Well over a hundred years ago, scientists concluded that lights travel as a wave.

And they knew that water waves were disturbances of water.

Sound waves were a disturbance of air.

So their assumption was light waves must disturb something.

They called this something ether.

So they went about spending countless hours doing very sophisticated research and spending a lot of resources trying to find this

Ether. It's a good article about this NOVA a few years ago by Kate Becker.

It wasn't until Einstein published his theory of special relativity in

1905 that the solution became clear, according to Miss Becker.

Ether wasn't just hard to find, it didn't exist. It was an incorrect assumption. So if we fast forward to the 90s and get into retirement

mode, in the 90s we were in the middle of the digital revolution, the new economy, and many very well respected experts were suggesting hey in this new era

of technology it's reasonable to assume you're going to get 15 to 20 percent returns so

you should be invested in a hundred percent in stocks and if you're

going to retire just sell enough to cover your needs as you need it and as long as you

you're taking out 8 to 10 percent, you should be fine. People made life decisions

based on those assumptions. I know, I was there, I remember. And it worked out horribly.

Now if we fast forward to 2008, 2009 after the Great Recession, experts said that returns going

forward are going to be horrible.

Many people left investing forever and they ended up missing a 10 year bear market and that had a material impact not just on their money but on their life because of that incorrect assumption.

So this month on the retirement answer man show we are going to talk about our

retirement assumptions so we can avoid making a disastrous mistake.

My name is Roger Whitney.

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