Robert Brokamp

For some people, obviously, they're getting closer to or in retirement.

You, I guess, could consider yourself in that category.

You are in your 70s.

I do think it makes sense to have some money in other funds.

Tell us a little bit about your wealth preservation portfolio.

That's a good segue to the next topic.

You mentioned the Trinity study.

And what that did basically was look at what's a safe withdrawal rate in retirement.

That came out, I think, at first in 1998.

Before that, four years before that, came a study from Bill Bangan in the Journal of Financial Planning, also looking at safe withdrawal rates.

Both of them basically cemented the 4% rule.

in the collective consciousness of investors in terms of how much you can safely take out of your portfolio and be reasonably sure it'll last as long as you do.

You talk a good bit about it in your book.

What's your take on the 4% rule?

Yeah, I think it is important to know that the safe withdrawal rate research really was a worst case scenario, right?

It's what survived the Great Depression, which is what survived the high inflation of the 70s.

And if you historically followed that rule, something like 95% of the time you died with more money than you started retirement with.

Yes.

And I think the average withdrawal rate, if you looked at all 30-year periods since the 1920s, is somewhere between 6% and 7%.

So it certainly makes sense to be very flexible with your approach to it, for sure.