My daughter starts college this fall and it is completely funded by a 529 account. Knowing that we have only 18 years investment horizon, we started a month after arrived once we got her social security number. We continue to invest through the ups and down including the 2007 downturn. Thanks to monthly automatic investment and many discussion on this board. And it all pays off now.

Hi @bee
A few quick observations, with a quick read of the article, as outside chores await.
---Writer didn't note whether the investments are all, any or partial IRA monies
---Writer didn't note any other income/living sources
---Writer didn't state age....over 59 1/2 ???
I don't follow why the writer moves the dividends to a money market account. This move skews all of the data work he did with his graphics. How the hell does he think the 25 years of data he noted arrived? Not from removing distributions.
If these monies were rollovers into IRA's or mostly IRA's at the time of his write, he wold be required to pull about 4% after age 70 1/2. We don't have any reference to any of this.
I could not offer any opinion or suggestion to this writer, as there isn't enough information provided.
Regards,
Catch

The following Article was posted here at MFO back in February and I wanted to rekindle the conversation regarding your strategies for generating retirement income from your investments.
The article looks at 4 open-end mutual "conservative allocation" funds using the following criteria:
VWINX, USBLX, GLRBX, PRPFX
The Retirement Income withdrawal will be 4% of the beginning investment value with each successive year's withdrawal increasing by 3% to allow for inflation. Any dividends collected in excess of this will be accumulated in a money market account (MMA) until the year the mutual fund produces less in dividend income than is required and the difference between the next year's household income need and the dividend collected is taken from the MMF. I'm assuming the interest rate on the MMA is zero. If the collective cash reserve is not sufficient…or non-existent…and the dividend collected that year is not sufficient to meet household income need, then sufficient shares will be sold at the end of the year to provide the required cash. This is repeated each December at the end of the month (last trading day).
The clear winner over the the last 25 years?
Read on:
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4050402-long-term-growing-income-open-end-mutual-fund-possible

Hi @Old_Skeet
First, we have not been front or back loaded fund investors, and have never used an advisor. I recall discussions with a friend back in the early 80's about an investment club he helped organize and they were going to use a local Merrill-Lynch broker/office. Others here or you may help with this; but I recall some of the mutual funds under consideration with ML had loads as high as 8%. Is this accurate from the early 80's?
We steered all of our personal investments to Fidelity and never had any investments with the big money houses of the day with the front/rear loaded funds.
Note: for the newer investors, Fidelity did have loads on some funds (3%) and I have a list stashed away somewhere in a filing cabinet from the way back days.
Secondly, a question about your loaded fund investments; at least your long ago initial purchases.
A presumption on my part of how the front loads may work:
Example: Fund "x" has a front load of 5%.
I will presume at some monetary level one no longer pays any load to add more money to the "same" fund? I'm guessing at levels, but perhaps the first $2,500, $5,000 or $10,000 of monies has the full load and then the load is no longer, yes?
The only clear status of the loads that I understand is payment, at least in part; to a/the firm and/or an advisor for their work.
Anyway, would appreciate your description of how this works or did work.
Regards,
Catch

