Time to pull money out of the stock market?

[Yonnie3]

14. I was scrolling down to make a comment and see you already made most of it. A bit more from me.

I am now 90% retired. I tried to time the market back in the time frame of the dot com crash and did great until I did poorly.

Since then I have moved everything to Vanguard. I picked and stuck to a nearly all index allocation between cash, bonds and stocks with a portion in international stocks and bonds. As my time horizon shortens I have shifted the allocation gradually towards bonds. I re-balance periodically, which causes me to sell high and buy low.

Since I made this change in investment philosophy, I've done well. Careful attention to which type of asset is in taxable and non-taxable accounts has significantly reduced my tax burden.

I am able to distance myself from the investments and relax about them. The markets will fluctuate with or without my attention.

If you don't want to do this allocation yourself, Vanguard (and others) offer retirement target funds that gradually shift the allocations as you get nearer to retirement. Vanguard has very low costs, some other firms don't.