Why not file at 62 and invest 8 years of benefits.

Comment:
What the video misses is the fact that the dollar amount of a 5% withdrawal changes as the invested portfolio continues to be invested (during retirement). An investment needs to maintain its value over time. The best investments maintain their inflation adjusted value over time while also providing an income (withdrawal).
I fiddled with this scenario...please critique.
I assumed a 7% return investing after tax SS from age 62 to age 70, netting a portfolio balance close to $200K.
Now, if I died tomorrow my estate is worth $200K more taking SS early verses if I waited until 70 to take SS. This gets rid of "short-evity" risk (dying early). Also, I continue to work part time between ages 62-70 and add all of my SS funded contributions into a Roth IRA, (Roth 401K), Spousal Roth or through Roth conversions along the 8 year investment window (age 62-70). Since my SS income is $15K less at age 70, I take Roth withdrawals which are tax free. This seems to make good tax sense.
Using PV, I run three scenarios using different types of investments.
VWINX=Conservative Allocation
PRWCX = Moderte Allocation
PRBLX = Managed All Equity Fund - Aggressive Allocation
I start the simulation in 2001 to include two nasty downturns (Tech bubble and GFR) early on in the simulation.
Portfolio value is $200K (what was saved from SS). Year one pay out @ age 70 is $15,200 (the difference between early and late SS filing). This withdrawal will increase 2% a year for inflation going forward (COLA).
PRBLX & VWINX - Lost portfolio value throughout the 20 year time frame (70-90).
VWINX - Was ready to bust at age 90.
PRBLX - Was worth about half its orginal value $106K adjusted for inflation.
PRWCX - Lost portfolio value briefly during the GFR, but recovered and gained value.
PRWCX- Fared much better than the conservative allocation (VWINX) and the aggresive allocation (PRBLX).
PRWCX - At age 90, this portfolio had a inflation adjusted value of $200K...pretty good.

My PV Link

A couple of more to consider. Blackrock International is a foreign large blend that scores in the top 10% across most time frames for its category. Impressive fund. Grandeur Peak Global stalwarts has had a very nice couple of years in the Global Small/mid cap space. David has written a lot about this fund family. Thanks for the advice on MIEIX @Observant1. Wasn’t aware of that one. Great candidate for a taxable account too. I’m personally leaning to starting an account with WCMIX. I will be reading up more on these other funds too. BGAIX is also interesting but it’s very high PE multiple gives me pause.

“ There is a lot of fear mongering ….. Those are worthwhile discussions to have.”
Nicely put. Thanks for the detailed analysis @LewisBraham
I try to read as much of the popular financial press as I can - by no means a comprehensive amount. But what often surfaces in these analyses is: (1) Central banks (notably the Fed) do not want to tank the markets. (2) They do, however, want to curb speculation. Unfortunately, there’s emerged over the years a certain amount of conflict there. When they do attempt to tighten (slow speculation) the equity markets become turbulent and fall or threaten to fall. “Taper tantrum” is the phrase often used. (3) This conflict leads (it seems invariably) to stage #3 in which the central banks / Fed “cave” to the markets and loosen the reins again. Repeat the process. Market players understand the game.
So now after years (decades?) of monetary stimulus we sit at near 0 short term rates with the Fed still buying bonds (albeit at a reduced rate) and talking obliquely about needing to further stimulate until “full employment” is reached. (Have you tried having your home roofed or painted lately?) Meanwhile, the markets march merrily along, The question left unanswered is - What further can the Fed and central banks do to keep the magic market money wheel churning next time the economy and / or stock market begins to shudder? What happens to those elevated asset prices when the stimulus runs out and people begin to realize the tank is empty?
One pundit I follow expects that coming inflation will force the bond market to take control - irregardless of Fed policy. In other words, faced with growing losses of purchasing power bond investors will sell en mass, forcing rates higher and eventually toppling stocks. I don’t necessarily siubscribe to this view, But think it’s one (of many) worth considering.

WCMIX has $29B in AUM and is quite concentrated, maybe a red light. My preference is PWJZX. For Global, I'd put new money into BGAIX, not MGGPX. Heugh's fund also may have become too large, prompting the soft close. The Baron fund has scorched just about everybody in recent years.
I could not identify an international LB fund I would really want to buy. Back in the old days, Harbor International was great. It's hard to beat an index over the long haul. In my retirement account I have a healthy allocation to TIAA-CREF International Equity Index (TCIEX).

