It is too easy to simply claim that other people are taking risks.
I'm not yet retired, but I am able to buy several years of of expenses in bonds each and every year because I invested in stocks. One of the benefits of getting 30-50% more by retirement through stock allocation is that the AA can stay aggressive and still hold plenty of bonds.
One would need to understand stock and bond risk to address this correctly. In turns out that stocks and bonds each have risks and that as long as you own enough of each in retirement, your portfolio size will largely dictate safety. That more aggressive AA may already be 10x safer because it grew 30-50% more. Things like TIPS do not protect us against unexpected spending, so once again the answer is always "enough" stocks and "enough" bonds.
There is nothing special with respect to risk about holding some conservative AA. I'd say any portfolio with 10x in stocks and 10x in bonds (of sufficient size) is going to be very resilient, particularly when the portfolio size grows large. From 10x stocks + 10 bonds, adding more stocks or more bonds adds roughly the same amount of safety.
We often neglect things like social security when mentioning our AA. Bogle said to include this. If we get 30% of our income from social security we are already in the 70/30 range. I think most people's AA's are plenty conservative when we include social security.
I'm not yet retired, but I am able to buy several years of of expenses in bonds each and every year because I invested in stocks. One of the benefits of getting 30-50% more by retirement through stock allocation is that the AA can stay aggressive and still hold plenty of bonds.
One would need to understand stock and bond risk to address this correctly. In turns out that stocks and bonds each have risks and that as long as you own enough of each in retirement, your portfolio size will largely dictate safety. That more aggressive AA may already be 10x safer because it grew 30-50% more. Things like TIPS do not protect us against unexpected spending, so once again the answer is always "enough" stocks and "enough" bonds.
There is nothing special with respect to risk about holding some conservative AA. I'd say any portfolio with 10x in stocks and 10x in bonds (of sufficient size) is going to be very resilient, particularly when the portfolio size grows large. From 10x stocks + 10 bonds, adding more stocks or more bonds adds roughly the same amount of safety.
We often neglect things like social security when mentioning our AA. Bogle said to include this. If we get 30% of our income from social security we are already in the 70/30 range. I think most people's AA's are plenty conservative when we include social security.
Statistics: Posted by abc132 — Thu Jan 08, 2026 9:08 am — Replies 53 — Views 4070