PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

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pmward
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PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

Post by pmward » Thu Jan 24, 2019 5:36 pm

Hey everyone I'm new here and just wanted to get a quick sanity check of my strategy. Apologize for the long post, but I wanted to explain not just what I'm doing, but also why.

So 2018 was a bit of a wake up call to me. I realized, like many people, that the risk I was taking was greater than my tolerance for risk, especially in my taxable accounts. I didn't panic sell or anything like that, but I will admit to spending more time than I should have staring at 15 minute charts hoping for the market to go up, or looking for the perfect time to buy more stocks. It added a lot of stress that I just simply don't need or want in my life. Now, admittedly, I was trying to do market timing/trend following, and that was my biggest fault. I didn't do bad in that end in hind site (I went to cash in my taxable account in early November and bough back in on Dec 26th), but still, I realized that I don't want the hassle of staring at charts and trying to predict what the market will do. It took a big mental toll on me, effected all aspects of my life, and I just simply realized that I don't want to spend my life staring at charts. The main reason why I was trying to market time wasn't to make more money, but to feel more safe. I would rather take a passive approach. The problem with the standard passive approach (ala Bogleheads 3 fund portfolio) is that you leave such a large chunk of your net worth exposed to the markets, where it can easily be decimated (like in 2008). There's no real safety in a 100% Bogleheads approach.

So this really got me thinking of how I can passively invest in a way that is comfortable for me, yet is still going to produce enough returns for someone like me who is 37 years old and in my peak accumulation years? I sat down and asked myself, what would allow me to sleep well at night? I realized a couple things. One is that I am totally ok taking risk in my retirement accounts. The fact that I'm not going to be touching that money for decades, and that I can still continue to DCA in if the market goes down, is enough to keep me content in that regard. Market dips are a good thing in my retirement accounts. However, what I do lose sleep over is my taxable accounts because that is money that is immediately accessible to me. Up until now I have had the standard 3 months of expenses in a money market emergency fund, and the rest invested in index funds (80% ITOT 20% IXUS). I realized that 3 months of expenses in an emergency fund is not enough for me to feel safe. So I asked myself what would make me feel safe? Having lived through 2008, and being laid off at that time, in retrospect I would feel safe going through that again if I had at least 12 months of expenses in an emergency fund. However, I feel kind of silly keeping 12 months of expenses in a money market. Enter many many many hours of internet research, book reading, etc and I stumble across this crazy idea.. the PP.

To me PP makes a lot of sense. I can really appreciate the way that having super volatile assets at each of the 4 corners smooths the ride, and creates a decent enough return. So this is my plan:

1) Create a PP as an "emergency fund" with 14-15 months worth of expenses. This overshoots my 12 month safety net a bit, for padding. Rebalance this with the 10% bands (to let the winners and losers run a bit before rebalancing, to aid buying low and selling high). I already have the cash and stock side of things for this. I created a new account and transferred both over in kind. Which leaves me with needing to get the gold and bonds. If I sell my taxable ETF's I will get short term cap gains, so I'm not going to sell that at the moment to exchange for gold and LTT's. I also don't want to deplete my cash store at the moment, because if I do that then I'm just begging Murphy to pay me a visit. So my plan is to DCA into TLT and IAU over the next few months (my 14-15 months of expenses is only $60k, so not enough to warrant purchasing physical gold or bonds just yet, imo). I should be able to be at my 25/25/25/25 by no later than June, as if worse comes to worse I vest for a large chunk of company equity June 1. When I am able to sell my ITOT with long term cap gains, I am thinking of selling that and swapping it over to IWF (IShares Russell 1000 growth index) as I feel it fits the sprit of PP a bit better than TSM. I see HB originally recommended "growth funds" but later swapped over to S&P 500. However, now we have growth factor index funds, and I feel that this large and mid cap growth fund will be more volatile to the upside in prosperity, so I feel it kind of fits the spirit of why gold and LTT's were chosen. It will also allow me to take a little more advantage of gains in prosperity times. Thoughts on this?

2) VP - taking my current 100% stock retirement and taxable brokerage accounts and slowly transitioning them over to bogleheads 3 fund portfolios with 65% total stock market, 15% total international, 20% total bond index over the next few months. This has the added benefit of allowing me to do the transition to bonds in my traditional IRA, so I can finally roll it over into my 401k and start being able to do backdoor Roth contributions without being taxed pro rata. I have been avoiding doing the rollover with it fully in stocks as I know with my luck the two weeks I would be out of the market, the market would run up, lol. But missing 2 weeks of bond gains is not a big deal, and a price worth paying to be able to do a yearly backdoor Roth from here on out without Uncle Sam wanting a piece of the action.

