Investing with Exchange-Traded Funds Made Easy: A Start-to-Finish Plan to Reduce Costs and Achieve Higher Returns, Second Edition

Chapter 14. ETF Strategies for Investment Income

We are fortunate that advances in health care and greater awareness of the benefits of healthy lifestyles has increased the likelihood of living past age 80. In fact, if a couple makes it to age 65, at least one of the spouses is expected to live until 91.^[1] Greater longevity means that one of the major challenges for today’s investors is to devise ways of making consistent withdrawals from their savings without depleting their principal over time. The task is rendered all the more difficult by the need to keep up with inflation.

As of this writing (June 2008), inflation is running at roughly 4 percent per year, which is high by the standards of the past 20 years but is actually consistent with ...