Hello,
Thanks @carew38 for the question.
No, I was never charged an additional sales charge that I remember. This is not to say all my purchases were in bond funds which got moved to equities. The way I learned to do this was through a seasonal investment strategy where during the late spring I'd do some nav exchanges from equity funds to bond funds. During the summer months I'd buy more of the bond type funds; and, then come fall I'd move some back to the equity type funds. Nothing was ever said, to me, nor was I charged any additional commission and/or fees to do these nav transfers other than the commission I paid when additional shares of the bond or stock funds were purchased. With this, I started to purchase more bond funds than equity funds and made portfolio adjustments through more and more nav transfers from bond funds to equity funds. And, I did this for a good number of years. Now, in retirement I am doing less and less new purchases; however, I am moving a good bit of money from all equity funds to some hybrid type funds (over time) rather than to bond funds. I am wanting to grow my footprint in hybrid funds by about one percent per year while reducing all equity fund holdings by a like amount. Currently, about 20% of my portfolio is in cash and cds, about 10% in bond funds, about 45% in hybrid funds and the remaining 25%, or so, in equity funds. When Xrayed this produces an asset allocation of about 20+% cash, about 30% domestic equity, about 20% foreign equity, about 25% bonds and about 5% other. Notice I used the word "about" a good bit because the percentages are rounded to the nearest 5% whole number. As the equity allocation contines to grow I periodically rebalance and move some equity money to hybrid money through nav exchanges. In doing this the hybrid type funds generally have a broader investment universe that they can invest in over other fund types giving the hybird fund manager leadway within ranges, of course, to position into assets classes they feel will offer the better returns and/or offer a more complete investment package. This makes my overall portfolio more adaptive to the ever changing investment environment more automatic whether due to seasonal trends and/or investment activity in the markets by other investors relative to positioning.
For me, one of the better benefits for A share investors is the ability to do nav exchange transfers without paying additional sales charges. I believe the level load funds many classified as T shares do not offer the free nav exchange transfer option.
I hope this somewhat lengthy answer is helpful to understand how and why nav exchanges were made along with cost associated, for me, with these nav transfers.

Over the last dozen years, I think, one of my kids did an undergraduate econ paper analyzing Apple, then revisited it in grad school, and after that as a blogger --- and each time (so now perhaps up to 4-5 instances), I thought to myself, 'Hmm, interesting, I wonder, ... still looks awfully expensive, we better pass.'
Phooey.

@Old_Skeet-when you paid the lower sales charge on the bond funds, did the brokerage ever charge you the higher sales charge when you moved into the stock funds? I know I wish I had been willing to pay the 5% sales charge on SGENX in 1993.

FYI: ( The fund is not available to U.S. investors.)
When Robert Marshall-Lee started running an emerging-market equity fund six years ago, he decided the only way to withstand the surge in passive investing strategies was to stop paying attention to them.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.fa-mag.com/news/this--3-3-billion-fund-manager-beats-world-by-ignoring-etfs-33674.html?print
M* UK: Snapshot Newton Global Emerging Fund:
http://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/funds/snapshot/snapshot.aspx?id=F00000W50J

FYI: As part of its ongoing series on 529 account owner
behavior, Vanguard recently reviewed the investment
saving behavior of a random sample of its 529 client
plan account owners. Our analysis revealed a number
of positive trends. First, we found that the use of 529
plans continues to increase, absolutely and relative to
other savings vehicles not specifically designed for
college. Second, 529 college savers are starting early,
giving them more time to benefit from the compounding
of investment earnings and tax savings. Finally, account
owners are contributing more regularly by making
automatic payments. As our results show, regular
contributors save more.
Regards,
Ted
https://pressroom.vanguard.com/nonindexed/529-plan-savers-earn-better-grades.pdf

Yea, even with my own millennials it's hard to convince them that investing in the tried and true hitters who spray it all over the field year after year is a better bet than the hitter who cranks out a grand slam once every 5-10 years.
However, if they wanted to construct an investing motif of their five to ten best tech stock ideas I wouldn't discourage them.

I don't give a hoot about meeting any particular performance benchmark but my own.
If a fund I hold gains 16% and everyone else gains 25% in a given year, I am not worried; it's still a very solid rate of return imho. Conversely, if a given fund loses significantly less than everyone else, I will chalk that up as a 'win' for the year, as it shows some concern over downside risks and/or good allocations.
And besides, one year does not matter if you're a long-term fund investor. Unless you're in a bubble, not everything moves equally and in the same direction at all times.

Attacking the fund in this environment is a failure to understand Foster's strategy. He is a defensive risk-averse emerging markets investor. When the average emerging fund is up 21.5% in 6 1/2 months like in 2017, this fund will probably lag. Anyone complaining about its 16.5% return instead of 21.5% is suffering from a bit of irrational exuberance. Foster ran Matthews Asian Growth & Income for six years with the same defensive strategy. It too would lag in go-go markets and shine in more stable or bearish ones.

