It’s Time to Retire Ruin (Probabilities)

Concerned about the growing use of ruin probabilities as the guiding risk metric for retirement income planning, the author introduces the idea of portfolio longevity being parallel to the biological longevity of human life and discusses how to educate clients regarding the most important factors influencing their money’s longevity. He suggests that advisers start by providing clients with an estimate of the number of years their portfolio will last—assuming they continue on the current path—using a framework that can be easily understood and communicated.