Schwab also has 0% ER fund, but with a $100K minimum initial investment.
https://www.schwab.wallst.com/Prospect/Research/MutualFunds/Summary.asp?symbol=LSSAX

I invested a small sum at the launch, sitting pretty flat still, with NAV increasing $0.01 about every 2 weeks or so, at $20.04 currently. Also have made their 6th investment as well.

I have ~ 13 - 17 yrs until retirement
401k and trading accts 90% stocks and 2040 TDF /indexes /etf -10% bonds+ fixed incomes + cash
2 yrs before retirement will changed redistribute to 55/45 and open -rolled ecerything to 401k. After take 5 -7% RMD out per yr until I part this Earth to limit tax situations (hopefully w social security 401k and rmd should be enough get by and travel retire)

Mrs. Ruffles inherited an IRA that must be drawn down completely in 10 years. It’s up in the air as to whether it will need to be drawn down proportionally over the 10 years (as the IRS recently proposed) or can be taken out at any time and in any amount.
I’m trying to come up with the best investment/withdrawal strategy to maximize the IRA’s value and minimize the risk of getting caught in a downturn.
My thoughts so far:
1. Invest in a 2032 Target Date fund with an automatic glide path to the end date.
2. A moderate allocation approach (either as a single fund or combination of funds).
3. Ignore the 10 year deadline, apply our typical investment strategy, and take withdrawals as in-kind rather than as cash to allow for recovery from drawdowns.
Any other ideas/refinements that I haven’t considered?

Interesting to note the June 16 quote at the start of this thread caught the short term market bottom....
VTI Chart

1. Has the 10 year treasury peaked at 3.48% over the next 2 years? yes or no and why?
2. Are we resting in a commodity super cycle over the next 5 years?

Perhaps M* read the prospectus.

The amounts shown in the table are 0.00% to reflect the fact that the Fund does not pay any advisory, administration or distribution and service fees, and that Loomis, Sayles & Company, L.P. (“Loomis Sayles” or the “Adviser”) has agreed to pay certain expenses of the Fund. You should be aware, however, that shares of the Fund are available only to institutional investment advisory clients of Loomis Sayles and Natixis Advisors, LLC (“Natixis Advisors”) and to participants in certain approved “wrap fee” programs sponsored by broker-dealers and investment advisers that may be affiliated or unaffiliated with the Fund, Loomis Sayles or Natixis Advisors. The institutional investment advisory clients of Loomis Sayles and Natixis Advisors pay Loomis Sayles or Natixis Advisors a fee for their investment advisory services, while participants in “wrap fee” programs pay a “wrap” fee to the program’s sponsor. The “wrap fee” program sponsors in turn pay fees to Natixis Advisors. Participants in “wrap fee” programs should carefully read the wrap fee brochure provided to them by their program’s sponsor. The brochure is required to include information about the fees charged by the “wrap fee” program sponsor and the fees paid by such sponsor to Natixis Advisors. Investors pay no additional fees or expenses to purchase shares of the Fund. Investors will, however, indirectly pay a proportionate share of those costs, such as brokerage commissions, taxes and extraordinary expenses that are borne by the Fund through a reduction in their net asset value. See the section “Management” in the Statutory Prospectus.

For-profit Prison company. Wow. We have too many criminals, and I've been a victim too often. I'm all for more prisons, so the perps can be KEPT INSIDE. But for-profit prisons are unethical. The very concept. To say nothing of the way they abuse and extort admittedly GUILTY pig-sucking shit-bag criminals.
https://www.reuters.com/business/big-short-fund-manager-burry-dumps-portfolio-buys-prison-stock-2022-08-15/

onetrust is a popular cookie consent management tool. While OT provides templates and language ootb, customers can customize how the cookie choices are presented to end users.
Unfortunately there isn't any standardized way in which publishers present consent choices to consumers. Some publishers are genuine in giving true choice to the consumer, many are just checking a box and some unfortunately intentionally play word smith games intended to confuse rather than illuminate.
The goal of many publishers is pretty obvious -- get the consumer to give up and click on the Accept All button. The entire cookie choice system is not inherently stable because there are variations in the controls presented, words used and differences in the UX as you saw. Very difficult if not near impossible to learn a pattern on one site and universally apply it everywhere. And since browser history and settings have to be periodically cleaned due to malfunctioning sites, cookie choice isn't a set it and forget it type op.
Which is why most users simply click Accept All and move on. Which pretty much defeats the entire edifice of giving choice to the consumer.
Regulators don't live in the real world. In one of my prior jobs (managing a custom web app used by a high volume call center) there was such a staggeringly high volume of consumers calling in for extremely basic browser issues (easily a third or more of the calls) that one couldn't really help wonder how effective the rocket science of cookie choice really was. And these calls had absolutely nothing to do with the functionality of the web app itself. These were literally the level of "Is your computer powered on" type questions.
So sometimes when you call tech support of a service provider, the agent will walk you through some really silly basic stuff -- you often wonder if the company created those support scripts 30 years back and forgot to update them for modern times You start wondering why the scripts are catering to the lowest common denominator which might be less than 1%. I've seen the other side and now know that the LCD is a lot larger than 1%.

