Hi Clive, Re: AIM and Retirement Timing..................
That's a truly interesting concept. I've never considered any form of retirement "timing" so this is a new concept for me. In general, people I've known seem to work until a required retirement age is reached.
There are those who do accumulate wealth enough while working that consideration for retirement "early" is an option. I guess I've not thought how people make that judgement call on their own.
It would appear the logic is, "If the sum of assets is large enough at the bottom of a market cycle (AIM in buying mode) then it should be enough for the rest of the market cycle." I can appreciate that.
I'm going to think on this further. For me, I went back to "work" in 2008 after going off on my own as an investor in 1986. We started our investment advisory just before the market took a most serious tumble in late 2008. So, my starting to work again was sort of the inverse of your example. It wasn't by conscious intent, however. It was just opportunity knocking at my door.
I'd met the fellow who eventually became my business partner in early 2000. He and his, then, partners were looking to build something more robust for their high net worth clients than just having their core position be something like a S&P 500 Index fund. They contacted me after coming across my ancient AIM-Users web pages. This was back when Exchange Traded Funds were still a novelty. I suggested the idea of deconstructing the S&P 500 by sector. Taking those 10 basic sectors and applying AIM to each individually looked, in modeling, to be able to at least match the S&P 500 Index and, over time, out-perform it.
My friend took the idea and converted much of his clients' core investments over to this first ETF portfolio strategy. It was in 2008 that he and three other asset managers and I opened the doors to our investment advisory. After decades of being on my own I had been concerned about whether I could find a 'fit' in this new enterprise. As it turned out that was unnecessary concern. With common goals comes common satisfaction.
Weathering that first 12 months was challenging. We'd told our clients what to expect if/when markets go "down." We said that we'd be using the substantial reserves of cash first set up in their accounts to buy deeply discounted shares. Because of this they weren't surprised by it and by late Summer of 2009 they were very happy we had been so brave as to have invested the surplus cash for them when nobody else was doing any buying, it seemed. That helped build significant loyalty and fostered excellent word-of-mouth expansion.
I've never done SWR planning. It's been a floating value at best and not by plan but by circumstance. A software that's available can let me tinker with such things but I'm just learning my way around with it.
Thanks again for bring this concept home to the AIM board.
Best wishes,
OAG Tom
Buy from the Scared; Sell to the Greedy.....
