You'd think, or would like to think so, but recent experience demonstrates how wrong that assumption could be. I'll try to explain.
Much like I have recently done a friend was in the process of buying a home in a state to which he wanted to move. He is retired and has none of the usual forms of income lenders look to first such as current W-2's or rents, royalties, etc.. He collects social security and can document a certain monthly income flow from his savings which would satisfy the traditional PITI (Principal + Interest + Taxes + Insurance) payment on the loan but would leave him with very little left after everyday life expenses (healthcare, food, utilities, entertainment, etc.). Doable but just barely. He owns a home free and clear in his current state of residence but lenders view that as more of a liability than an asset. Why? It's true value is unknown or at best an estimate until it is sold, assuming it is sold. Until such time that home assets must be insured, property taxes must be paid and upkeep must be maintained all of which constitute subtractions or liabilities against his income. I hope you see where I am going with this.
Lenders are only concerned with your ability to service your loan in the form of current income. It's all that seems to matter. Having an assist pile is nice in terms of credit worthiness but where's the 'income' ? They use what is called "Capacity" which measures the borrower's ability to repay a loan by comparing income against recurring debts and assessing the borrower's debt-to-income (DTI) ratio. Lenders calculate DTI by adding together a borrower's total monthly debt payments and dividing that by the borrower's gross monthly income. More information can be found in the NOLO link below.
From NOLO - Mortgage Rules on "Ability to Repay"
At the end of February my friend thought he was sitting pretty because he could document the income flow necessary. There wasn't much wiggle room there but he felt he had an 'ace' in the hole in the form of the unsold house. One month in time has now seriously put a hurt on his assumptions. Will his house sell for what he hoped or thought? Will it even sell? Will an investment he holds cut or eliminate the income or distribution he counted on to be there? I've heard it said that if you can document an automatic monthly flow of income from your savings (e.g. retirement account) to your spending account (in whatever form that takes) and that flow is sustainable for 3-years than lenders can choose to proceed with the loan. I can't verify that at all. I also don't know what I would do if I were in his shoes.

@msf
Last week I called Fidelity and Schwab reps and both told me the following...this is from Schwab "All Schwab Money Funds with the exception of Schwab Government Money Fund, Schwab U.S. Treasury Money Fund, Schwab Treasury Obligations Money Fund, Schwab Government Money Market Portfolio, and Schwab Retirement Government Money Fund may impose a fee upon the sale of your shares or may temporarily suspend your ability to sell shares if the Fund’s liquidity falls below required minimums because of market conditions or other factors"
We are talking about generic Muni MM. The big 3 VG, Fidelity and Schwab have similar narratives on their site. Prime + Muni MM will probably be OK but I prefer to take the safer route.
So, with all due respect, I believe the reps at Fidelity and Schwab and the narratives on their site that support it.

I have been looking for a reliable trading system for many years. I ran hundreds of scenarios, mostly technical analysis. I wanted to find something easy, if you use too many indicators it's too complicated. You also don't want too many trades. I could find anything I like so I made my own system.
I looked at
50/200 moving averages--too late/early many time
10 months MA by Faber-It works only in crashes but not good at mild one. You can see it in this (link)
I tracked the performance of GMO, Arnott and AQR Capital Management and they were not good.
Inverted yield, PE, PE10 can be off by months and years
When I was younger I was very heavy in stocks but in the last 7-8 years I learned a lot about bonds, starting with PIMIX.
In the last 5 years and close to retirement I based my timing on the following
1) Bonds rule. Bonds must work rationally for me to be confident. Stocks don't have to be rational, they can go up regardless, at some point they will go down but they can be off by years/months
2) I simply set a rule of max loss from the last top for each fund I own. Years ago it was 3% for bonds and 6% for stocks. Now it's 1% for any bond fund I own, at 0.5% I start checking why.
If I sell a fund then I look at other funds in the same category, it the category bad or just this fund. Then I look at other categories, maybe they are doing OK.
example: rates go up most bond categories go down but wait, bank loans may go up.
make the switch.
When you have enough, it's just a number game. If I sell too soon and it rebounded and I miss the performance...I don't care.
3) Look at VIX. If it's over 30, it's a warning sign. Over 40 a stop sign. continue up, it's a danger zone. The key here is to look at extreme because it's hardly there.
4) Pay attention to the traders. I record fast money and watch it every day, at least the first 15 minutes. Pay attention to Carter Worth. Pay attention especially to an unusual guess Tony Dwyer with pretty good calls. These people give me the market internals, spirit and what the big Wall Street firms are doing. Investing for me is a passion for years.
5) I use simple tech indicators because many algos use it too. 50+200 MA, MACD, trends,
3-line-break (link) This fast indicator tells you to get ready to buy/sell. I used these for riskier stuff for short term trading.
When stocks lose and rebound, they will capture most times 40-50%. I look at the SP500 + 3 line break + daily MACD(weekly MACD is better) when to enter and stay for 1-2 days of trade. The more it's down the more you can make and stay with the trade. It's feeling but if I made money I sell anyway if I think it's enough.
For my longer term bond holdings, I use a simple trend. I have several bond funds I like and just switch.
6) Common sense based on the news.
Examples:
The Fed says they will raise rates, watch your bond fund, stay away from simple IG bonds
The Fed said last week they will support IG bonds, start buying.
Fast trading:
A very known stock had bad news after hours and falls 20%. The next day, you can see the trading prior to the opening. It opens even lower at -22%, you buy, it will go up several %, you sell.
PCI is one of the best known CEFs. It was going down sharply and more than the SPY, then one day it was down another 20%, this means, investors are desperate, then I buy, I made 5% in 30 minutes. The next 2 days it was up another 15% but I don't care. I made money.
So, why I sold almost everything weeks ago because 1) bonds, including treasuries were acting irrationally 2) VIX over 45-50. These 2 are enough to sell but then stocks were crashing and all the news media were talking 24/7 about the Coronavirus.
Bottom line: I have strict written rules that I follow but I'm also flexible. Never say never, I learn stuff all the time and then I test it to see if it works. It took me years to be comfortable to trade and use big %.

