Research for people who hold things for decades
Notes on the decisions that actually move outcomes: how much you save, what you pay, how you are allocated, and when you take the money out.
The quiet case for boring index funds
Costs compound in the wrong direction. Here is what a 0.60% expense ratio actually takes out of a 30-year retirement balance.
5 minute readMeridianClad Research
Every dollar paid in fund expenses is a dollar that never compounds for you. Over a single year the difference between a 0.03% index fund and a 0.63% actively managed fund looks trivial - six dollars on a thousand. Over thirty years, on a growing balance, it …
Sequence-of-returns risk: why the first five years matter most
Two retirees with identical average returns can end up decades apart. The order the returns arrive in explains why.
6 min readRoth or traditional? A decision that turns on one variable
Strip away the complexity and the choice is mostly a bet on your tax rate now versus your tax rate later.
5 min readRebalancing without guessing
Bands beat calendars, and both beat intuition. A simple rule for keeping risk where you set it.
4 min readClaiming Social Security: the eight-percent question
Every year you defer past full retirement age raises the benefit by roughly 8%. That is a guaranteed, inflation-linked return.
5 min readWhat a target-date fund actually does
One ticker, a whole glide path. Here is what happens inside the fund between now and your retirement year.
4 min readTax-loss harvesting, minus the folklore
A real but bounded benefit, with a wash-sale rule that catches more people than it should.
5 min readHow big should an emergency fund actually be?
Three months, six months, a year - the honest answer depends on how correlated your income is with the market.
4 min readThe research briefing
One email a month. Allocation, taxes and retirement income - no market calls, no trade ideas.