If you inherited $100,000 right now - and didn't need it for 10 years - where would you put it today ?
I don't view myself as being qualified to answer this question. I do think that there are others in the board community who are qualified to answer it at least in part, and that, if you review all of the possible answers that have been put forth in different places, you have available to you at least a number of ideas worth exploring.
Here are some of the options that I recall being discussed at various times:
1) Putting money into TIPS or ibonds or CDs as a holding place until stock valuations move to more moderate levels;
2) Investing in high-dividend stocks on the thinking that a high-dividend portfolio may permit you to avoid selling stocks during a price downturn;
3) Investing a portion of one's assets in stock indexes other than the S&P index. There have been arguments that small caps may be better, that value stocks may be better, and that some international stocks may be better;
4) Going with a total diversification approach of the type favored by Ben so that you own assets that may do well when U.S. stocks do poorly;
5) Learning enough about how to invest in real estate to do so successfully;
6) Getting involved in a post-retirement income-producing activity that one enjoys so much that one does not view it as work;
7) Studying stocks to the point at which one develops the ability to do better than the indexes through intelligent selection of good individual stocks (the Warren Buffett approach);
![Cool 8)](./images/smilies/icon_cool.gif)
Staying in TIPS or ibonds puchased at times when they paid a higher return than they pay today. This option is not available to investors who own no TIPS or ibonds today. I mention it because it is available to me as a result of having purchased TIPS annd ibonds at times when they were paying a higher return, and my decision to do so was the product of SWR analysis. So this option shows how an analytically valid SWR analysis can permit an aspiring early retiree to position himself in advance to get through difficult investing time-periods successfully. It may be that there is positioning that can be done today that will help prepare some of us for circumstances that will come upon us at some later date;
9) Cutting spending enough so that one is not concerned about what will happen as a result of big price drops for stocks. This is not an option for all, but it is an option for some;
10) Going with some form of the Sensible Withdrawal Strategy advocated by Gummy, where one employs a different take-out number depending on the results that have applied for one's portfolio in the prior year.
There is no one perfect answer to the question posed by DelawareDave. There are lots of potential partial answers. Add them all together, and I think that as a community we have been able to provide at least a bit of useful guidance for just about all of the various investing circumstances in which members of our board community find themselves.