For me I feel that this fulfills the goal of keeping the money that is "precious" to me safe, while also allowing me to participate in full market gains in my VP to help me build my retirement. I feel I can sleep at night with this 2 portfolio allocation. Over time as I accumulate more money, and get more experience with the PP, it's possible I will move more money over to PP from my VP. I think something that would make sense in retirement many years down the road might be 10 years of expenses in PP, and the rest in VP. Thoughts, warnings, or any other wisdom any of you may have for me? Thanks for taking the time to read this!
Last edited by pmward on Thu Jan 24, 2019 7:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

Post by buddtholomew » Thu Jan 24, 2019 7:34 pm

pmward wrote:
Thu Jan 24, 2019 5:36 pm
Hey everyone I'm new here and just wanted to get a quick sanity check of my strategy. Apologize for the long post, but I wanted to explain not just what I'm doing, but also why.

So 2018 was a bit of a wake up call to me. I realized, like many people, that the risk I was taking was greater than my tolerance for risk, especially in my taxable accounts. I didn't panic sell or anything like that, but I will admit to spending more time than I should have staring at 15 minute charts hoping for the market to go up, or looking for the perfect time to buy more stocks. It added a lot of stress that I just simply don't need or want in my life. Now, admittedly, I was trying to do market timing/trend following, and that was my biggest fault. I didn't do bad in that end in hind site (I bought a bunch of stocks on Dec 26th), but still, I realized that I don't want the hassle of staring at charts and trying to predict what the market will do. I would rather take a passive approach. The problem with the standard passive approach (ala bogleheads 3 fund portfolio) is that you leave such a large chunk of your net worth exposed to the markets, where it can easily be decimated (like in 2008).

So this really got me thinking of how I can passively invest in a way that is comfortable for me, yet is still going to produce enough returns for someone like me who is 37 years old and in my peak accumulation years? I sat down and asked myself, what would allow me to sleep well at night? I realized a couple things. One is that I am totally ok taking risk in my retirement accounts. The fact that I'm not going to be touching that money for decades, and that I can still continue to DCA in if the market goes down, is enough to keep me content in that regard. Market dips are a good thing in my retirement accounts. However, what I do lose sleep over is my taxable accounts because that is money that is immediately accessible to me. Up until now I have had the standard 3 months of expenses in a money market emergency fund, and the rest invested in index funds (80% ITOT 20% IXUS). I realized that 3 months of expenses in an emergency fund is not enough for me to feel safe. So I asked myself what would make me feel safe? Having lived through 2008, and being laid off at that time, in retrospect I would feel safe going through that again if I had at least 12 months of expenses in an emergency fund. However, I feel kind of silly keeping 12 months of expenses in a money market. Enter many many many hours of internet research, book reading, etc and I stumble across this crazy idea.. the PP.

To me PP makes a lot of sense. I can really appreciate the way that having super volatile assets at each of the 4 corners smooths the ride, and creates a decent enough return. So this is my plan:

1) Create a PP as an "emergency fund" with 14-15 months worth of expenses. This overshoots my 12 month safety net a bit, for padding. Rebalance this with the 10% bands (to let the winners and losers run a bit before rebalancing, to aid buying low and selling high). I already have the cash and stock side of things for this. I created a new account and transferred both over in kind. Which leaves me with needing to get the gold and bonds. If I sell my taxable ETF's I will get short term cap gains, so I'm not going to sell that at the moment to exchange for gold and LTT's. I also don't want to deplete my cash store at the moment, because if I do that then I'm just begging Murphy to pay me a visit. So my plan is to DCA into TLT and IAU over the next few months (my 14-15 months of expenses is only $60k, so not enough to warrant purchasing physical gold or bonds just yet, imo). I should be able to be at my 25/25/25/25 by no later than June, as if worse comes to worse I vest for a large chunk of company equity June 1. When I am able to sell my ITOT with long term cap gains, I am thinking of selling that and swapping it over to IWF (IShares Russell 1000 growth index) as I feel it fits the sprit of PP a bit better than TSM. I see HB originally recommended "growth funds" but later swapped over to S&P 500. However, now we have growth factor index funds, and I feel that this large and mid cap growth fund will be more volatile to the upside in prosperity, so I feel it kind of fits the spirit of why gold and LTT's were chosen. It will also allow me to take a little more advantage of gains in prosperity times. Thoughts on this?

