Valuation-based market timing demonstrates greater potential to improve risk-adjusted returns for conservative long-term investors than given credit by Fisher and Statman (2006). On a risk-adjusted basis, market-timing strategies provide comparable returns as a 100 percent stocks buy-and-hold...

Focusing on a “safe withdrawal rate” and then deriving a “wealth accumulation target” to achieve by the retirement date is the wrong way to think about retirement planning. Such a formulation isolates the working (accumulation) and retirement (decumulation) phases. When considered...

We find evidence that retirees in 2000, in particular, are on course to potentially experience the worst retirement outcomes of any retiree since 1926. This holds for a wide variety of asset allocations and withdrawal rate strategies. Wealth depletion is taking place more rapidly for 2000-era...

This study attempts to quantify whether a 4 percent withdrawal rate can still be considered as safe for U.S. retirees in recent years when earnings valuations have been at historical highs and the dividend yield has been at historical lows. We find that the traditional 4 percent withdrawal rule...

Countless current and prospective retirees now rely on portfolio success rates calculated from the historical data for different retirement withdrawal strategies when planning their own retirements. Past history-based studies ushered forth what has become known as the 4 percent rule for...

Researchers have mostly focused on U.S. historical data to develop the 4 percent withdrawal rate rule. This rule suggests that retirees can safely sustain retirement withdrawals without outliving their wealth for at least 30 years, if they initially withdraw 4 percent of their savings and adjust...

Most literature about retirement planning treats the working (accumulation) and retirement (decumulation) phases separately. The traditional approach decides on safe withdrawal rate, uses it to derive a wealth accumulation target, and then calculates the savings rate required to achieve this...

The aim of traditional retirement planning is to set a wealth accumulation target for your retirement date so that your desired expenditures can be obtained using a “safe” withdrawal rate. But it is quite difficult to know if you are making progress toward this target. Volatility over short...

Section I reviews some of the important contributions using time series evidence to estimate Social Security’s impact on private savings. Essential to these studies is the use of a “Social Security Wealth” (SSW) variable, created by Martin Feldstein (1974), which defines the present value...

During a time of rapid economic transformation in Vietnam, we examine two possibilities for elderly support: living together with children and receiving remittances. Our analysis uses four household surveys conducted in Vietnam between 1992 and 2004. With the highly detailed 1997/98 survey, we...