Short Takes: Reduced Spending in Retirement, Novel Mutual-Fund Marketing, and more

Rob Carrick discusses the fact that our spending tends to drop throughout retirement in a video interview with Fred Vettese, Chief Actuary at Morneau Shepell, Inc. Vettese quoted studies in Germany and the U.S. showing that our spending at age 75 is 20% lower than at age 65, and our spending at age 85 is one-third less than at age 65. Unfortunately, he did not give enough information to locate the studies. I wonder whether these studies took into account that people’s pensions decline with inflation and some retirees simply run out of savings. Declining retiree spending would hardly be surprising if the main reason were that their income declines.

Tom Bradley at Steadyhand considers a new marketing strategy based on how Steadyhand treats clients when they choose to leave.

Million Dollar Journey explains how to easily and accurately calculate your portfolio return using the XIRR() spreadsheet function.

Potato gives us some clear thinking on Canada’s high debt-to-income ratio.

Big Cajun Man explains the idea of cost-per-use of exercise equipment as a way to motivate you to use it more.

The Blunt Bean Counter suggests a number of things to consider in your will to prevent problems with the inheritance of your belongings. He also explains some of the ways an executor can deal with distributing belongings not specifically mentioned in a will.

My Own Advisor lays out his financial goals for 2013. I was happy to see that he included the goal to not take on any new debt.

Where Does All My Money Go? has some cool graphs showing that even while the U.S. debt has been rising quickly, the interest cost on that debt has been falling.

Larry Swedroe reports that hedge funds had yet another bad year in 2012.