Planning for retirement is hard. There’s a lot to think about, and so much of what you need to prepare for is uncertain. But as this article points out, everything starts with trying to figure out how much you’ll spend in retirement. Once you know that, you can figure out how you’ll get there (or…

Our Director of Retirement Research, Dr. Wade Pfau, was recently named one of InvestmentNews’ Icons & Innovators of 2016. According to IN, the list recognizes the people who have “shaped and transformed the financial advice profession.” All told, the list includes 20 people – 18 innovators and two icons. Dr. Pfau was listed as an innovator, which…

Last time, we compared retirement spending rules using historical data, but I believe we can arrive at a much more realistic picture for today’s retirees using Monte Carlo simulations. To that end, today I want to simulate these strategies with Monte Carlo simulations for stock and bond returns using current market environment as a starting point.…

People like round numbers. Investors really like round numbers. But just because a number has a lot of zeroes at the end doesn’t mean anything. We’re seeing this all over again because the Dow Jones Industrial Average is closing in on 20,000 (by the time you read this, it may very well have already surpassed…

Shockingly, the average investor lost to the market. It happens most years, yet the financial media acts like it’s Truman defeating Dewey every time. Looking at the data from Openfolio, a platform for individual investors, their average investor was up about 5% on the year. That’s around 7% worse than the S&P 500 Index. On…

No matter how much your employer matches your 401(k) contributions or the government provides assistance, you are the one who will determine how successful your retirement will be. How you prepare will determine how your retirement looks. But your retirement plan will undoubtedly be affected by external factors, many of which will be driven by…

Not all retirement expenses are created equal. You can break them up in all sorts of different ways, but one of the most important ways is to look at fixed and variable expenses. By looking at your expenses in this way you can get a sense of just how flexible your spending can be. If…

Investing isn’t simply picking the best funds or building your perfect portfolio. Keeping your portfolio in line over the long term is just as important (if not more so). Markets move. That’s what they do. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t reflect our ever-changing world. As a result, your portfolio will drift over time from being…