And this is where I got it right (in my opinion, of course, not necessarily anyone else’s) then got confused and veered from that.I would absolutely agree! If those were the only two goals, but they're not. You missed this goal: "(3) an account that my 75 year old better half can manage easily upon my demise!", which is why some of us were saying our spouses would NOT be able to easily manage a ladder of individual Treasuries.
A long non-rolling ladder set up to auto-drop money into an account can be set up without needing to be managed afterward. It would need rungs to be sized close to annual (or semi-annual) expenses so that it’s consumed without a ton left over and begging to be reinvested.
OP indicated that they have other money, so any year when expenses exceed the rung and exceed any leftovers, the spouse could draw from more conventionally fund-invested resources, perhaps at a less than ideal time. That risk of less-than-ideal withdrawal would be what the ladder is intended to minimize. It would allow a lot of the spouse’s expenses to come quite close to (close AFTER, so no sale decisions on their part) the bond duration.
If the ladder exceeds the spouse’s lifetime as well, eventually it would have to be dissolved. So a remaining question is the priority placed on later heirs.
Statistics: Posted by BirdFood — Fri Jun 28, 2024 11:02 am
