2008 Performance for Work Less Live More portfolios
Thanks to Wally's question I just did the math on the 2008 Performance for the Sandwich Portfolio (page 190 in Work Less, Live More) -- the 8-fund portfolio (with a MM fund), substantially from Vanguard, was down 20.4% for the year. Not great, but I've been hearing worse. There is a fair dollop of foreign stocks in these portfolios which got truly hosed.
The single-fund portfolios mentioned in the book came in as follows:
Vanguard Lifestrategy Moderate Growth VSMGX -26.5%
Vanguard LifeStrategy Conservative Growth VSCGX -19.52%
Vanguard STAR VGSTX -25.10%
American FUnds Capital Income Builder, which has more international exposure than the Vanguard options: RIRFX -29.9%
Vanguard Wellington VWEHX -21.29%
Haven't done the calculations on the full ESR-Portfolio yet, as they require data coming in from some exotic indexes (VC, Private Equity) which I don't have yet, but my own portfolio which follows the targets in the book was down about 24% in 2008.
These were definitely the worst yearly results for the slicer/dicer crowd for as far back as my complete data go.