2) VP - taking my current 100% stock retirement and taxable brokerage accounts and slowly transitioning them over to bogleheads 3 fund portfolios with 65% total stock market, 15% total international, 20% total bond index over the next few months. This has the added benefit of allowing me to do the transition to bonds in my traditional IRA, so I can finally roll it over into my 401k and start being able to do backdoor Roth contributions without being taxed pro rata. I have been avoiding doing the rollover with it fully in stocks as I know with my luck the two weeks I would be out of the market, the market would run up, lol. But missing 2 weeks of bond gains is not a big deal, and a price worth paying to be able to do a yearly backdoor Roth from here on out without Uncle Sam wanting a piece of the action.

For me I feel that this fulfills the goal of keeping the money that is "precious" to me safe, while also allowing me to participate in full market gains in my VP to help me build my retirement. I feel I can sleep at night with this 2 portfolio allocation. Over time as I accumulate more money, and get more experience with the PP, it's possible I will move more money over to PP from my VP. I think something that would make sense in retirement many years down the road might be 10 years of expenses in PP, and the rest in VP. Thoughts, warnings, or any other wisdom any of you may have for me? Thanks for taking the time to read this!
This was me 8 years ago and it has worked out well.
Your next decision will come when your PP has significantly outgrown your EF expectations and you consider adjusting your stock allocation.
Take a quick look at the portfolio in total and make sure you are still comfortable with % allocated to stocks. It may be too low for your tastes given 100% equity exposure in retirement accounts.
Anyway, good place to start and some thought for later down the road.
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Re: PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

Post by pmward » Thu Jan 24, 2019 7:55 pm

Good points. In the grand scheme, my VP will be much larger than my PP. I'm mentally and physically separating the two from each other. I opened a completely new taxable account for my PP and my plan is to build it up to 60k (14-15 months expenses) in the next few months and just going to kind of organically let it grow from there. So I have plenty of equity exposure in my VP. I also have a high income and am currently investing a hair over 50% of my net income. This will all be flowing into my VP (I am considering my 401k, IRA's, HSA, and my taxable account all under the VP umbrella by the way) via dollar cost averaging. As time goes on and I get closer to retirement, I may slowly siphon some funds from my VP over to my PP, but probably won't do that for awhile.

I'm also thinking of doing the swap to 20% bonds in my VP slowly over the course of the next year. I may not even stay 20% bonds for good, but I at least need to do that much in order to go 100% bonds in my traditional IRA, so I can roll that into my 401k. Right now I'm unable to do a backdoor Roth contribution without being taxed because of the traditional IRA. Would love to get that rolled over. It's just so stressful picking the time when that is 100% equities because I know the market would rally in the time I was out of the market for the rollover. So I could do a strategy where I convert that slowly to bonds, roll it over into a 20% allocation in my 401k, then just turn my future contributions back to 100% equities until I'm back down to like a 90/10 allocation. I'm not totally 100% sold on 20% bonds as a permanent allocation in my retirement accounts, as I'm good at mentally separating my retirement accounts as money for decades down the road. But I do want to roll that IRA over one way or another, because I do not currently have enough Roth exposure, imo, and make too much for Roth 401k to be a sensible option.

I'm also glad to hear you say that you said that you feel it has worked out well for you. Lurking in the other threads it seemed like you might have had a bit of buyers remorse. But reading your comments did help me decide on sticking only to 14-15 months of expenses in PP, so I can keep enough protected for peace of mind, yet still participate in the market growth in my much larger VP. That seems like a good balance for me where I'm not stuck in the tug of war between FOMO and fear of loss.
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Re: PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

Post by sophie » Fri Jan 25, 2019 7:10 am

This is a completely reasonable strategy similar to one many of us follow. I see a few points of confusion here though.

The PP is NOT an emergency fund. Your EF should be in cash, period, end of story. Once the PP is large enough it can contain your emergency fund in its 25% cash allocation. Per the numbers in your post, your EF currently is ~3-4 months expenses. Is that enough for you? Depending on your EF goal, you may want to hold some extra cash until your PP has grown larger.

The VP is not about long-term investments. "VP" means speculative investing where you are trying to beat the market, which is not what you are trying to do. I suspect that instead of "VP" you mean "another long-term investment strategy that I can live with". Realize that 80% stocks is not that different from 100% stocks, and you will see fluctuations in value over time - and possibly long stretches with minimal gains. The goal should be to keep your hands off that stock/bond investment, as what you just did is a variant on the "panic and sell low" theme. Do your best to not look at that account especially during market corrections, if that's what it takes to avoid doing that in future. The PP should help you with this since you can concentrate on that instead.
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Re: PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

Post by pmward » Fri Jan 25, 2019 8:26 am

Fair points.

