[xfhgjxcfgh]

The oughts were a particularly bad decade for stocks, one of three in the past century. It isn't fair to choose a test period where stocks under-performed 50% of the time.

A portfolio that includes some gold would have performed well enough during the 70s and 00s (gold wasn't a commodity in the same sense in the 30s).

[qwytw]

Still you can't really expect a constant 7% return. Looking at S&P 500 since 1990 there haven't been that many years when growth was between -10% and +10%:

2018: -6.24% 2016: 9.54% 2015: -0.73% 2011: 0.00% 2007: 3.53% 2005: 3.00% 2004: 8.99% 1994: -1.54% 1993: 7.06% 1992: 7.06% 1990: -6.56%

in all other years it was double digit in either direction (of course it more often increased than fell). So it's still a huge gamble, if you start this at the beginning of recession and/or need to eat into your capital it won't end great.

[xfhgjxcfgh]

I agree. 4% is the most commonly discussed yearly withdrawal rate, and it might be too high.

[NovemberWhiskey]

The point is: it doesn't matter what the average return over a given period is, the safe draw-down rate is always less than that much.