In fact, while the very recent trend is probably due to a need (due to retirement funds being hit hard) there has been a steadier trend of increased employment in this demographic.

Whether this is a result of people living more materially or balancing life/work in their pre-retirement years than previous generations or it is a case of people finding retiring early isn’t quite the enjoyable life they expected, I think it could have an important benefit.

If these people are continuing to work, and adding to the tax coffers rather than drawing from them (e.g. CPP/OAS/GIS), then this should make the forecasted demise of OAS/GIS an event further off in the horizon.

In many cases, these older workers are not standing in the way of the young graduates from getting jobs – they are self-employed.

You know what, I’m going to share your challenge with my wife. I think it would make a good series of posts to analyze “retirement for generation Y” (& maybe X).

I’ve definitely been brewing alternate solutions for many years, it may well be time to “publish”.

Unfortunately, it’s probably a 5 or 10-parter. So maybe I’ll just post them to my own blog and share them with @FT as they progress. I would love to bring it back to this blog though :)

Great comments, you are sharing very interesting arguments that you must have spent considerable time researching and thinking about. Knocking wholes in Cooper’s plan is good, but I wonder if you have an alternative idea for a retirement plan? Maybe you would write a post about it for MDJ to share and discuss?

Thank you for the additional data. I’ve added it to the spreadsheets and overlaid the data here.

So let’s take your 20-year numbers.

It’s pretty obvious that 6.37% minus an average of 3.1% inflation is well below the target of inflation+5.

The top quoted numbers from 1986 to 2006 provided about 6.5% over inflation. But only on the half of your portfolio. The other half earned about 3.5% for an average of inflation+5. So as long as you retired from 1986 to 2006 you were in good shape.

Except 2006 was pretty clearly a “bubble” year. If you ride through from 1986 to 2008, your CAGR suddenly goes from 9.52% to 6.58% and now you’re back under inflation+5.

1975 to 1995 seems great: 11.01%!!!
But if you tried to retire just 3 years earlier 1972 to 1992 you’re suddenly hosed, you retire right into two really bad years for the markets (1973, 1974) and then you see inflation go absolutely crazy from 1974 to 1981.

So if you catch the right date ranges and die at the right time, everything works like magic. But if you try to retire in 1972 (or 2008) using “the plan” listed above, then you’re not making “inflation+5″. Heck retire in 1970 or 1971 and you run into the same problem.

And I believe that this is the fundamental problem with the retirement planning that we calculate and preach. We all talk about “not trying to time the markets”, but if you ever plan to retire, you have to time the markets at least once. What’s more, when you need to pull money from the account, you don’t always have the benefit of “averaging” out the years.

Just take a look at the chart. Watch the big see-saw motions on the green line (S&P).

Imagine that you had successfully saved for your retirement in any year since 1996 and start tracing through the roller-coaster. There are lots of years where retirement is, at the least, very poorly timed.

Imagine you’re the lucky person who struck in rich with $2M in 1998. You plan to live off 4% which is 80k / year (circa 2001). You have the 50/50 allocation with a million in T-Bills and a million in the S&P. You make life easy and withdraw 40k from each at the end of the year.

This simple plan leaves you with 1.2M left in the bank after only a decade. 0.778 in bonds, 0.414 in stocks. That’s after adjusting for inflation each year. (I can share the xls)

Losing most of you nest egg in the first decade is clearly very divergent from Sherry Cooper’s plan. But it happened to everyone who retired in 1998 and followed the plan. Retirement in 1999 is even worse. Maybe if you had retired in 1995 you’d have been luckier.

Yes, you could have avoided some of the losses by cashing out T-Bills instead of stocks (but that’s market timing, right?) And really, how long is that going to last? The markets just dropped 40%, what if they do nothing but go sideways for 6 years? Do you just keep pillaging the T-Bills? For how long? Every year you pull only from T-Bills means that you need a larger % growth from your stocks just keep cash flowing.

So yes FT, I feel that the “inflation + 5%” averaged return going forward the next 30 years is quite unlikely. Yes, some smart (or lucky) investors will make it happen. But as a general populace, it is very unlikely to happen. In fact, it seems more likely to me that lots of people will pick the wrong time to retire and will fail the “Cooper plan”.

For the S&P500 (CAGR):
1988 to 2008: 6.37%
1987 to 2007: 8.97%
1986 to 2006: 9.52%
1975 to 1995: 11.01%
1972 to 1992: 7.17%

I think that 5% post-inflation is a pretty darn big number.

Here’s a chart for US TIPS over the last 5 years. So this is a guaranteed treasury that is paid at inflation + X%. That X has not exceeded 3.5% in the last 5 years.

Here’s a similar chart going back to the 60s. This time for US treasury notes not inflation-protected. There are definitely some big numbers there, but overlay that with annualized inflation and things don’t look that great. I pulled inflation from here.

Here’s a link to the overlaid chart with data.

Follow the orange line. That line is the difference between prevalent rates and inflation. That’s our “inflation + X%” line.

That line is rarely above 5% in the last 30 years. It has a median value of 2.7%. It even has some negative years (where buying a 10-year t-bill lost you purchasing power).

Here’s a chart of the S&P 500 in a similar range. It seems like awesome growth over 30 years, but we’re not cutting away inflation. Plus, look at the peaks and valleys.

Take a look at 1997 to 2009, just two big humps. If you had a million dollars in the S&P in 1997 and just “held”, you would still have a million dollars, but it’s pretty obvious that you’ve lost real purchasing power.

At just under 3% per year in inflation, you’re down 30%+ in real purchasing power over that decade. But it’s worse than that, b/c you needed inflation + 5% over those years, right?

