April 8, 2026

A Few Useful Finds for Life After Work — Issue #7

Hi from Stefan,

Welcome to the 7th issue of this biweekly newsletter.

Nothing here is sponsored or written for compensation.

Your 12 Good Years

Dan Haylett writes that the physically capable version of you that can travel, stay active, and pursue ambitious experiences “has a shelf life.” The average healthy 60-year-old has about 12 years before mobility, energy, and independence start to significantly decline. His advice: front load your retirement and give yourself permission to spend your money and energy now.

Don’t Be Fooled By These 3 Investing Tricks

Financial planner Allan Roth cautions about a few of the common misleading presentations used in financial communications: misleading benchmarks, inflated bond yields, and faulty mortgage math.

Private equity in 401(k)s?

The Labor Department, which regulates workplace retirement benefits, has proposed rules to allow private equity, annuities and other asset classes in 401(k) plans.

I applaud giving savers more choices for investing their nest eggs. But these are not choices I would make for myself. There are reasonable arguments for deferred annuities to cover the financial tail risk of an unexpectedly long lifespan. But I also concluded that a TIPS ladder is more efficient than an annuity to guarantee income for most of retirement. As for private equity, current funds are illiquid, actively managed, and have higher fees than public market funds.

I would consider adding private equity once there are liquid, low-cost, broad market index funds with sufficient historical data to evaluate them against public market funds.

Coming soon at The Best Third

In the survey and feedback form, a number of you have asked for more detailed handling of:

  • when different retirement accounts can be tapped
  • required minimum distributions
  • explicit year-by-year accounting of income, withdrawals and taxes

I’ve been working on a set of upgrades that address exactly those areas. These changes make the output closer to a full withdrawal plan than the current high-level projections.

The work is essentially done. I’m finishing up with final QA, presentation and documentation. I’ll share a full update in the next newsletter once everything is in place.

Warmly,
Stefan Sharkansky, PhD
Founder of The Best Third