@BenWP,
RMD are taken for tax purposes. The government wants to collect deferred taxes on the deferred arrangement of certain retirement accounts. Our budget should budget for these tax payments. Starting SWR prior to RMD may actually help lower RMD. Roth conversions early in retirement might also help lower RMDs. If SWRs come from tax deferred accounts they are a component of RMD. If SWR withdrawals are lower than RMDs, the remaining RMD dollars (after taxes are paid) could be contributed to a Roth IRA (if you or your spouse have work income).
I Do Not Need My IRA RMD. Can I Put It in a Roth IRA?

It seems to me that the fundamental concept of an SWR is to establish a constant rate that will be used during retirement, come what may.
If we're going to be adjusting the SWR up and down depending on market conditions (which makes perfect sense to me), then we don't actually have an "SWR", but rather a "DSWR", as bee suggests.
Which takes us back to the original Market Watch article, which as far as I'm concerned, is mostly baloney. As I said above, various actors, needing to fill up the space required for their commentary, pick and choose whatever they need to "prove" whatever point that they're trying to make. As long as the required space is filled, all is OK. These guys don't get paid to be right- they get paid to fill up space.

Whatever he did with his stake, I think he still has enough to live comfortably after retirement by withdrawing only 2.26% each year. Such incredible sums blur my vision and affect my thinking.

"SWR (which is type of payout...that hopefully last a lifetime) should have in it's SWR methodology considerations for performance ( in both up and down markets)."
I'm surely not math gifted but how could that could be done? How could a Safe Withdrawal Rate methodology possibly predict what types of market conditions, either good or bad, might exist in any given time span?
Yes, one can construct a bracket of simulations that cover a range of overall market conditions in a given number-of-years time frame, and in fact I did exactly that over a span of fifty years prior to retirement. That helps one to see what range of asset mixes would be required to insure a decent retirement over a given length of time.
But that's a different animal than a projection that yields a number that guarantees an optimal withdrawal percentage over an entire retirement time span. If such a projection erred substantially in predicting poor market conditions, the retirement pot would be underfunded. If it erred substantially in predicting unusually good market conditions, then the retirement scheme would provide significantly less income than possible. "Safe", yes, but not terribly efficient.
Seems to me that there's no such thing as "one ring to rule them all" in financial projections over a long period of time.

I was trying to understand how the seemingly open-end funds listed in this month's Commentary article are not for sale in the same way that close-end funds do trade on equity markets. The following explanation on Schwab's website cleared things up for me:
"Interval funds are not available for purchase by individual investors.
Interval funds are closed-end funds that offer daily purchases and redeem shares by periodically offering to repurchase a certain portion of shares from shareholders (“tenders” or “redemptions”). Rules and regulations related to interval funds enable fund companies to create portfolios with less capital volatility while holding a greater percentage of less-liquid, longer-term investments, often with higher risk-return opportunities than may be readily achieved in open-end mutual funds or exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
Although interval fund purchases resemble open-end mutual funds in that their shares are typically continuously offered and priced daily, they differ from traditional closed-end funds in that their shares are not sold on a secondary market. Instead, periodic repurchase offers are made to shareholders by the fund. The fund will specify a date by which shareholders must accept the repurchase offer. The actual repurchase will occur at a later, specified date. If repurchase requests exceed the number of shares that a fund offers to repurchase during the repurchase period, repurchases are prorated (reduced by the same percentage across all trades) prior to processing. In such event, shareholders may not be able to sell their expected amount, and would potentially experience increased illiquidity and market exposure, which could increase the potential for investment loss."
FWIIW, I own QREARX in my retirement account at TIAA. It's up about 12% YTD, offering nice ballast.

How many of those Vanguard defined contribution accounts are held by people who have only worked for their employer a few years? How many of those participants have other DC accounts at former employers or have additional retirement savings in IRAs?

