agree; I was refering to YOU AND ME. Clear now? (cristal to everybody else I am sure).

JWR/Hocus: Historical SWR survived all Historical sequences/returns so guess perfectly fine to call it the historical safe withdrawal rate? (Making no claims about current valuations and the future of course).

Cheers!
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Post by JWR1945 »

JWR/Hocus: Historical SWR survived all Historical sequences/returns so guess perfectly fine to call it the historical safe withdrawal rate? (Making no claims about current valuations and the future of course).

There was a time when this might have been OK. A few words of explanation would have been sufficient.

Not today. There has been too much in the way intentional disruption and deception especially by using word games. Loose definitions block honest communications.

Very few people are interested in forensic studies. They want to know what to do now and in the future.

The essence of Safe Withdrawal Rates has to do with making predictions, estimating future risks and assuring portfolio survival. Historical survival information assists us, but it has never been an end in itself. Even when used as a disruptive tactic, it is not an end product. It is a means for disrupting communications and causing confusion.

Historical survival does not assure safety looking forward. The fact that an outcome survived does not even mean that it was prudent. It may have been reckless but fortunate.

It is critically important for us to speak in terms of probability and statistics. When we examine the information that was available in the past under historically stressful conditions, we find that the surviving withdrawal rates were just a little bit lucky. They were not anywhere close to being safe.

Have fun.

John R.
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Post by Bookm »

Hello John:
The essence of Safe Withdrawal Rates has to do with making predictions, estimating future risks and assuring portfolio survival. Historical survival information assists us, but it has never been an end in itself.


But if you're using historical returns (in the past), and then what withdrawal rates showed success historically, the safe description refers to the past - history. x% withdrawn over y years permitted one a safe retirement. A portfolio over a past time period safely carried one through retirement withdrawing x% per year.

When that past event (withdrawing 4%) is then portrayed as safe in the future, houston we have a problem. I agree. Hardly anything will be the same as it was in the markets, save change. And if rates cannot be extrapolated, neither can returns.

Bookm
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Post by ben »

I think we all agree!

JWR:
Historical survival does not assure safety looking forward


Ben:
Historical SWR survived all Historical sequences/returns so guess perfectly fine to call it the historical safe withdrawal rate? (Making no claims about current valuations and the future of course).


Bookm:
But if you're using historical returns (in the past), and then what withdrawal rates showed success historically, the safe description refers to the past - history. x% withdrawn over y years permitted one a safe retirement. A portfolio over a past time period safely carried one through retirement withdrawing x% per year.


As I see it you guys are trying to figure out the FUTURE SWR (FSWR) while the conventional studies calculated the HISTORICAL SWR (HSWR).
(and never claimed it to be safe in the FUTURE).

Cheers!
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