For those who need more than the stock market's historical 10-11%, why? That return has historically been more than enough to cover inflation and still return 4% minimum. At 11% fixed you could still get 4% even if inflation were 7% for all 30 years. Periods of inflation higher than 7% have always historically been much shorter than 30 years, so you would have to be preparing for some much worse than historical inflation to require more than 11%.
I felt I needed more (15% to 18%) because I expect to earn that return in the market. I do not
need to - I live on my dividends, so all I need is for the dividends of my stocks to be raised as
fast as the inflation rate to maintain my standard of living, and I could live on half that easily enough.
But I enjoy analyzing and investing. I try to increase the 'intrinsic' value of my portfolio (based on my
opinion of the value of the future dividends of each company) by trading the stocks I own that become
relatively overvalued for stocks I track but do not own that are relatively undervalued. I have
gained a pretty steady 13 - 18% each year of intrinsic value for the last 14 years, which translates
into -7% to +47% of market value (average 17+ %).
I realize I could just be lucky, but this strategy allows me to sleep at night, while maintaining a 100%
equity position of top quality stocks with long histories of rising earnings and dividends, and keeping
me intellectually active to boot. If I fail, I doubt my 0.1% expense ratio will kill me.