On these recommendations, I went there and bought it today.
A nice read. A little long, but a lot of information. I think he over-analyzed some things, but he comes back and basically says that it can be reduced to a few simple things because some of the alternate ways of doing things turn out pretty much the same in the end. Among them, the familiar 60/40 (more or less) equities/financial instruments is a good mix and 3.4% is a sustainable withdrawal rate. He does a good job of discouraging people from thinking that a 5% or a 6% withdrawal rate is a good idea. He likes to focus on the worst cases. He has a spreadsheet optimizer with a similar output to FireCalc that likewise uses historical data (and gives similar results, not surprisingly). He doesn't say much about slice-and-dice. If I followed his argument correctly, he does not think that diversifying internationally does any good. In a global economy, it is a reasonable argument (but I am still going with 50/50 anyway). He says that active management is better than indexing. He likes ETFs. He makes an argument that 100-your age = %bonds is not as good as keeping a 60/40 ratio over time. He suggests rebalancing every four years at the end of a US presidential election year. (That one was new to me!) He goes into a lengthy tutorial on varieties of annuities and how to use them. More than I ever wanted to know, but it is well presented and some day I may go back and read it more thoroughly. Then he says, be careful about who you buy the annuities from; you are only buying a promise, after all. (One good reason to stay away, for my money.) He has a buckets-type distribution scheme that he has designed.
He has done his own work, so even if he is covering the same ground as others, he speaks with authority. Sometimes he doesn't present things clearly enough for me. My eyes glazed over once in a while, but it is easy enough to skip such sections.
I liked his summary of parting thoughts on about page 500 or so. He wants you to think about what is really important to you.
Six bucks well spent, for me. Recommended.
