Bill,

We hope to be able to maintain the growth bucket as such, without taking any $ from it as ongoing income, but in years when equities boom, we would siphon off some of the profits to buttress the income bucket for inflation. Also, as a small but steady inflation hedge, we would plow a % of the yield of the income bucket back into principal of the income bucket. The 2.8% is nominal but is only a very rough estimate at this juncture because of several things I have not yet nailed down, eg whether to annuitize part of our TIAA-CREF holdings.

As you probably know, we would also get automatic COLAs from the State of Fla pension and social security.

I have not completed the re-structuring of our portfolio to reflect our long-term strategy, and before proceeding much further I wanted to get more info on individual bonds and to back-test our strategy using various historical periods (eg, late 1800s to early 1900s, Great Depression and aftermath, WWII era, 1970-1985, and 1978-2008).

If we fully implement the bucket strategy, we would have ~1/2 of our portfolio in the growth bucket and ~1/2 in the income bucket. The growth bucket, in addition to equities, would have some diversifiers for rebalancing, such as Vanguard Inflation-Protected Secs (VIPSX). (I recognize the controversy re whether rebalancing boosts returns or only lowers volatilty, but I "believe in" rebalancing.) I would track our portfolio in Excel viewing it as a whole per MPT and also as asset classes and styles within each bucket.

Thanks again, Steve
PS Going for a walk with my bride and then to the movies, dinner, and church with her, so I'll be AFK until tonight sometime.