(How) Have you changed your portfolio

[jIMOh]

Quote:

Originally Posted by peggy Am I missing something, because I thought the 3.5% was the withdrawal rate, not the expected return (which should, of course, be higher than the withdrawal rate)? And as a follow-up, we switched over to 60-40 yesterday afternoon. (Well, technically, we set things in motion to do so; the actual sales in our taxable accounts will occur on 12/28 and 1/2, to split the capital gains taxes between two years.)

My response was to someone which wanted to only spend the return of a CD type investment.

In my post the 3.5% was the expected return from the CD long term, and the withdraw rate. I was suggesting this was not a good idea, IMO.

[peggy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jIMOh My response was to someone which wanted to only spend the return of a CD type investment. In my post the 3.5% was the expected return from the CD long term, and the withdraw rate. I was suggesting this was not a good idea, IMO.

Ah! I did, in fact, miss something. Thanks for clarifying.

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

What sub-prime crisis?

I have not made any changes based on any news.

What I have been doing is sending dividends to a money market fund and waiting to rebalance. I am still dragging my feet on rebalancing, but I moved the cash to a bond fund in the meantime. I may or may not rebalance. Another poster asked how to begin setting up to begin programmed withdrawals. Frank Armstrong recommended funneling 7 to 10 years of distributions into a short-term bond fund, from which one would eventually withdraw. So, I figured, maybe I should just let the dividends keep going into the now-bond fund? (I figure to stop working in maybe 5 years, more or less.) Meanwhile, I can always rebalance later. The idea is to gradually fund the bond fund buffer with dividends.

Normally, I am 100% invested in equities. My portfolio has been screaming along at 20% a year for the last 5 years (at least) and trees don't grow to the sky, so why not start priming the pump a little? If I were younger, I would still be 100% in equities.

Ah, well.

Cheers,

Gypsy

[mathjak107]

as i said a hundred times. its no longer about growing richer, its about not getting poorer. after so many good years you know a bad year is almost a given at some point. im usually not a dirty lil market timer but i got to admit i have been hunkering down over the last year and probley am at the lowest amount of equities ever since the eighties. i think im under 40% at this point.