For the PP / emergency fund part, I already have 3-4 months of expenses in cash which I think would cover all the normal run of the mill emergencies (car break downs, AC or heater takes a crap, etc). If one of those nuisance emergencies comes up, I would still be employed so I could tap into the cash and then quickly replace the cash as my first priority. I feel comfortable with that level of cash sitting around. But having a PP with 12-14 months of expenses in it would make me feel safe from the larger scale emergencies, like say a repeat of 2008 where I got laid off and couldn't find work for almost 6 months. So I think that I am comfortable at that level, at least in the short term. Of course, if things keep up as they currently are in Washington, I might get more inclined to add more to my PP than that, hahaha.

Yes that is also a fair point about using the term VP, I was using the term VP because of a lack for a better term. I think going forward I will refer to it as my LP (long-term portfolio) since I will not be doing any speculating. And I guess it is possible that at some point in the future I could have an idea I want to speculate on, and if that happens I could do a 3 portfolio approach where I have my PP, LP, and VP. So for definitions sake, my LP is money I'm investing and committing to not touch for a minimum of 10 years. But you did hit the nail on the head as for why I feel the PP would be a beneficial addition to my strategy, that if the market starts to drop I can ignore my other accounts and focus on the safety of having my PP. I will be able to look at a market dip exclusively as a way to DCA on the cheap, instead of as losing money. And in the coming years, as I reach "won the game" territory and/or approach retirement, then the "money that is precious to me" would definitely be more than just 14 months of expenses. I would definitely be funneling capitol from my LP to my PP along the way. At the moment, being only 37 and not having a wife or kids to worry about, it allows me a degree of flexibility. But at the same time, I want to feel like I'm covered. 2008/2009 was a scary time, and the odds are that I'll live through at least another time equally as scary. Also, from reading the forums here it seems that many of you have grown more appreciation for the PP after watching it do it's thing for a few years. This may also happen to me. I am an engineer, so I tend to gain a lot of knowledge simply through stepping back and watching things function for a bit. This may just be my dipping my toes in the water that could lead to me wanting to dive in further. We shall see.

Also, after sleeping over Budd's comments, I think that I will hold off in the interim on transitioning any of my IRA over to bonds. As for the next 4 months or so I will be building up the gold and LTT portion of my PP. So I think that's enough focus on defensive's at one time. I think that building both that and simultaneously swapping equities for bonds in my IRA would probably be too many defensive moves at one time. I think I'm just going to take it one step at a time, get my PP in place, and then see how I feel in regards to the bond allocation. The bond allocation is the one piece of the puzzle that I can't seem to make my mind up on. While I can see the virtues of having some padding, I do see bonds as more risky than stocks on any time-frame greater than 10 years, because there is no guarantee bonds will give a real return. And if I have my PP, maybe that's enough in itself? Maybe I should just stay 100% equities in my LP and just slowly continue to build my PP as well along side it, and rely on that for protection and smoothing the bumps? I'm not sure. I'm conflicted on the bond portion of my LP to say the least. So maybe having a few months to mull it over while I finish building my PP will grant me a bit more clarity? I just fear that maybe I might be looking at the bond allocation through the tainted goggles of a 10 year bull run, that maybe I might be letting my recency bias cloud my judgment. There's no rush to come to a conclusion, I am free to kick that can down the road a bit.
Last edited by pmward on Fri Jan 25, 2019 9:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

Post by Kbg » Fri Jan 25, 2019 9:03 am

Some small pointers

- look at SGOL for ETF gold

- 10% bonds will give you pretty much the same returns as 100% stocks with better risk stats. For the bond allocation I would stick with treasuries and for simplicity ITTs would be my choice.

- definitions aside for whatever you think a PP is appropriate for there is a 25% drawdown in its history and the basic assumption for any backtest is the Max dd has not been seen. So you should factor that in as a worse case scenario.

- bonds DO provide real returns...about 2% historically, cash about 1%. Be careful getting bond advice from old people who lived in the 70s. It’s accurate for the 70s/high inflation but not accurate for the the majority of history. There is a reason why professional investors tend to use intermediate term bonds. They are in a sweet spot for risk reward.

- assuming you can avoid large behavioral errors don’t sweat 10% here or there. In the long run it’s not going to matter. When you hit your mid 50s you need to think long and hard about sequence risk. The most conventional response is to dial down the equity component, but there are other methods to get at this issue.
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Re: PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

Post by dualstow » Fri Jan 25, 2019 10:29 am

Whatever you do, don't change course too often, even if you're changing from sensible plan #1 to sensible plan #2. Or Plan #4 to Plan #5.
For your vp or LP or whatever, the 3-fund portfolio is boring, and I think it's underrated because it's boring. I am a fan of the 3-fund portfolio.