To make inflation + 5%, you’re making 8% / year from 1997 to 2008. That means that your million dollars should undergo a 100%+ increase. If you (and everyone) are making “inflation+5″, then the million dollars you had in the market should now be two million dollars.

But it’s not.

And if you had invested it in government t-bills you also didn’t make inflation+5.

You didn’t make inflation+5 from 1999 to early 2008, even at the peaks.

So for over 10 years, we as a collective investment group have not been able to make “inflation+5″ in any of the majorly traded North American markets or using any of the commonly available investment tools. Yes, some investors made out well, but not we as a whole.

So even if you take Sherry Cooper’s advice on the 50/50 split, where do you get inflation+5? The markets didn’t beat inflation, and “guaranteed” investments paid out way less than “5″.

But here’s what’s more. If you were retired for the last 10 years, how are you going to make up for all of that lost income?

How are you going to get “inflation+10″ so that you can “catch up”?

“How should they save for their retirement…?… The answer is simple. They should save more than ten percent of their income. Not a lot more, but more… say, fifteen percent. On retirement, one-third of their ten percent fund should be used to augment their income. (p. 112)

In the context above, “they” refers to the narrator’s co-workers who have pensions but have not started an RRSP. So Chilton’s advice (circa 1989) is to save 20% of all of your income even if you have a pension. In this case, the pension will provide for 65% of the narrator’s last working year of income (p. 102).

If a 10% RRSP contribution covers 35% of your target income, then you would need at least 20% to cover the full 100% (but 20% is the current max). So based on Chilton’s math, everyone without a pensions (i.e.: most of us) should be saving the full 20% (or so) to their RRSP, plus maxing out the TFSA, plus saving 10% for their “ten percent fund”. That’s 30 to 40% of your pre-tax income in savings.

Telling the average Canadian that they can be rich by saving 30%+ of their income is hardly noteworthy or even ingenious. Telling people that your investments averaged 12% when you lived through the 80s isn’t really much of an accomplishment. Government bonds averaged 10%+ from 1980 to 1984. With rates in the 9%+ range from 1976 to 1992 (source).

The 4% rule
FT: 4-5% retirement withdrawal rule for 30 years of retirement assuming an average of 5% equity returns after inflation.

OK, this sounds a little odd.

You’re supposed to earn inflation + 5% and then only withdraw 4-5%? So after retirement you’re supposed to be able to live off of your savings AND have the actual purchasing power of those savings increase? Why do you want to do that? I’m supposed to earn my “million dollars” and then never spend it? I’m just supposed to live off the interest and dividends?

Huh?

And who earns inflation + 5%?

The US has a Treasury Bill that is inflation protected (TIPS). They’re currently paying 2% or less. The markets (Dow Jones, TSX) are in a 10-year bear market after adjusting for inflation. And you may have noticed that they’re not going anywhere.

And that ignores the big question: how can all of us (not just some of us) earn inflation +5% over the long-term.

@FT: thank you for the summary. It’s nice information. Saving 15% is probably a reasonable target.

But all in all the whole things sounds like a lot of BS to me.

I agree a little with XEGTrader about the research departments, back in June 2009 they were predicting oil at $200 and in Nov. $25 thats just one of the examples I dont really depend on them much either, I do a lot of my own research but still have to rely on some analyst research.

Unfortunately I lent my copy to someone so I can’t confirm that is what’s said, I’m sure someone else will be able to.

XEG Trader – I am curious to know why you wouldn’t have any new investment money in indexed funds. What if, while I’m waiting for earnings to improve the market takes a huge jump at the beginning of a resurgence. If I’m in Bonds I’m not going to get any of that increase. What are people’s thoughts on this? This advice sounds like trying to time the market, which I’m not interested in attempting.

As for retirement savings, it’s unfortunate that data suggests that most Canadians are not saving as they should for retirement. For instance, the average RRSP contribution for 2007 was $6,000, and the average RRSP value for those over 55 was $102,000.

Many are relying on the value of their home to help fund their retirement. This is a mistake for several reasons, but the most compelling is that home prices have peaked, are expected to fall in the short term, and will appreciate little over the next 5-10 years due to a number of factors including household deleveraging and tightening lending standards at Canadian banks.

We have seen 30 years of tremendous growth on the back of a debt bubble that has finally been pricked and will cause a tremendous amount of financial stress for years to come.

My 2 cents to those looking to retire in comfort is:

1. Get out of real estate (excluding the home you live in).
2. Adjust your living standard such that you can save 25% of take-home pay.
3. Top up the RRSP and the TFSA every year.
4. Wait for earnings to improve before allocating further capital to the broader stock market. For now, consider short-term bonds and inflation-indexed bonds.
5. In the short term, invest only in sectors that are not highly leveraged (ie. agriculture, oil & gas). These sectors have seen a lot of red lately and are beginning to look attractive. They also pay reasonable dividends.

I suspect this will be a long and painful deleveraging process that will take many years to sort out.

One final thought. Over my 22 years of investing, I have come to realize that the financial industry is the worst threat to your financial health. I consider the entire brokerage industry to be a scam. Simply look at the forecasts offered up by this industry just one short year ago. I have no faith in full service brokers, or the research departments they rely on for their talking points. Do yourself a favour – read, read, read…and take control of your own investment plan.

Caveat Emptor.

article link

I am expecting the retirement age to be raised at some point.
I think that the clawbacks for OAS could be adjusted as well.
That 66k income requirement for clawbacks to start seems a little on the high side to me.

TMW, I agree, I think CPP is relatively sound, but I also believe that OAS has a real risk of being reduced in the future due to demographics. More retired seniors along with a smaller tax base spells trouble for OAS.

Shouldn’t we be worried about how the private pension plans are severly underfunded and get off riding CPP? They seemed to have brought their house in order.

Another crazy myth spouted by the financial industry.