I went to the Economist website and clicked on Manage in the "Information We and Our Partners Collect About You" window. The toggle switches for Advertising, Analytics, Marketing, and Functional were in the left position and they were greyed out. Therefore these particular cookies are not enabled by default.
Here's more info regarding The Economist Group's cookie policy.

Thanks for looking into this. Any guess / thoughts on how to use the "Apply and Exit" and "Accept All" buttons at the bottom of the pop up if I do not want to enable those cookies and why the "Accept All" is highlighted when all the toggle switches were greyed out?
I am trying to learn this schematic in the hope I can use this knowledge at other sites as well.

+1 msf Hope you're not living in Guayaquil which has had problems with gang violence in recent days. I looked at relocating to Ecuador for health insurance, but hoping I can transition from the ACA to Medicare in 2026 !

Schrager is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute-a right-wing think tank, so there's your explanation !

yeah, she is a conservative (whatever that means anymore) macro economist, well-trained, but also in the past an FA, starting w DFA.
She may be more famous now for having written a rather panned and seemingly obvious book An Economist Walks Into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk, which among many other things explains that street whores make way more than whorehouse employees, trading wages for risk reduction.
A Frank Stein wrote [grammar-edited]:
a primer on basic risk and reward analysis in economics. Most concepts, like the diversification of risk, the difference between systematic and idiosyncratic risk, the difference between hedging and insurance, will not be surprising even to those reading regular business news, but the treat here is the little stories Schrager tells to illustrate these ideas.
Schrager shows how brothels pay their women less money, almost 50% less, than those women would earn on the streets, but these women trade off the income for risk reduction. The johns pay more for the safe experience though (up to 300% more, partially because both they and the women are affected by tax rates, which cuts wages and raises prices). She shows how horse-raising encourages high-risk, high-reward studs like War Front, who got $250,000 a mating session, or almost $25 million a year, even though the market leads to many failures and mass inbreeding (almost all thoroughbreds are descended from a single male in the early 1700s, the Darley Arabian. Another stud in the 1980s, Northern Dancer, sired most all of the next generation). She explains why paparazzi like Santiago Baez tried to organize "photogs" in the gold-rush era of the early 2000s, with each taking some percentage of the high-income photographs, but she also explains why incentives led most of these photogs to cheat and why the alliances fell apart. Etc.

@davidrmoran It depends on how target date funds mentioned in the piece allocate to short-term bond funds. [[my bf]] Vanguard is the largest target date fund manager. It allocates its short-term bond exposure for retirees in its target date funds to VTAPX, i.e., Vanguard Short-Term Inflation-Protected Securities Index Fund Admiral Shares. That fund is down less than 1% in 2022, very good for this year's poor bond and stock market.

Come on --- you said, and keep saying, 'ST bond funds'. No and nope. (You will want to be careful in your good articles to avoid restating that.) VTAPX is not that, ST bond, as commonly understood. It performs like a Tips fund. Indeed, for $10k, VTAPX is within a few bucks (or tens of bucks over enough time) of STIP, exactly, always lagging except for ytd, maybe.

@davidrmoran It depends on how target date funds mentioned in the piece allocate to short-term bond funds. Vanguard is the largest target date fund manager. It allocates its short-term bond exposure for retirees in its target date funds to VTAPX, i.e., Vanguard Short-Term Inflation-Protected Securities Index Fund Admiral Shares. That fund is down less than 1% in 2022, very good for this year's poor bond and stock market.
@Bee I know. I was being a bit facetious myself regarding fatherly talks on careers. But I don't like generalizing on these sorts of topics much.

@LewisBraham
>> I imagine many workers are thankful they owned the short rather than long-term bonds right now. Also, short term bonds adjust to inflation and interest rate increases more quickly than long.
uh
Possibly individual bonds, if they knew what to do.
But if they were in, say, BSV the last 2y/1y/ytd, or even 3y, or had given their money to supposedly smart bond people like the managers of FTBFX, PONAX, and/or DODIX, no, I don't think they are so thankful.