One could say that combining such a portfolio with the PP is a case of too many strategies. Just make sure you're happy with the overall stock portion, the overall bond portion, etc, when you combine the two portfolios. Even though you may be running them strictly separately, you have a third portfolio, and that is the combination of the two.
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Re: PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

Post by Kbg » Fri Jan 25, 2019 10:45 am

Ya, what DS said. I’ll be more blunt...we can do all the mental bucketing we want but risk and returns are going to be what the total portfolio composition is. Personally I’m more a fan of defining what you need for emergency funds/living expenses for whatever length you define and which must be very low risk. Return is interesting but should mainly focus on simply pacing inflation...which is easy to do with ST bonds. Then put the rest in whatever allocation or system you like/are comfortable with.

Yes, I just bucketed, but the primary objective you should seek on the first is to minimize taxes and costs and make sure you can get at those funds in a timely and efficient manner to meet your liquidity requirements. The second should focus on maxing LT terminal wealth at a risk level you can stick with. When you get to withdrawal time then the two merge.
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Re: PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

Post by pmward » Fri Jan 25, 2019 11:11 am

Well you all have certainly given me a lot to think about. I'm very glad I decided to post this, as this was exactly what I was hoping for, was some different angles to view this from. Because what I want to avoid is what @dualstow mentioned, jumping from one plan to the next. I'm trying to work out a plan, and then formally put it in writing as an investment contract with myself. I want to find the right balance where I'm not stressing about either FOMO, or fear of losing my shirt (especially in my taxable accounts). So yes, bucketing is a convenient approach, to have two buckets to check both boxes. I speculate that this was what Harry was getting at with the separate PP and VP, having separate buckets to psychologically address both the FOMO and the fear of loss. But you all are probably right that I do need to look at the overall risk as well. As we all know, investing is as much a psychological game as anything else. So I'm looking to answer the question of, how do I win the psychological game so I can stick to a plan and follow through long term? The answer to that question is likely not going to be the most mathematically correct answer (because emotions are never mathematical, and if it were a math problem everyone would go 100% small-caps and call it a day, haha), but in the long run it gives me the best odds of success.

In looking at the overall risk, I think I am ok moving forward with my plan for the PP. But I think in the interim, until that is set, I'm probably best holding off on trading any of my current equities for bonds. Building the PP in itself is going to add a much larger defensive allocation than I have been used to. After the PP is in place I'll take a look at my overall portfolio and decide on my bond allocation in my LP after that. Worse comes to worse, in the grand scheme I can miss out on one year of doing a backdoor Roth contribution and it won't be a big deal.

Also thanks for the recommendations on SGOL. I wasn't aware this ETF even existed, and it's a much lower ER and all foreign stored gold, which are both good things.

I also did some backtesting on the intermediate term bonds, and it had both a lower standard deviation and higher total returns than a total bond fund. In the past I've always just backtested the total bond market. If that's not a win/win situation, I don't know what is. So that probably does make more sense than a total bond fund for whatever bond allocations I do decide upon.
Last edited by pmward on Fri Jan 25, 2019 11:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

Post by ochotona » Fri Jan 25, 2019 11:36 am

Maybe "your age in HBPP" is a good rule.

A 20 yo would be 85% in equities

An 65 yo would be about half in equities
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Re: PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

Post by Kbg » Fri Jan 25, 2019 12:46 pm

Summing up total bonds versus treasuries. The former gets you a bit more return for a bit more risk but has higher correlation with the stock market due to the corporate bond element. Treasuries are almost always risk off assets so they zig when stocks zag which is a nice feature. IIRC a US total bond fund is about 65% government anyway...either choice will be just fine.

The above pretty much sums up the trade offs. It can be made more complex, but it really isn't.
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Re: PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

Post by pmward » Fri Jan 25, 2019 1:17 pm

ochotona wrote:
Fri Jan 25, 2019 11:36 am
Maybe "your age in HBPP" is a good rule.

