New (and free!) ebook by William Sharpe

[MichaelB]

William Sharpe published a new ebook titled “Retirement Income Analysis with Scenario Matrices”. Based on the ToC it is a comprehensive analysis of retirement planning and financing. The ebook is free and can be found here It covers many of the core topics we regularly discuss here, such as how long will we live, the impact of future inflation, how to make sure we don’t run out of money.

There’s an article from Barron’s (paywall) about the book, including an interview with Dr Sharpe, here. Dr Sharpe is a well known for advocating annuities, but this Barron’s article suggests he favors a different approach now, a type of “buckets”, where each future year is financed with a portfolio that includes growth assets.

A snippet

Your ebook outlines a strategy that you call a “lockbox.” Can you take us through it?

The idea is that you segment your money. It’s similar to using “buckets” but with a time component. A retiree might have a box for 2020 and a box for 2021, and 2022, etc.

In each box, you have a combination of safe assets, such as an annuity or TIPS [Treasury inflation-protected securities], and a market-based portfolio, such as one with stocks and bonds. You have the key if you need to access the funds, but the idea is that, once a year, you would sell the assets in that year’s lockbox. You put all your money in locked boxes to begin with, and you just happily open locked boxes. If you’re dead, your partner opens the lockbox, and if you’re both dead, your estate opens all the lockboxes that are left.

The book is long (>700 pages) but I’m looking forward to reading and discussing here. There’s no doubt the analysis will be top notch and the recommendations of interest to many of us.

 

[MichaelB]

Not behind paywall link
https://www.barrons.com/articles/william-sharpe-how-to-secure-lasting-retirement-income-51573837934

Book Link - https://web.stanford.edu/~wfsharpe/RISMAT/

Thanks, although both links are in the OP.

 

[davebarnes]

Thanks, although both links are in the OP.

Oops. Did not see them. I apologize.

 

[steelyman]

Thanks for posting! Should make for some warm winter reading. I’ve used Calibre to convert to Kindle format from PDF.