° The traditional balanced portfolio of 60% stocks and 40% bonds lost 20% from its peak value.
° This is only the fourth time in 75 years it has suffered such a decline with the other moments coming in August 1974, September 2002 and January 2009, according to Michael Batnick of Ritholtz Wealth Management.
° An investor who rebalanced holdings back to the 60/40 asset split at the end of the month when a 20% decline was first registered would have been positioned for attractive returns in subsequent years.
° But some believe there are reasons to be skeptical that holding fast to the 60/40 stance this time will fare as well as in past decades.
Read Article from CNBC

I share your fear @Charles. I want to treat this as a typical bear market that will come back in some historically defined amount of time, but in the back of my mind I know this is unprecedented. It feels like possibly the only thing that comes close to it historically in a financial way is the great depression. And that took decades and a world war to get over.
At 66, my plan to semi-retire in May has been put on hold (self imposed) until I see what this will ultimately end up as. So far I've been buy-and-hold except for selling my remaining shares of IOFAX. But even with that I took 1/2 the proceeds to buy into BRK/B and put 1/2 into MM. So I guess I remain B and H in a sense.
One comfort I do have and what keeps the exit door closed is that I set aside 3 years of withdrawal money (safe bucket) in anticipation of semi-retirement. I'm not trying to make suggestions to others, but I think that bucket would be prudent for retirees, even setting one up now, (damn, that is a suggestion :) ). If only for it's mental affect, knowing it gives you some time for the rest of your portfolio to recover.
Good luck to all, especially retirees. I'm trying to stay optimistic for now.

I am not a trader. And generally I don't buy funds that do a lot of trading. I don't think there are all that many extra-smart traders out there after expenses.
I tend to stay invested in my taxable investments. I plan on leaving that behind, although I do take some income from it now.
I have quite a bit of cash in it due to an unforeseen event. I have been slow to invest it. I thought the market was over-valued at the time the money came to me.
I am more active in my IRA account. I typically take a hard look at things twice a year. I sell if I have lost faith in the thesis, or the people executing it.
I did take some profit at the end of last year. It seemed as good a time as any to put more money into bonds, and some into cash. And I did re-deploy from some strategies in mid and small caps into some ESG funds with reasonable expense ratios, and low turnover.
The retirement account is meant to be spent down. If interest rates were at some reasonable level I might put the whole thing into an income annuity. I am eight, seven years out from RMD's. So we'll see how things look then.