Here ya go...added comments
WCMIX (Int'l Gowth) - Great performance, Concentrated
CIVVX (Int'l Value) - True to their Style
PRIDX (Int'l Small/Mid) - One of my favorite funds and categories
GQGPX (EM) - Replaced Harding Loevner 2 years ago
In my other accounts ...I have a Roth IRA with Vanguard and own VWIGX, My 401k has DODFX, BUFIX, ARTJX and ARTYX

Nice fund selection!
Personally, I'm not fond of Causeway Intl Value and am unfamiliar with Buffalo Intl.
I would have purchased PRIDX if it wasn't closed to new investors.
For those interested in WCMIX, the fund will soft-close after 11/30/2021.

The article is stupid because of what it says:
Try to imagine what would happen if stocks lost 70% and stayed down for years.
What useful or actionable comes from such imagining? To anyone?
And what would have been the conditions for such? Asteroid? Worse plague?

The Nasdaq peaked at 5,048.62 on March 10, 2000.
From that point it generated a maximum cumulative loss of ~80% until October 2002.
I'm not aware of any major plagues or asteroid crashes during this period.
All that was needed for this to occur was a bit of irrational exuberance!
The Nasdaq did not climb back above 5,000 until March 2015.

There is a lot of fear mongering about the economy and inflation for obvious reasons, but I don't see a lot about the stock market. I think Roth is right to get people to try to conceptualize the risks even if a little ham-handed. Here's Zweig on the subject of optimism:

In February 2020, before the pandemic had fully hit home, these [surveyed Vanguard] investors estimated the odds of such a bear market at an average of only 4%. By April, just after the S&P 500 had fallen by one third, their expectations that the market would plunge again in the coming year nearly doubled to 8%.
Those fears swiftly faded. By last December, investors in the Vanguard survey estimated the probability of another crash in the ensuing 12 months at only 5%. That was slightly lower than their average estimate during the three years before the pandemic.
It’s as if the speed of the recovery had erased the pain of the decline, or made a recurrence seem even more improbable. Just like that, a grizzly bear turned into what feels more like a teddy bear.
That complacency takes a toll—even among Vanguard investors, who tend to be cautious. These people often follow the philosophy of the firm’s late founder, Jack Bogle, who preached patience and repeatedly warned that stocks are risky. If anyone should come through the sharpest market decline in decades unperturbed, it’s the people in this survey—typically about 60 years old, with about $225,000 in Vanguard investments, roughly 70% in stocks.
Yet they didn’t all sit tight. One group in the survey stood out: those who went into early 2020 with the highest expectations for stock returns in the upcoming year. They ended up reducing their exposure to stocks much more sharply during the crash of February and March 2020 than those who had been expecting lower returns.
They also tended to turn around and buy back much of the stock they had just sold—but not until prices had already shot above the March lows.
Investors elsewhere seem to have concluded from the swiftness of the recovery that stocks aren’t risky at all. After last spring’s rebound, Dave Portnoy, a social-media celebrity, declared “Stocks only go up” so often that it began to seem like a magic incantation.
And, for the past year, just about every stock has gone up.
That’s largely because the Federal Reserve has backstopped markets by squashing interest rates toward zero and by buying more than $2.5 trillion in Treasury securities since February 2020, along with other massive interventions. Meanwhile, emergency government programs pumped trillions of dollars of stimulus into the economy.

As for useful actions, I can think of quite a few--save more, spend less being an obvious one. But there are others. Roth's story has a table I can't reproduce here for some reason of which asset classes did well in previous bear markets. It's worth thinking about which might do well in the next one. The I-bond thread already points to an interesting avenue for saving. Options funds if you can find the right one are interesting. Are Treasuries worth it, REITs, high quality value stocks with strong balance sheets? Gold bullion? Cash? Paying down your mortgage or refinancing it? Those are worthwhile discussions to have.

Jon raises some great points about large cap blend. If you already hold SPY then you probably have this area covered well. But it is a wonderful fund. We all have our different favorites. I'm curious what funds you have as your international holdings. International has underperformed for so long now that I find that to be much more difficult in terms of fund selection. My main fund here is MIOPX which has great performance over the long term but has lagged some this year because of China. One fund that I'm currently evaluating is WCM focused International Growth. However, I would love to find a strong international blend fund. The performance just hasn't been there though for that asset class over the past 10 years. Would be interested if anyone has found a good one.

