Optimal Equity Glidepaths in Retirement

Dynamic retirement glidepaths evolve over time based on some measure such as the retiree’s funded status or current market valuations. Conversely, static glidepaths are fixed at a starting point and selected under the assumption that they will not change. In practice, new static glidepaths may be derived periodically making them more flexible. The optimal static retirement glidepath would be the one that performs better than all others with respect to some metric. When systematic withdrawals are made from a retirement portfolio, glidepaths are often assessed via the probability of ruin (or success). Our goal here is to derive the optimal static glidepath with respect to this metric. It is a result new to the literature and the shape will be of special interest to retirees, financial advisors, retirement researchers, and target-date fund providers. * The author works as a statistical programming consultant and is concluding a degree in the Department of Systems Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology. The attached Internet Appendix document contains proofs, derivations, and source code from a full C++ application.