With all due respect, I don't put much weight behind the fact that the fund has struggled for a year. Given Foster's history, I would give him the benefit of the doubt for now. As Ted said, the fund's 3 and 5-year performance is very good. I would give Foster the benefit of the doubt that he will turn it around. In addition, I don't believe SFGIX is considered a total EM fund, so it may lag other EM funds that are more comprehensive.

@BenWP: No question SFGIX has had a difficult time of it YTD and 1-Year, putting it in the 85 and 93 percentile. However, its 3 & 5 year performance is excellent with a 5th and 7th percentile ranking. I guess its a question of what have you done for me lately. I recommend if thing don't improve significantly by the end of 2017, I'd dump Foester
Regards,
Ted
M*: SFGIX Performance:
http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/performance-return.action?t=SFGIX&region=usa&culture=en-US

http://updates.seafarerfunds.com/t/ViewEmail/r/ABC6E0301B01329A2540EF23F30FEDED/A8EFEBE0ED2CC0EB4D402EFBD42943A3
Shareholders of SFGIX, myself included, probably received an email with Andrew Foster's latest video. I did not watch the whole thing but I did listen carefully as Foster struggled to explain why the fund has failed to keep pace with its bogey for four quarters running. Not buying Chinese internet stocks did not sit well with me as good reasoning. I know many on the board own the fund and I, for one, believed we'd be rewarded in a year when EM stocks have been on a tear. Do others share my disappointment?

Fake quote: snopes.com/quotes/einstein/interest.asp
Aside from its dubious provenance, the quote is incompatible with Einstein's overall political philosophy. Einstein was a socialist. He wrote an essay entitled "Why Socialism?" in which he stated:

The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil.

and

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.

You can see the wiki on it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Socialism%3F
You can also read the essay in its entirety here:
https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/
I suspect even the author of this link on investing doesn't believe Einstein said that comment about compound interest. He states:

It is alleged that Albert Einstein was asked what is the most powerful force in the universe and he replied: “Compound interest.”

It is alleged that such alleging is utter poppycock.

@Charles: I'm glad to see so many funds, although 9,500 wouldn't be missed ! That gives some MFO Members a greater number of funds to collect !
Regards,
Ted

FYI: If you’ve spent any time watching professional sports, whether live or on television, you’ve no doubt heard a variation on this phrase hundreds of times: “this is brought to you by brand X, the official sponsor of the league.” Now, there’s an exchange-traded fund that tracks those sponsors.
The ProSports Sponsors ETF FANZ, -0.05% which made its debut on Tuesday, only holds companies that partner with one of the four major U.S. sports leagues: the National Football League, the National Hockey League, Major League Baseball, and the National Basketball Association. This is separate from team sponsors; for example, Citigroup Inc C, -1.10% and the New York Mets, who play at Citi Field.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/etf-dedicated-to-pro-sports-sponsorships-steps-up-to-the-plate-2017-07-11/print

oh, sure
like a lot of macro types the points made often seem a little late, but that is built into that kind of role
this caused me to buy some EM
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2017-05-19/jurrien-timmer-on-being-bullish-on-emerging-markets-video
but again, not the newest new news exactly.

Looking at a total return graph comparing POAGX, RPMGX and VETAX on M* I fail to see the benefit of holding VETAX. It appears to track RPMGX like a shadow (or vice versa) so what benefit is being gained other than perceived manager diversification?

Thanks for the comment Mark. I'm quite sure that the folks at Victory Funds would be very pleased at the performance comparison with Brian Berghuis and the TRP Mid-Cap team. RPMGX is my single biggest holding, residing in both a taxable and IRA accounts.
You are absolutely correct in that their aggregate performance over 3, 5 and 10 year timelines are very similar. However, their performance by year varies dramatically...evidenced by the 2016 performance of RPMGX at 6.3%, versus VETAX at 20.66%. This variability works in my favor I believe, given how I manage my withdrawals.
A portfolio comparison shows very little overlap...perhaps explained by the AUM difference.
All in all...I think having 3 good management teams in one space is a good thing...IMHO.