Vanguard estimates that a typical participant should target a total contribution rate of 12% to 15%, including both employee and employer contributions. Forty-seven percent of participants had total employee and employer contribution rates that met those thresholds or reached the statutory contribution limit.

https://institutional.vanguard.com/content/dam/inst/vanguard-has/insights-pdfs/22_TL_HAS_FullReport_2022.pdf
If one were to include IRA contributions, the percentage of participating employees meeting the recommended thresholds would be higher.
------
Hulbert grossly misread the BC study, or I did. That study contains only a single graph with a 12% figure in it. That is the rate of coverage by both defined contribution and defined benefit plans. The study says that 73% of workers were covered by DC plans alone in 2019.
As far as actually participating (having accounts) in DC plans is concerned, the BLS reports that in private industry (in 2021), 68% of workers had access to retirement plans. 75% of those participated. In other words, a majority of workers in private industry had retirement accounts.
Government workers? Even better. 92% had access to retirement plans, and 89% of those participated. over 4/5 of government workers had retirement accounts.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2021/68-percent-of-private-industry-workers-had-access-to-retirement-plans-in-2021.htm
--------
A statistic from the Vanguard plan that I find informative is that only 2-3% of participating employees with wages under $100K max out (Figure 49). The figure would be even lower if we included the 1/3 of employees who aren't offered a plan, or the 1/4 of those who have that option but don't participate.
For all the consternation about limitations on contribution amounts, it's almost exclusively the higher salaried employees who would benefit from increasing the limit.

"...And that’s assuming you have a $1 million retirement portfolio. According to the most recent analysis by Vanguard, only 15% of retirement accounts at Vanguard are worth even $250,000. And according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by the Boston College Center for Retirement Research, only 12% of workers have any retirement account in the first place..."
frightening.

The 1.9% safe withdrawal rate (SWR) referenced in the article is much lower than some others suggest.
M* suggested a 3.3% SWR for a 50% stock/50% bond portfolio.
Bill Bengen believes retirees can safely withdraw 4%-plus from their portfolios
unless we get in a severe inflationary environment.
Michael Kitces replicated Bill Bengen's original 1994 study with a broader dataset
and concluded that a 4% - 4.5% SWR was feasible.

The problem with the 4% rule is that what sticks in most people mind is the 4% and not the 50% equity allocation it is based on. Lots of retirees, myself included, do not allocate 50% to stocks and as my 4th year of retirement grinds to an end I have not regrets that I don’t qualify for the 4% plan. Just my opinion.

@Baseball_Fan -
What is your advice for a 25 year old working individual who has a 401-K tax deferred option available at work and who does not expect to need to withdraw any funds for at least 40 years and who likely will not need all the funds for at least 50 years, assuming you would not advise investing a large portion, if any, in equities?
Where are you going with the lengthy diatribe directed towards equities? Would you advise such an individual to invest his or her retirement money instead in cash? In bonds? Divide it into cash, bonds and equities? Or to seek to time the markets? Would that all of us at 25 were so blessed with those market timing skills that we might glide easily in and out of the most “profitable” investments of the day over the next half century.
For some reference - 50 years ago the DJI was around 750. The hand held calculator hadn’t yet appeared on store shelves. Most of us watched black and white TV and the cassette player was about to replace the 8-track as state of the art music. A gallon of gas cost 25 cents. $3500 bought you an upscale sedan off a new car lot. A modest home in many areas sold for $20,000 - $25,000. Computers were the size of a room and generated immense heat - yet were less powerful than an iphone today. Your 1970s dollar’s buying power today? One shudders to think.

From JohnN’s above post:
“ … long term investors absolutely need dca /buy now.”
I suppose it depends on your definition of “long term investors” - among other things.
- If 25 years or more from retirement / needing the money one might ask why they are not already 100% in good equity funds.
- If we shorten the definition to mean 7-10 years from needing the money, I’d still argue for adding some equities at today’s levels, the degree of which dependent on the individual’s risk tolerance.
- Some folks consider only 3-5 years “long term”. With that short a time horizon the prospect of adding equities at today’s (still arguably elevated) valuations becomes much dicier. I probably would, but it’s far from a done deal.
(Not intended as advice)

The TSP is what it is. I might, however, point to the L income performance. While most elderly retirees have lost about 15% in most commercial target retirement income funds, retirees in L income have only lost 6%. The G has crept up a bit but doesn't seem to have the superior returns to many commercial vehicles that it once had. (Maybe it was always a myth; I don't know.) The equity funds are what they are - broad indexes. They probably mimic any other commercial offering for the same index fund. Truth be told, when income funds are down 15%, equity dominant funds being down more, even twice as much, isn't a stretch of my imagination. One might admit, however, that, when the G fund is available for ballast, it is a good thing. Many, like myself, are hoping that the recent changes that open the TSP to a commercial window don't drive up expenses for everyone and don't trash the plan entirely. Right now, it is reportedly non-functional. I haven't been able to fix my beneficiary after my husband's death. I don't think; who knows? Nothing is guaranteed updated or accurate. I am worried that RMDs won't come off in December as designed. With the disfunction, the only indicator might be whether you received the check or deposit. It is a mess, a royal, stupid, unnecessary mess with no real end in sight.