Here ya go...added comments
WCMIX (Int'l Gowth) - Great performance, Concentrated
CIVVX (Int'l Value) - True to their Style
PRIDX (Int'l Small/Mid) - One of my favorite funds and categories
GQGPX (EM) - Replaced Harding Loevner 2 years ago
In my other accounts ...I have a Roth IRA with Vanguard and own VWIGX, My 401k has DODFX, BUFIX, ARTJX and ARTYX

Jon raises some great points about large cap blend. If you already hold SPY then you probably have this area covered well. But it is a wonderful fund. We all have our different favorites. I'm curious what funds you have as your international holdings. International has underperformed for so long now that I find that to be much more difficult in terms of fund selection. My main fund here is MIOPX which has great performance over the long term but has lagged some this year because of China. One fund that I'm currently evaluating is WCM focused International Growth. However, I would love to find a strong international blend fund. The performance just hasn't been there though for that asset class over the past 10 years. Would be interested if anyone has found a good one.

Your comment above has (not surprisingly) more intelligence and substance and less unhinged alarmism than the Roth guff.
At least until you get to the '50% fall' and 'important question' parts. :)
I did not say anything about Zweig.
The article is stupid because of what it says:
Try to imagine what would happen if stocks lost 70% and stayed down for years.
What useful or actionable comes from such imagining? To anyone?
And what would have been the conditions for such? Asteroid? Worse plague?
I’m pretty certain that you’d feel a lot of regret ...
Jeez louise.
I do recognize that anxiety-churning is a major motive for journalism and especially financial journalism. But Roth is juvenile even by today's standards of mega-fret-mongering.

Hey when I look at the trailing p-e of QQQ and it’s over 40 and the trailing p-e of IVV and it’s over 33 when the long-term average for stocks is about 15, it seems surreal to me. And this isn’t off trough earnings either. This is after massive amounts of stimulus when the tech sector, the dominant one in both indexes, did quite well. How much ammo does the Fed have left to prop things up if things go wrong? And if you read Zweig’s article—not a dummy by any means—he would argue that even the 08-09 bear was short by historical standards. I think it’s important to put things in perspective and I liked the fact the article showed how different asset classes performed well in different kinds of bears. That’s very important for investors to understand—what might work depending on the kind of bear we will have. Stocks could fall 50% from here and still not be at historical norms. And it’s an important question whether such a decline lasts a few months or several years. So, I’m not sure why the article is stupid.
From Zweig's piece:

With the exception of a 100-day rebound after an interim drop in early 2009, [the 2020 recovery is] the fastest-ever recovery to a prior peak. The S&P 500 has fallen at least 20%—the conventional definition of a bear market—26 times in the past nine decades, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Recoveries to previous highs have typically taken almost three years, often much longer.

My asset allocation for this portfolio - 56% Domestic Equity, 22.5% Int'l/EM, 20% Fixed Inc. I am 13 years from Retirement and all of my equity holdings are a healthy split across Style and Market Cap.

@KHaw24 It's hard for me to comment on choosing PRWCX over PRDGX not knowing your specific situation in terms of age and how close to retirement you are, how you are currently allocated, and what your other holdings might be. They are both excellent funds. Personally, I have been wanting to add PRWCX for a number of years and plan to buy it if/when it opens up again. For me, however, if I were to select a large cap blend fund, I would probably invest in PRBLX. If you run the screen on MFO Premium you'll find that PRBLX is a Great Owl, has stronger APR over the past 5 and 10 years as well as lifetime of the funds, has less max drawdown, and has performed better in bear markets.

"Good"? A preposterous fright article seems more like it. Zero substance.
(And ... teddys include 2.5y and 1.5y dips?)
What would cause a protracted bear market? Fundamentals (overvalued) aside, if the market fell as he scarily suggests is possible but without giving reasons, the buying eventually (pretty soon) would be astonishing in its quickness, as quick as or quicker than the selling.
Q: Who here would use a financial advisor who told you with a straight face:
"... just recently, the Japanese stock market recovered from its 1989 high—that’s 30 years! If you think that can’t happen here, I suggest you rethink your position—and I’d do it sooner rather than later"
"Try to imagine what would happen if stocks lost 70% and stayed down for years. It might mean things like:
You cannot afford to send your kids and grandkids to college. In fact, you need to take back those college 529 accounts you set up for them.
You must sell that vacation house even though the market is quite depressed.
You must either sell your home or take out a reverse mortgage to have cash to live on.
You must figure out how to cut your monthly expenditures in half even though you say only 20% is discretionary. Maybe one of the kids will let you live with them?
Embrace the pain you would feel. Even if you didn’t need to cut things out, I’m pretty certain that you’d feel a lot of regret if you were heavily in stocks and lost more than half of your net worth."
" ... protect your financial independence from a bear market that doesn’t resemble the last three. "
... "I’m afraid of grizzly bears—they are fierce!"
Booga and boo!
Worthless. Is there a point? A plan? Ah: bond ETFs? Got it. Yeah, that'll work.
Maybe he just meant to say Don't use levered equity ETFs. That person he met in the lede made him lose his mind. I sure hope he did not get paid any folding money for writing this.

