Bernstein's The Ages of the Investor E-Book

[WildAboutHarry]

I just finished reading this short e-book.

He discusses various aspects of life-cycle investing and offers an insightful view of liability matching in retirement.

He suggests establishing two portfolios:

A liability-matching portfolio invested very conservatively and scaled to meet income needs in retirement.  The liability-matching portfolio covers spending prior to receipt of social security/pensions and the difference between spending and social security/pensions after those start.

Assuming your assets exceed the needs of the liability-matching portfolio, he considers the balance to be the risk portfolio, to be invested to meet the intended ultimate use (charity, inheritance, etc.).

The liability-matching portfolio concept is one that I have not considered (and if you are not close to retirement it is probably not very interesting) but it is useful to consider how one would fund retirement with various permutations of spending assets, social security/pension payments, etc.

And I was struck by the two-portfolio concept he discusses.  Kind of like the HBPP and the VP.