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...

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...

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...

I investigate how well market valuation and yield measures predict the maximum sustainable withdrawal rate (MWR) that a person can use with their retirement savings to obtain inflation-adjusted income over a 30-year period. The regression framework includes variables to predict long-term stock...

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...

While most everyone would agree that valuations matter, the question remains as to whether clients with a long-term outlook (such as those planning for retirement) can hope to act successfully on information about valuations. This article provides favorable evidence based on the historical...