Good article: https://etf.com/sections/etf-strategist-corner/preparing-grizzly-bear
Of particular interest is the subject of "teddy bears," which investors have gotten used to lately.

Intellectually, we know a bear is coming, but I don’t think people understand it emotionally. And people have gotten used to what Jason Zweig of the Wall Street Journal called “Teddy Bears.” These bears recovered very quickly.

Look at this chart:

Another quote:

Intellectually, we understand recency bias, and most of us know a bear can be fiercer and hang around much longer. Zweig noted U.S. bears have lasted nearly 20 years. And just recently, the Japanese stock market recovered from its 1989 high—that’s 30 years! If you think that can’t happen here, I suggest you rethink your position—and I’d do it sooner rather than later.

Here's Zweig's article referenced in this one: https://wsj.com/articles/what-happens-when-stocks-only-go-up-11619794810

Funds can and often do drift across category boundaries. I would not want to see a fund whipsawed between categories every three months (funds disclose portfolios quarterly) just because it added (or subtracted) 3 or 4 percent in equities, or edged just over the line between value and blend.
That would make comparing funds difficult, let alone even finding a fund using a screener. If funds were classified based solely on their current holdings, a fund could wind up classified as a 2* 70-85% fund one quarter, a 4* 50-70% fund the next, and a 2* 70-85% later the same year.
Instead, M* incorporates some lag, and yes, some human judgment when classifying funds. Enough time to see whether the change is "transitory" (to use the word of the day), or something more permanent.

Chad Lowry: The reason why we use three years of information is, we really – we want our classifications to be stable over time and reflect what the manager is intending to do and what your performance is going to reflect over a long period of time and a timeframe that most people who own a fund would have that in their portfolio. We can tolerate slight drifts outside of the classification on the most recent portfolio if the manager tends to go back within that range, which has been demonstrated over time.
Okay. So to that point, so if there are sort of recent portfolio changes, it is not necessarily going to result in a change to the Morningstar Category?
Paul Justice: Yeah, not necessarily, and that’s where our analysts really step in and want to make an assessment to make sure that is this a temporary phenomenon or is there really a strategic change at the fund. Which is going to indicate that they are going to perform same or like a growth fund than they have been as a value fund in the past.

https://www.morningstar.com/articles/754147/morningstar-categories-introduction-update-2016

Several months ago, a poster on another forum made the following observation about FMSDX: "With value equities and junk fixed income be prepared to take a hit with this fund if the equity / credit markets turn south [...]"
That was apparent yesterday when FMSDX lost 0.86%, that is more than the S&P 500 index lost. This may not be the "sleep well at night" type of fund for a conservative retiree in today's market environment. Time for me to reconsider and re-evaluate whether or not to keep this fund in my portfolio.
Currently looking at WBALX, a balanced fund in M*'s 30-50%/conservative-allocation category with a lower standard deviation and somewhat lower equity exposure that lost only 0.17%. Total returns over the past 3 and 5 years have been in the 10 to 11% range, quite satisfactory in my neck of the woods.
Good luck,
Fred

One can always go straight to the horse's mouth:
https://www.troweprice.com/personal-investing/campaign/summit-program.html
This is essentially the same basic information that T. Rowe Price sent to customers last month via email, though it adds a lot in its FAQs. What follows is what I read into this preliminary announcement; I could easily be misinterpreting.
- This appears to be the replacement for T. Rowe Price's "Select Client Services", including Personal Services ($250K min) and Enhanced Personal Services ($1M min). That program used to also include Preferred Services ($100K) - see, e.g. footnote 2 on p. 4 here - that TRP quietly phased out a few years ago.
TRP writes (regarding Select Client Services): "The Summit Program is T. Rowe Price’s revamped benefits program that will offer special access to products and services from T. Rowe Price." It doesn't say explicitly that Select Client Services is being discontinued, though that would be the most reasonable interpretation. Alternatively, TRP might allow existing Select Client Services to remain in that program, much as they appear to have grandfathered Preferred Services ($100K) customers after phasing out that tier.
- It is reasonable to assume that eligible assets (i.e. what's counted toward the min) will be the same for old and new programs, though nothing explicitly says that.
- If this Summit program is replacing Select Client Services, will it still provide free M* premium membership?
- The Summit program, like Select Client Services, will have multiple levels. But what they are and what the minimums are remain largely unstated. Though $250K is the min for the Summit program, so that must be the lowest tier. And $500K is likely the min for a tier because that level qualifies you to invest in I class shares.
- "Preferred access" to closed funds doesn't say what that preference is nor does this say that you'll have access to all closed funds. TRP might operate like Vanguard and allow Summit customers to buy, say, $25K of a closed fund per year. TBD.
- We may expect a flurry of activity from Shadow as TRP updates its funds' prospectuses :-)

