Financial Analysts Journal January/February 2015 Volume 71 Issue 1
The Only Spending Rule Article You Will Ever Need
Abstract
After examining an array of approaches to determining a spending rule for retirees, the authors propose the annually recalculated virtual annuity. Each year, one should spend (at most) the amount that a freshly purchased annuity—with a purchase price equal to the then-current portfolio value and priced at current interest rates and number of years of required cash flows remaining—would pay out in that year. Investors who behave in this way will experience consumption that fluctuates with asset values, but they can never run out of money.
About the Author(s)
Laurence B. Siegel is the Gary P. Brinson Director of Research at CFA Institute Research Foundation and an independent consultant. He has authored, edited, or co-edited six CFA Institute Research Foundation monographs and is the author of Fewer, Richer, Greener, published by Wiley in 2019. Mr. Siegel serves on the editorial boards of several prominent journals and on the board of directors of the Q Group and the American Business History Center. He has assisted a variety of nonprofit organizations in the role of investment committee chair or member. Previously, Mr. Siegel was director of research in the Investment Division of the Ford Foundation. Before that, he served as a managing director at Ibbotson Associates (now Morningstar). His website is www.larrysiegel.org. Mr. Siegel received a BA in urban geography and an MBA in finance from the University of Chicago.