A 20 yo would be 85% in equities

An 65 yo would be about half in equities
Hehe, this is quite a rabbit hole actually, and part of how I got here. I'm not a huge fan of arbitrary numbers or percentages. I think this is part of why I've struggled so much to find an arbitrary percentage of bonds in my retirement (and also, to a lesser degree, percentage of international equities). This is part of where I came up with the 14-15 months of expenses in PP, because it's not arbitrary. It has meaning to me currently to build over a years worth of expenses protected from the unknown. To me, at my age and life situation, that is the answer to the question of how much of my money is precious to me. Now, as I get older, life situations change, macro geo-political situations change, the answer to how much money is precious to me will change and the amount will likely increase. I doubt I will ever strictly base it off of age. But I'm sure age will have a large bearing on my decision making process. But what I kind am doing is mentally lumping my PP in with any bond allocation I may choose to take in the future together as kind of a defensive allocation, as I would kind of lean on the PP to keep the ship afloat when the storm clouds inevitably roll in.
Last edited by pmward on Fri Jan 25, 2019 1:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

Post by Kriegsspiel » Fri Jan 25, 2019 1:22 pm

I think we had a discussion about 'age in PP' which I like, because I kinda think of the PP like a bond. But personally, I try to keep around 10 years of spending in the PP, and I'm ok with the rest in other stuff. I think I did a back of the envelope on 10 years of expenses with a 4% real return, like the PP, and it would last a bit over 12 years or something like that, which is plenty of runway for you in case the rest of your investments went to shit too. If they didn't, then you could do whatever.
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Re: PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

Post by pmward » Fri Jan 25, 2019 1:23 pm

Kbg wrote:
Fri Jan 25, 2019 12:46 pm
Summing up total bonds versus treasuries. The former gets you a bit more return for a bit more risk but has higher correlation with the stock market due to the corporate bond element. Treasuries are almost always risk off assets so they zig when stocks zag which is a nice feature. IIRC a US total bond fund is about 65% government anyway...either choice will be just fine.

The above pretty much sums up the trade offs. It can be made more complex, but it really isn't.
That is a great way to look at it. If I add a bond allocation to my retirement it would not to be try to maximize returns, it would be simply to add a tool to dampen the dips. So, I think that that would favor using treasuries. If I become super concerned about return, there are probably better ways to increase return on the equity side, like small or mid cap tilt. Though, given my propensity in the past to want to try to time the market, I think I'm better off not trying to tilt and just accepting the market returns. My life has certainly been less stressful and more enjoyable since I stopped trying to do that. If I ever did feel a strong conviction to tilt my portfolio in any direction, I think that would be something I would be better off separating into a true VP that is completely separate from both my PP and my long term retirement portfolio and fully in the realm of money that I'm totally ok to lose if worse comes to worse.
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Re: PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

Post by buddtholomew » Fri Jan 25, 2019 2:05 pm

Pmward, your thoughts are my thoughts but said more eloquently. Like others have said find the VP % you are comfortable with and the PP % in each asset you are comfortable holding while still maintaining the framework and philosophy AND stick to it for a while then reassess. We are tweakers at heart ;)

I personally only invest in the PP in my taxable account (EF initially and keeps growing...) with a 70/30 tax-deferred retirement portfolio. Comes out to 55/35/10 or thereabouts when viewed holistically.
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Re: PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

Post by Kbg » Fri Jan 25, 2019 3:41 pm

Well...I feel vindicated and destroyed in this thread by one article.

https://www.advisorperspectives.com/art ... roy-wealth

Head on down to the "Results" section for the bottom line.

Some excellent points in here...
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Re: PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

Post by pmward » Fri Jan 25, 2019 5:01 pm

Yes that was a good read. Of course a couple things to be careful of. They are testing one specific bucket approach that is specific to retirees. They are also testing said bucket approach specifically vs a 60/40 portfolio and nothing else. They also are not accounting for total assets, just assuming an SWR and that all funds withdrawn will be spent. In some cases, where someone barely has enough retirement to get by, the bucket approach may have them at a lower equity allocation than 60%. On the other hand, someone with say 2+ million in retirement may actually benefit by having more invested in equities with a bucket approach than 60/40.

For instance, let's use the person with 2 million. Let's assume that said person has $60,000 in yearly expenses as that's kind of considered the typical norm these days. If that person used a 60/40 they would have 1.2 million in equities. If, however, they used a bucket approach with 5 years of assets in the low risk bucket they would have 1.7 million in equities. If they had a conservative 10 years in the low risk bucket they would have 1.4 million in equities. Both above a 60/40 portfolio. If they also had their "low risk bucket" invested in PP as opposed to bonds, they would also likely get a bit more return out of it as well.

So it is a good article, and I think it has some good general advice, but there's definitely some holes that can be poked in it, and results will vary depending on the person and their total assets. There's also some strategy that can be employed. They mentioned the selling low phenomena in the bucket approach if done on a hard set date yearly schedule, but that can be avoided by having a hard rule that you don't rebalance from equities to the low risk bucket on years that the market is down. That allows you to live off of your low risk bucket while you wait for equities to recover and avoids the sell low. Of course, the tradeoff being that this requires a bit of management and can't just be automated. Like most things in life, it's not black or white but varying shades of grey.
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Re: PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

Post by ochotona » Fri Jan 25, 2019 6:22 pm

The only way to go is run a Monte Carlo, parameterize it a bit pessimistically, and examine the cumulative probability of your portfolio surviving to end of life. If it does to a 95% chance, what more can you do?