Great explanation of Musk sales
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/ARbTQlRLRjE/matthew-s-levine?cmpid=BBD111121_MONEYSTUFF&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=211111&utm_campaign=moneystuff&sref=OzMbRRMQ
Copied below if interested if you cannot open paywall
Oh Elon
Well here you go sure sure sure:
Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk unloaded $5 billion of stock in the electric-car maker, shortly after restoking a social media debate over the tax treatment of billionaires’ shareholdings.
The world’s richest person so far has disposed of more than 4.5 million shares this week, according to regulatory filings. Those were his first sales in more than five years.
Musk, who frequently stokes controversy on Twitter, created a firestorm over the weekend with a survey asking whether he should sell part of his Tesla stake. While he portrayed his proposal as having to do with debate over the ultra-wealthy avoiding taxes, the filings released Wednesday show some of the transactions were pre-arranged in mid-September -- weeks before the poll. He also didn’t mention in the tweets that he has millions of stock options that must be exercised before next August, when they expire.
There are two sets of sales. On Monday, he exercised 2.15 million stock options that were granted in 2012, paying about $13.4 million to acquire 2.15 million shares; then he sold 934,091 of those shares for about $1.1 billion. The Form 4 disclosures for the exercise and sales are here and here. Footnote 1 of each of Musk’s Form 4s says: “The transactions reported on this form 4 were automatically effected pursuant to a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan previously adopted on September 14, 2021 and established by the reporting person for the purpose of an orderly sale of shares related to the exercises of options scheduled to expire in 2022.” Actually it says that in all caps. I like my readers so I rendered it in sentence case for readability, but now I’m going to say it again in all caps, for accuracy but also for emphasis: “THE TRANSACTIONS REPORTED ON THIS FORM 4 WERE AUTOMATICALLY EFFECTED PURSUANT TO A RULE 10B5-1 TRADING PLAN PREVIOUSLY ADOPTED ON SEPTEMBER 14, 2021 AND ESTABLISHED BY THE REPORTING PERSON FOR THE PURPOSE OF AN ORDERLY SALE OF SHARES RELATED TO THE EXERCISES OF OPTIONS SCHEDULED TO EXPIRE IN 2022.”
On Tuesday and Wednesday, he sold a total of about 3.6 million of the 170.5 million shares that he already owned (i.e. not shares subject to options), for proceeds of about $3.9 billion. There are a bunch of Form 4s for these sales (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here).[1] They do not mention a prearranged 10b5-1 plan; presumably he decided to sell them this week, and then did.
Some background. First, in September, a few weeks after he put this Rule 10b5-1 plan in place, he said publicly at a conference that “a huge block of options will sell in Q4 — because I have to or they’ll expire.”[2] He has 22,862,050 options in the tranche set to expire next August; he exercised 2.15 million of them on Monday, leaving him with about 20.7 million options in that “huge block” that he plans to “sell in Q4.”
Second, this past Saturday, Musk tweeted a poll. “Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance,” he wrote, “so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock. Do you support this?” In a second tweet, he said “I will abide by the results of this poll, whichever way it goes.” The poll closed on Sunday, with 57.9% of the votes in favor of Musk selling 10% of his stock.
It is not clear what “10% of my Tesla stock” means. At the time of the poll, Musk owned about 170.5 million shares of Tesla stock. But he was also, for legal purposes, the “beneficial owner” of another 73.5 million shares underlying options; Tesla’s filings show him owning 244 million shares. So if Musk were to sell 10% of his stock that would mean selling somewhere between 17 million and 24 million shares, give or take.

@msf
I am not advocating setting up an LLC for I bonds alone, unless you live in a state where there is no annual fee for the LLC. Even then the legal fees and accounting are probably not worth it for the ability to invest another $10,000 in I bonds.
To pay expenses out of the LLC you have to have cash in the LLC, and you indicate, a profit after expenses, at least in most years.
I have not set up a sole proprietorship with a separate tax ID, but if this is feasible and as easy as you say, getting the additional TIN would allow you to buy more I bonds. IT will be at least five years before you can realize any return however without an interest penalty.