William Bengen

speaker

108 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 25 Jul

William Bengen’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing · The Father of the 4% Rule Says Retirees Can Take Out Much More · 25 Jul 2026 podcast

So I'm still learning here.

And as soon as I get a conclusion, I will pass it along.

But I think higher stock allocations are probably beneficial.

You just have to be careful.

You don't want to have a stock allocation when you retire and you know you're going to have a big bear market or likely to have one.

Probably best to be a little conservative and then

After the smoke clears, go to your higher allocation.

That's right, because cash doesn't pay much.

It's not very volatile, but today it's better than it was, let's say, five, six years ago when it was paying practically zero.

But you're not going to get a good withdrawal rate having a lot of money in an asset generating just 4%.

Yeah, to a certain extent, it depends upon the retiree's circumstances, whether they retire into a bull market or a bear market.

But overall, looking across all 400 retirees I study, a period of about one year seems to be optimum.

It may not always generate the highest withdrawal rate, but we don't know in advance what rebalancing interval will generate it.

So one year seems to work pretty darn well in the vast majority of cases.

Yeah, I tested a scheme that was developed by two fellow advisors, Wade Pfau and Michael Kitsies.

Back about 10 years ago, they published a paper in which they investigated starting with a low stock allocation, let's say 30%, 40%, and then increasing it 1% or 2% a year during retirement.

And their conclusion, surprisingly, was that that had a beneficial effect on withdrawal rates.

It gave them a bump.

It wasn't huge, but it was significant, worth considering.

I suspect their conclusion is correct that the reason this Pierce counterintuitive thing seems to work is that because when you're in a bear market early in retirement, you're going to find out a lower stock allocation is beneficial.

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