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Comment by maerF0x0 | Hacker News Reader

Google about "safe withdrawal rate" and you'll see theres a bunch of information about a portfolio being able to fund 4% long term (in perpetuity?) .

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I know of it, and I think it's optimistic. You have to factor in the chance for inflation to go up and general equity returns to go down. I think 7% nominal returns is an outlier in the history of the world.

For example, the 30 year TIPS return at the moment is ~1% - I would consider that a truly "safe, real interest rate" return. By that standard, taking out 4% in real dollars has a significant chance of depleting your principal over time.

Picketty's "Capital in the 21st Century" gives ~5% as the historical rate of return of capital after inflation, which is remarkably consistent across countries and decades.

1% is way off.

a robo-adviser I am using "assume[s] a return of 5.1-5.45% on stocks and 0.74-1.05% on bonds after 0.5% fees". I do find these numbers a bit pessimistic but at the same time, I would expect the robo-adviser to give more optimistic numbers than pessimistic ones.

0.5% fees are high. are you getting value out of those, compared to index funds and some vanguard target funds that are 1/10th to 1/4 of the price?

they do auto-rebalancing and auto tax loss harvesting, kinda hands-free investment. Real human investors can charge 1.5%

S&P 500 return was about 22% in 2017. On paper, I made a lot, although I have no plans to touch any of it for a long time.

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