@charles, Still have few more years to go before retirement. I have learned and survived through several market crisis. The key is to stay invest so you can regain the loss in the future days. In the last two weeks, the market declined at a rate even greater than 2008-2009. However, the government across the globe came quickly to the rescue with massive QE in form of lowering interest rates, loans, and purchasing of bonds. In the near term this should stabilize the market as the COVID-19 continue to impact the economy.
Assuming that you are in the appropriate asset allocation between stock, bond and cash. Your loss should be much smaller than say S&P500. This should provide comfort knowing that the recovery period will be shorter than S&P500 for example. During 2008 crisis I stayed fully invest in a conservative allocation and the magnitude of loss was much lower than the typical 40% loss. New $ was invested in stock throughout that period despite it was a scary time. I managed to regain the loss and more in about 2.5 years. Since my retirement is near and the market was getting expensive, I rebalanced several times in 2019 to 15% cash, 35% bonds and 50% stocks. Again my loss is smaller compared to that the market's. I have full confidence that I will get through this crisis.
Our MFO contributor to the Monthly Commentary, Charles Lynn Bolin also writes for Seeking Alpha. Several excellent articles he wrote describe how he constructing low risk and well balanced portfolios utilizing the historical data from MFO Premium site (that you put together).
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4331201-performance-of-low-risk-vanguard-portfolio-year-to-date
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4333593-conservative-portfolios-of-funds-for-this-bear-market
Best of luck.

For me, I'm an asset allocator and I manage risk and opportunity through maintaining and/or adjusting my asset allocation based upon my needs, risk tolerance and market conditions. Plus, I limit how much exposure I have to any one fund to better deal with fund manager and strategy risk.. I'm now 72+ years of age and have been an investor since the age of 12.
In 2008 & 2009 my asset allocation was 10% cash, 20% income and 70% equity. With this, I averaged down the equity side, booking a good bit of losses, as the market continued to side through this process. However, when things turned at the S&P 500 price level of 666, I was there to enjoyed the ride back up.
Through the years as equities became more overvalued I kept trimming my exposure to them and at retirement I was at an asset allocation of 15% cash, 35% income and 50% equity. This would have been around 2014. I maintained this asset allocation until a little better than a year ago. I continued to reduce my exposure to equities as they became more overvalued and reconfigured to a 20% cash, 40% income and 40% equity asset allocation. I wrote about doing this.
With the recession now in place I have moved to a 15% cash, 40% income and 45% equity allocation. Thus far, in this debacle, I have sold nothing and have been a buyer on the equity side of my portfolio. Now that I have reached a near full asset allocation to equities I have now become a buyer on the income side of my portfolio. This is because many bonds have now taken a hit and from my perspective they offer better value than just holding a greater percentage of cash. Since, my portfolio also generates a good bit of income this gives me the ability to continue to buy in down markets or take the money to my wallet, if needed.
I've been on the board back into the FundAlarm days and have detailed my investment activity through these years. For me, the asset allocation model of investing has worked well although, at times, I've traded around the edges using special investment positions (spiffs). I've written about these in the past as well.
FWIW ... Overall, my success in investing, through the years, has come by staying invested and receiving the benefit of organic growth plus compounding. I was there in 1974 with that debacle as well as those that came during the 80's. And, I've been a buyer in all of them including this current bear market which will pass as well.
And ... so it goes.
Wishing all ... "Good Investing."
I am ... Old_Skeet

Hi Sirs...
Maybe too late to get out now. Old_skeet snd catch22 post good investing monthly commentary/strategies. Maybe others posted good guides to follow if retired /closed to retirement. I am so glad following many others advise and place mom retired portfolio into conservative last year, 35/65. She lost very little past few months. I got out after Ted got out in ~ 2019.
I think we will see seesaw patterns next 4-6 weeks /much volatility until everything open up again/slow recovery. Not everything is working currently even CDs so low yields. You can argue stocks are getting cheaper now and these maybe good vehicles to buy moving forward. Corp Bonds not doing well because companies have no revenues going forward and may not be able to pay their creditors.
If you feel unease perhaps consider place at least 40-60% of portfolio divided in incomes based products [corp bonds/munis/US Tbonds]. Rest of portfolio divided evenly in cash and stocks. You may not loose much on downs days but may not go up if indeed recovery is on the way. Once you see there us indeed recovery 3 -6 months from today perhaps start slowly buy more equities by then.
Stocks /market maybe lower 4-5 weeks from today, but could be much higher 4-5 years from today
Maybe another easier lazy approaches maybe redistribute bulk of your portfolio into Tdf 2015 and cash. let it ride by itself, not much worries.
If you have schwab or fidelity, maybe reasonable to visit their cpa/investment advisors then possibly make up/draw up new escape plans after
On other thought, maybe a great buyer market imho if you have 15 yrs left.

Retired here, but mostly still investing for heirs. SS and traditional pension plus wife's wages are seeing us through, nicely. I don't have to depend on the monthly dividends and yearly pay-outs since she still works. I'm re-investing it all. With me, having crossed the threshold to retirement, it's about safety, stability, profit generation and risk. Glad to say I'm heavier in bond funds these days, and fortunate they are ones which have not fallen off a cliff since the Market fell off of a cliff. Eventually, I will begin to "indulge" and take the monthlies. In a vague way, I have a timeline in mind. But it's more about circumstances than the calendar, since my wife's work situation is fluid.