Portfoliovisualizer.com has Monte Carlo. Portfoliocharts.com has a historically based look at safe and perpetual withdrawal rates. Both are insightful.
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Kriegsspiel
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Re: PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

Post by Kriegsspiel » Sat Jan 26, 2019 7:17 am

ochotona wrote:
Fri Jan 25, 2019 6:22 pm
The only way to go is run a Monte Carlo, parameterize it a bit pessimistically, and examine the cumulative probability of your portfolio surviving to end of life. If it does to a 95% chance, what more can you do?
Save more money ;D
You there, Ephialtes. May you live forever.
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ochotona
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Re: PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

Post by ochotona » Sat Jan 26, 2019 10:19 am

Kriegsspiel wrote:
Sat Jan 26, 2019 7:17 am
ochotona wrote:
Fri Jan 25, 2019 6:22 pm
The only way to go is run a Monte Carlo, parameterize it a bit pessimistically, and examine the cumulative probability of your portfolio surviving to end of life. If it does to a 95% chance, what more can you do?
Save more money ;D
Spend less!
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Re: PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

Post by sophie » Sun Jan 27, 2019 7:43 am

pmward, don't overthink this! And, especially pay attention to dualstow's warning: frequent strategy switching is really a form of active investing in disguise, and it also tends to chase high returns. Which means you're always buying into a new strategy just when it's about to revert to the mean i.e. go down. You can't know if you're buying into a new portfolio at the right time, but that would be when it's doing badly, not when it's doing well. So yes, simple is best. 100% stocks is certainly that!

I have different portfolio buckets, but it's mostly because I'm working with employer retirement accounts which limits investing options and ability to move $$ around. The problem with choosing to do this is that you really don't know what's going to happen over the next 15 years (that being the longest zero-return period for stocks historically). There are many people who saw their retirement accounts evaporate in 2008-2009, lost their jobs, had too little savings to pay their living expenses, and ended up having to raid their retirement accounts before the stock prices had a chance to recover.

I suggest picking a reasonable portion of retirement funds that you can put into 100% stocks if you like, and that you can "protect" by keeping a PP as the rest of your savings. Aim to grow both of them over time, and don't sweat it too much about exactly what proportion is what. When you're within ~10 years of retirement you may want to start moving out of that 100% stock position, but it will depend on lots of things like how much total savings you have, what your options are etc.
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Re: PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

Post by pmward » Sun Jan 27, 2019 9:12 am

Thanks Sophie. Great advice. And yes this is exactly what I'm working on doing is locking in a strategy, writing it down on paper, and sticking to it so I'm not bouncing around strategies. I like you also have the 401k issue, which houses a great deal of my assets, but has limited options, so yes that's definitely part of why the "bucket" approach is so appealing. It kind of gives me a delineation so I don't have to worry about balancing across different accounts. It actually helps simplify things to a degree.

I do think that I am leaning towards what you're mentioning, building my PP for the defensive / capitol preservation side of my portfolio, and then starting off full on stocks for the long term capitol growth side of things. I am going to kick the can down the road as far as deciding whether or not to include bonds in my retirement accounts until next year, since building my PP will be building a larger defensive allocation than I'm used to having in and of itself. I think that just having the PP in and of itself will give me peace of mind, which will help me with the behavioral finance side of things, and allow me to stick to my long term strategies. Next year I'll have a better feel for the PP and I can then decide if I want to continue building that out exclusively for my defensive allocation, or if I want to let that grow organically and add some bonds into my retirement accounts. Either way, until now I've never had any defensive allocation, and it probably wasn't wise for me to have been taking all of that risk with no mind for preserving my capitol. Since I have such a high savings rate, I'm going to do just fine long term, so there's no need to be overly aggressive. I think that having somewhere in the ballpark of 20% of my total assets in defensives (through PP and possibly a future separate bond allocation) is a smart thing to help with the behavioral side of things. I have definitely learned a lot through doing all of this research lately. I also have one of HB's books on the way, and have been slowly making my way through the radio show. I also found last week that after committing to creating a PP, creating my PP account and transferring the cash and stock side of things over to that account already gave me a bit of peace of mind. I was able to get through the day at work without obsessively checking the market. I also didn't feel like I had to check my account balances every evening. That's a big step in the right direction.
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Re: PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