Nice @LewisBraham. I’m very worried about many workers dependent on 401-K savings for what could be 20, 30 or even 40 years of retirement. I’m fortunate to have a DB pension. But those are now few and far between. And, when it comes to managing / investing a 401-K, those who post on this forum possess better than average investment acumen. But in general few wage earners would appear equipped to manage a small fortune successfully and time the withdrawals so as to last a lifetime.
Preventing workers from “borrowing” against their 401-K during their working years might be a start. Some retire with little if any left invested for growth. Perhaps limiting withdrawals to a set percentage or an amount that rises incrementally during retirement would help. As far as target-date funds go … the jury is still out on whether they’re the best approach as the default option. I know a few persons in their mid-60s who have already exhausted 100% of the money they contributed during 25-30 year careers. Suddenly they see their rent, fuel and food costs rising sharply. It’s really sad to witness. Maybe our politicians could stop throwing brickbats at one another long enough to address problems like this one.

+1 @Catch22 / No problem with continuing this one. Just that readers should check dates of earlier posts …
I do have a small hold in one large mining company. A lot of industrial metals including iron ore. And it was clear from the action in Asia last night that it would take a hit today. Actually, diversified miners are one good economic indicator to watch, as demand would fall off going into a recession …

A sign someone is making stuff up to bolster their case: They use familiar cliche stats like “nine times out of ten.” Really, she interviewed sex workers and hit men and they said it was their fathers who got them into the business via nepotism nine times out of ten? That must be an interesting fatherly chat about future careers when they’re children. While I agree nepotism is a problem, it tends to be more of one at the top than the bottom. Why not instead of glib statements, do some real analysis? How prevalent is it actually, in what jobs and what industries?
It’s also amusing to me she’s fine with the government stepping in to address the “big risks” like a “crazy” stock market crash but seems to take issue with addressing millions of workers problems with retirement savings. Socialism for the rich in the form of a stock market bailout is OK in 2020, but everything else for workers is too much nanny state. Most Americans either have little stock exposure or none at all because they have little left over after they pay their bills. So why should the government bail the stock market out? In general, Main Street not Wall Street needs the bailouts. The two are interconnected to a degree, but not nearly as much in 2022 as they were in 1929.
While I agree defaulting to short term bonds as target funds do when someone retires is overly simplistic, I imagine many workers are thankful they owned the short rather than long-term bonds right now. Also, short term bonds adjust to inflation and interest rate increases more quickly than long.

I thought this was a pretty good read from Allison Schrager. Some interesting points regarding Fed policy and action that has impacted the economy and the market.

Getting rid of risk is the biggest risk. It seems like every time something bad happens in the economy we decide we need policies to keep it from ever happening again. And sometimes that is wise, say if a bad recession or stock market crash reveals some crazy distortion or externality that needs to be eliminated. But often, we tend to try to eliminate any bad thing.

On the Housing Market:

Now, the market is weird—sales down, prices up, and frozen in some places. And I think it will be screwy for a while because no one who got a cheap mortgage can afford to move. And the MBS market will be weird because no one will refinance either, so the duration of these securities is totally unpredictable.
and,
the Fed buying the entire MBS market in the middle of a housing boom?! That’s crazy, and it did not eliminate risk—it only created more.

On "nudging" the workforce into Target Date Funds:

nudging did have a big impact on investing. Before nudging, people kept their portfolio allocations pretty constant as they aged or kept their money in cash. But automatically enrolling people in target date funds (TDFs) means more people now own stock and move into bonds as they age.
Great. But the problem with TDFs is they don’t help people spend in retirement, and that is the whole point. And while I agree people should move into bonds as they age—because of lifecycle finance, not because a shorter time in markets is riskier—TDFs move people into the wrong kind of bonds. They are mostly in short-duration bonds (less than five years), while the duration of your future spending at retirement is more like 12 years. This leaves people exposed to interest rate, market, and inflation risks.
Nudging is not enough; you need good defaults too. And in a changing-rate, high-inflation environment, we’ll start to see the costs of TDFs’ shortcomings.

On Nepotism:

I meet a lot of people who do some unusual jobs: Sex workers, bounty hunters, mob hitmen, horse inseminators, pensions actuaries—you name it. And the first thing I always ask them is how they got into this line of work. And nine times out of 10, I hear, “My father.”

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