And how about the even more conservative( about 29% equity) VTINX which is off -15.77% YTD as of yesterday. Vanguard Target Retirement Income Fund is my benchmark and I am happy to say I am beating it handily.

Possibly the Chestnut Street Exchange Fund (CHNTX) and/or BlackRock Exchange Portfolio (STSEX) for a retirement account.
Brown Capital Management Small Company Fund (BCSIX , BCSSX) would be nice also.

FWIW, as of close Sept.23, misery loves company. Here is a look at some diversified TRP retirement funds as benchmarks - YTD losses.
TRRAX 44% equity -16.7%
TRRBX 50% equity -17.7%
TRRCX 68% equity -20.7%
TRRDX 87% equity -25.5%
Fan favorite balanced/allocation fund:
PRWCX -14.6%

Interesting article near the end of Barron’s print edition (September 26, 2022) credited to Rick Lear of Lear Investment Management.
Caption - “What Investors Got Wrong About Risk”
Basic premise seems to be that fixed income, particularly bonds is, and never was, a proper method for managing / quantifying risk in a portfolio.
Excerpt:
“Risk is one of the most widely discussed topics in the business. It is also one of the most misunderstood. The investment industry relies heavily on a statistical tool called standard deviation to gauge risk. In technical terms, standard deviation calculates the dispersion of a data set, relative to its mean. In other words, the more varied an investment strategy's returns are, relative to its average return, the riskier that strategy is thought to be. Strategies with low standard deviation, where returns are tightly bunched up near their historic average, are considered more predictable and therefore less risky. This view of risk emboldened investors to rebalance into bonds at a time of growing market turmoil, as the broad fixed-income market's standard deviation, over the past three years, has been around a fifth that of stocks, implying that bonds are expected to lose less than stocks in a down year.”
-
Not well versed in modern “standard deviation” methodology - which Lear critiques. However, he suggests that rather than mitigating risk with bond exposure one needs to be selective in holding particular assets that have offsetting risk characteristics. Humm … For most of the twenty-five years I’ve followed markets bonds have indeed been good volatility hedges. I suppose we might conclude from our recent 2022 experience to date that this time “things really are different.”
Check-out the year to date performance of your favorite conservative allocation fund. VWINX (albeit more of an income fund) is the best of the lot IMHO. Off more than 13% year-to-date by Fido’s accounting - worse than some equity funds. But still it’s held up better than TRP’s “Retirement Balanced Fund” TRRIX by a percent or two. In its early days TRRIX was labeled “Retirement Income Fund.” Fortunate, perhaps, that Price elected to rename it more than a decade ago.
(Sorry - Not able to provide links to the Barron’s print edition I draw from.)

No wonder why Woods screaming ****rate halt ...deflation*** past few wks. She maybe couple months early
So many folks lost $$ these days
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/she-never-explained-anything-im-a-senior-citizen-and-i-lost-100-000-in-the-stock-market-this-year-can-i-sue-my-financial-adviser-11663719152?mod=quentin-fottrell
Dear Quentin,
I am a senior citizen and have suffered major losses to the tune of $100,000 in the recent stock market turmoil. Can I sue my financial adviser? I understand the dynamics of the market as far as its ups and downs, and have ridden them out before.
However, it’s been different with the market in this timeframe insofar as tech stocks are taking a major hit, as well as others. I advised my financial adviser I was heading into retirement months before all of this happened.
As my account was taking losses, she did nothing to warn me that given the current situation it might be a good idea to move my assets to another area to lessen the losses — and return at a later date when things have stabilized.
....

@hank

Good! Makes investing more interesting.

I think unpredictability is good in sports and works of art, but am less enthused about it for the finances of millions of Americans whose retirements are tied to securities markets. It’s one of the reasons I’m a strong believer in Social Security and don’t think it should ever be tied to the stock market.

@LewisBraham - I was speaking as 1 individual investor, which I’m sure you realize. Not everyone possesses your depth of knowledge or my keen interest in investing.
Oh, I agree. It’s absurd that individuals of every education level and walk of life and having vastly disparate incomes during their working years should be expected to manage a retirement portfolio during all their working years and than continue to manage such after retiring. Just nuts. I know well one such individual. Sure didn’t work for him, even with a company match which he did not take full advantage of. That 401-K money was 100% “out the window” after about 3 years into retirement.
I don’t know what the answer is, but would support better SS or other public initiatives to try and level the playing field..