Most books on buy & hold index fund investing do not say to ever pull ALL your money out of equities when you hit retirement age. They say you should be rebalancing between stocks and bonds AS you age. Going with a higher % in bonds as you get older. They would say someone who is 60 should have say 50% in equities & 50% in bonds/fixed income. Even someone on their 80’s has a certain % in equities. Not saying I agree, just saying what all the professionals would say say.

And every book I’ve ever read on buy & hold Index fund investing said the worst mistake anyone can make is to pull all their money out based on what they are reading, newsletters, blogs, etc… I.E people who panicked and pulled their money out in early 2009 when the DOW hit 6,700…then it pops back to 12,000, and they think about getting back in. lol. B/c really virtually no-one, only the best investors in the world can time the stock market consistently. All the studies I have read say 75% of professionals timing the stock market cannot beat the market indexes. And there was a study done of audited investing newsletters in 1995 where 80% of them could not beat the indexes. You should either be in funds or not in the stock market, not trying to time when to get out and back in. That’s a fools game.

But who knows, “this time it may be different”. I’m not sure we have faced demographic changes like this in a long time? It may be good to not be in stocks for a few decades.

But what else do you invest you money in??? CD’s won’t keep up with inflation. I do like hard money real estate loans (12% return+) for those who know real estate.