Subject: Re: beating the market
Well done. 16 years of post retirement living and you haven't dipped below your starting point. Keep on keepin' on!

If i may ask, what is your draw-down strategy (broadly)?

I assume it's me you are asking, not Jim?

Anyway.....my withdrawal strategy was Guyton-Klinger. Initially with 4.5% guardrails. 2009 was scary because our portfolio was down by 35% from the 2007 starting value.

In 2018 I reset to 5.5% guardrails, in recognition of the 11 years of life expectancy that was behind us.

We did a LOT of expensive-ish traveling in the first several years of retirement, and drew much more than the scheduled G-K withdrawal. The overage was carried over to the next year and the new scheduled draw was reduced accordingly, as were under-withdrawals, so that the long-term actual withdrawals averaged out to about the scheduled amount.

A couple of years ago I stopped bothering to take the (adjusted for under-draws) scheduled monthly withdrawals because that scheduled amount was much larger than what we needed. For 2023, our adjusted (adjusted for under-draws) scheduled monthly withdrawal is almost twice the raw non-adjusted amount. And we don't even need or take the non-adjusted amount, so the underage just grows bigger every year.

Financial freedom is being able to walk into a car dealer and when they ask what your target budget is you say "I can buy anything here I want to. For cash."