The main thing that I would add is TIPS.It's conventional wisdom that owning stocks is less risky for longer holding periods (say, over one's working life); but for shorter periods, like a retirement lasting an indeterminate period (usually shorter than we'd like), holding some balance of stocks and bonds seems a very good idea. At this moment in time (2026), both seem to have targets on their backs -- stratospheric valuations for stocks, inflation and currency debasement for bonds, a disintegrating world order for both.
So I've settled on an approximately 50/50 balance of the two. I just don't know which will outperform (or collapse!) over the next decade or so. Being retired, making bets in either direction tends to give me nightmares. To that end, I've hired people at Vanguard, Wellington Management and Pacific Heights Asset Management to rebalance for me, inside three different balanced funds.
Because the big risk in retirement is inflation's effect on buying power. In the USA Social Security is relatively generous so the risk is lessened.
Thus I could make case for half or more of bond weighting to be in TIPS.
Unfortunately TIPS are by nature long duration instruments. Much of the return is from accreted principal at the end. So we see in 2022 just how painful that can be for performance.
I would suggest holding ST TIPS fund as well, because they track inflation more closely w less interest rate risk.
Statistics: Posted by Valuethinker — Sun Jan 11, 2026 9:43 am — Replies 14 — Views 1693