The section on retirement savings spends a lot of space criticizing what people actually do, and rather little saying what they should do instead. Clearly you’re suggesting playing-it-less-safe in some sense, but the ploddingly straightforward “keep investing in hopefully-high-return assets like stocks rather than hopefully-safe assets like bonds, even when growing old” seems (1) not like advice that’s actually justified by anything else you’ve written and (2) to be missing a bigger point (which I take to be related to Ben’s in “Against the barbell strategy”).
It feels like this would benefit from being more explicit. But I get the impression (as I did from Ben’s article) that you are deliberately avoiding being clear and explicit about something here, and I wonder what. (Perhaps nothing! My impression could be wrong.)
So there’s at least *a little* deliberately avoiding being clear and explicit on exactly what to do, because legally one can’t give investment advice safely, especially if the advice would be something riskier than standard. There’s also ‘what to actually do comes later and is a distinct and complex and heavy topic’.
You are correct that this series is in part a response / building upon “Against the barbell strategy.” Not a coincidence there. I certainly am pointing out that choosing a weird form of “safety” as measured in dollars under ‘normal’ world conditions as represented by bonds is, even under the best of assumptions, a false security not worth sacrificing much for in expected value terms under most circumstances.
The section on retirement savings spends a lot of space criticizing what people actually do, and rather little saying what they should do instead. Clearly you’re suggesting playing-it-less-safe in some sense, but the ploddingly straightforward “keep investing in hopefully-high-return assets like stocks rather than hopefully-safe assets like bonds, even when growing old” seems (1) not like advice that’s actually justified by anything else you’ve written and (2) to be missing a bigger point (which I take to be related to Ben’s in “Against the barbell strategy”).
It feels like this would benefit from being more explicit. But I get the impression (as I did from Ben’s article) that you are deliberately avoiding being clear and explicit about something here, and I wonder what. (Perhaps nothing! My impression could be wrong.)
Mumble mumble “not investment advice” mumble mumble!
So there’s at least *a little* deliberately avoiding being clear and explicit on exactly what to do, because legally one can’t give investment advice safely, especially if the advice would be something riskier than standard. There’s also ‘what to actually do comes later and is a distinct and complex and heavy topic’.
You are correct that this series is in part a response / building upon “Against the barbell strategy.” Not a coincidence there. I certainly am pointing out that choosing a weird form of “safety” as measured in dollars under ‘normal’ world conditions as represented by bonds is, even under the best of assumptions, a false security not worth sacrificing much for in expected value terms under most circumstances.