"Mona">

Are those of you investing in muni bond funds doing so in taxable accounts only?
Not all brokerage houses allow you to purchase a muni bond fund in a retirement account. I'm sure FD will comment on this.
Mona, I am with Schwab, and they allow me to invest in Munis in IRA accounts, as long as I acknowledge that it is not a typical investment for an IRA. I consider Investment Grade Intermediate Munis as one of the better bond categories to invest in right now, so I am using Munis in all accounts. I doubt that I will stay in Munis in IRA accounts very long, but for now that is where I prefer to be.

At the end of January the advisor for my retirement funds asked me if I'd be comfortable with a 17% drawdown in return for a chance at equivalent higher returns. I said yes, but I too was really not thinking that my portfolio (then about 57% equities) would decline precipitously. Not sure how I would answer the question today, nor how financial advisors are going to have to alter their advice. Maybe in hindsight this period won't feel like a game changer, but it certainly does now. FWIIW, no advised me to get into Alpha Centric.

This opinion piece has shades of @rono in it....and includes 3 specific investment ideas....

The unprecedented decline in consumer spending might signal an evolution of long term investing for retirement.
Value companies tend to be mature and rely on continuous consumer purchasing to continue paying dividends.
As this pandemic lags on, the investment dynamics might evolove for younger generations.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4334815-retirement-strategy-new-investing-paradigm-may-change-dividend-growth-investing-forever

Are those of you investing in muni bond funds doing so in taxable accounts only?

Not all brokerage houses allow you to purchase a muni bond fund in a retirement account. I'm sure FD will comment on this.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/if-you-do-this-now-you-might-be-able-to-double-your-retirement-portfolio-2020-03-23?siteid=yhoof2&yptr=yahoo
/The counterintuitive investment call you probably did not expect
The coronavirus crisis has created an extraordinary buying opportunity in emerging market stocks for anyone hoping to save for their retirement, say two independent investment houses./
High risks high rewards situations. May work out long term, perhaps start a small position and watch closely.
Symbols mentioned in article
SPX
-3.36%
DEM
-5.60%
PXH
-5.69%
DVYE
-5.87%
QEMM
-4.65%

Yes, total bond market index funds are in many retirement accounts.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/806633/000119312520017093/d842170d485bpos.htm
From the 1/31/2020 prospectus:
Open/Closed Status of Funds. The Emerging India Fund, Emerging Markets Select Fund, Emerging Markets Small Cap Fund, Frontier Emerging Small Countries Fund, Global Opportunities Fund, Global Select Fund, Global Value Fund, International Select Fund, Micro Cap Fund, Micro Cap Value Fund, Small Cap Value Fund, Ultra Growth Fund, and U.S. Treasury Fund are each open to investors.
The Core Growth Fund, International Growth Fund, International Opportunities Fund and Small Cap Growth Fund are each closed to new purchases, except purchases by new or existing shareholders purchasing directly from Wasatch Funds, existing shareholders purchasing through intermediaries, and current and future shareholders purchasing through financial advisors and retirement plans with an established position in the Fund. Fund officers may waive or revise the conditions of a closed fund for an intermediary depending on its ability to systematically apply the conditions .

Yeah, I've been thinking same thing. Talk about potential for price dislocation. How does the market know what the true demand is when the Fed/Treasury is buying everything up? Maybe the Fed is just betting that demand and attendant liquidity will return to normal when folks don't feel the world is ending. It's that or let everything freeze-up now, which certainly would be catastrophic! Mutual funds, especially in fixed income, are everybody's retirement account and simply too big to fail ... those deemed investment grade anyway.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/105563/000168386320001038/f2772d1.htm
497 1 f2772d1.htm WELLINGTON FUND 497
Vanguard Wellington™ Fund
Supplement Dated March 27, 2020 to the Prospectus and Summary Prospectus Dated March 27, 2020
Important Change to Vanguard Wellington Fund
Effective at the close of business on June 30, 2020, Edward P. Bousa will retire from Wellington Management Company LLP and will no longer serve as a portfolio manager for Vanguard Wellington Fund.
Loren L. Moran, Daniel J. Pozen, and Michael E. Stack, who currently serve as portfolio managers with Mr. Bousa, will remain as portfolio managers of the Fund upon Mr. Bousa's retirement. The Fund's investment objective, strategies, and policies will remain unchanged.

I hope folks do not become forced into, or think they should "anyway", pull these monies.
***Presumption house will pass this legislation on Friday.
CARES ACT article with internal links
Take care of you and yours,
Catch