White Coat Investor posted up an interesting case study today about a hypothetical couple who wanted to retire early:
He was an internist who worked hard his entire career, and she stayed at home and raised the kids. They're both 62, and they want to retire today. They have a $2.5 million portfolio and a paid-off home, and the kids have gone through college and are on their own.
https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/deploying-assets-retirement
The case study delves into their fixed and variable expense budget, their investment asset allocation, and how the couple deployed their assets, shifting from a traditional stocks/bonds portfolio, to a bond ladder, to laddered SPIAs.
They used the Trinity Study to evaluate their planned safe withdrawal rate at various ages along the way and used that data to recalibrate their withdrawals based on the percentage success rate. They ended up with $1.6m left which went to their kids.
As I read through this I found myself wondering how their retirement plan might have changed had they used IL with its risk-based spending guardrails. I thought an A/B comparison based on a case example like this with the rich level of detail it included might make for an interesting way to highlight the (presumably) better total spending and reduced risk outcomes IL delivers.