Post by pmward » Thu Jan 31, 2019 1:38 pm

I've been doing a lot of modeling in portfolio visualizer the last few days. I'm really noticing some interesting things. The first being that in the accumulation phase, like I'm in, the actual division of the portfolio doesn't really matter much for the first ~8 years or so. At my current savings rate, when altering the start and end dates for all combinations of bull and bear timeframes (within the limited date ranges they provide) when making monthly contributions and annually rebalancing, there really is not that great of a difference in asset allocation styles. Whether I choose 100% stock, HBPP, 60/40, or a modified PP (70 stock/10/10/10 or 55 stock/15/15/15) I seem to always hit my FI number on an average of about ~11-12 years regardless of which years I start in (surprisingly even holds true if I start in 98 or 99 right before 2 large bear markets). This also assuming that I never get raises and keep only contributing at my current rate (odds are I will be contributing more each year). Now after that point my monthly contributions start becoming such a small drop in the bucket and things start to vary a bit more. This has been kind of an eye opening exercise, in that I was assuming that the difference of having a higher stock percentage in the early accumulation years would be more noticeable. Instead, I'm not really seeing that at all in the data. The difference is definitely noticeable when my account gets over a million, but at that point I probably would rather not have the roller coaster ride anyways. HBPP is definitely the smoothest ride from that point on. So since in the early years it doesn't matter that much what I do, maybe my current early game portfolio should look more like my desired end game portfolio? My FI target number is currently about 1.5 mil. Once I reach that I don't plan on retiring right away, so at that point I would most likely want to be in a 25/25/25/25 PP to keep standard deviation down and protect my capitol. Then anything I make and save from working is purely fun money.

It really does seem to me that the thing that matters the most where I am at is purely savings rate. So that tells me that while I might want to be a bit more aggressive until I reach my FI, that I probably should model my portfolio now so that it's easy to move to 25/25/25/25 long term (especially since a great deal of my savings will be in taxable accounts, where I will have to eat a lot of capitol gains if I have to do a huge rebalancing act). So I think what I'm leaning towards is probably going 55stock/15/15/15 from the get go. That had a max draw down of 25% in 2008, which is tolerable for me at this point in time (I mean I already just sat through a 20% draw down last month...). With access to stocks and short term treasuries in my 401k I should be able to make this work across all my accounts by keeping all the gold and LTT's in my IRA and taxable accounts. Then, as I approach my FI number I can slowly and easily move to 25/25/25/25 over time mostly through new contributions as opposed to selling and realizing capitol gains. Is there anything I'm overlooking here? Thoughts?
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Re: PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

Post by Kriegsspiel » Thu Jan 31, 2019 4:01 pm

Yup, the savings rate is the most important thing. ERE Jacob said he only utilized a savings account for the first 4 years while he figured out how to invest. If your savings rate is high enough (I'm talking 75% or so), you're going to get to 4% or 3% without much contribution from investment returns.

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Re: PP/VP Strategy Sanity Check

Post by pmward » Thu Jan 31, 2019 8:05 pm

Yeah and all said and done, 75% savings rate might actually be realistic for me. I'm currently saving 52% of my net base salary. I've so far done all my calculations based just on this amount. I also get about another 50% of my base salary in company equity every year, which then vests at ~6% per quarter for 4 years. This is my first year at the company, so for the next 3 years it will kind of snowball where by the 4th year I'll be vesting for parts of 4 years worth of equity grants (2x my base salary at issue price). Now, I do not count this because I work for a mid cap growth tech company and the shares are pretty volatile, so what price I'm issued at and what price I can sell for are two different things. I could make out like a bandit or get severely disappointed depending on how the market goes, and whether or not growth tech names stay in favor. I'll probably also spend some of it on fun stuff and home renovations, but most of it will be plowing into my brokerage accounts. Either way, I should be able to hit FI in under 10 years bar any unforeseen circumstances.

It definitely was a shock to me though to see how 100% equities was actually not that far ahead (and not always ahead either) for my calculations. The traditional way of being super aggressive early, and moderating over time seems to work out better for people with longer time frames to let the gains compound. For someone that is saving as aggressive as I am, it doesn't seem to work out that way. It actually has me leaning a little more conservative than I was originally planning. I mean, in most cases 100% equities had me FI only 3-6 months earlier than a more conservative approach. So why assume all that extra risk just to reach my goal 3-6 months earlier? That really doesn't seem worth it to me, ya know? This has really been eye opening to say the least. For the first time I've begun to think about not just total absolute returns, but the cost and risk associated with those returns as well.
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