That's what I'm thinking. If you look at AA in terms of how many years of "safe" income you need instead of a typical percentage, the AA of someone who is rather old can be much higher than the conventional wisdom IF they need a very small portion of their portfolio for current income. I think that's where the "bucketizing" approach is a little different than conventional AA; you don't say "55 stocks / 45 bonds" but instead you say "15 years of income in safer stuff and the rest in stocks" -- or something like that.
So to use your example, if this 75-yo is only withdrawing 1% of his/her portfolio each year for income, you could have 15 years of more secure income even with an 85/15 allocation. (Of course, such a person is also in the position of not needing to take much stock market risk, if any. so it would really come down to their risk tolerance and how much they're willing to "gamble" for higher expected long-term returns. Chances are most of it would go to heirs anyway.) And if the market happens to recover strongly, then you may want to load up on your buckets 1 and 2.
Ray's scheme is no different than an AA scheme. Only new jargon and a different way of looking and naming the same things......
I've never failed to learn something by considering another person's (including "advisors" or financial subject matter authors, etc.) views and outlooks, Ray is no exception. But, to me, there is absolutely no difference between saying a person with an extrmemly generous retirement portfolio could safely have a 85/15 AA and saying that 15 years of expenses respresents only 15% of that person's portfolio. It's just a different way, new jargon, of looking at the same thing.
The only negatives I find about Ray are:
1. He seems to want you to follow his methodology/terminology/jargon exclusively without understanding it's relationship to other approaches. I'm concerned for folks who have bought in on his scheme in a manner where they simply want to fill in the blanks, turn the handle and be guarateed optimum results.
2. He's too flexible. He frequently uses hindsight to say that in many cases you would have "of course" done something differently than he seems to be prescribing after time shows that his prescription wasn't optimum. "Well in that case you would have....blaaah....blaaah....blaaah."
But, all in all, understanding what he's trying to do (other than the part where he's simply trying to reel you in as a client) as it relates to other schemes and theories adds to one's body of knowledge. I highly recommend understanding his stuff and especially how it relates to other approaches.
I give him a lot of credit for the amount of product differentiation he's gotten out of his "system." It's not all that different, you can easily do the same things within a more generic AA system, but his jargon sets it apart and gives him something to sell. Bright guy.