Remember when your parents retired? They looked forward to playing bridge, gardening in the backyard of the house you grew up in, perhaps traveling upstate to visit your aunt a few times a year. That was their idea of a “carefree” retirement.

Well, that was then… and this is now. And I’m pretty sure you have a different idea of what a “carefree” retirement looks like!
If you’re anything like me, you don’t want to sit around and garden in your golden years. You’ll want to travel the world, probably play some golf, and spend your weekend cruising Biscayne Bay fishing for swordfish. And, if you are like me, you’ve probably planned diligently for retirement using a variety of highly rated Vanguard funds. Good for you. But have you invested in Vanguard’s #1 Fund for retirement?

The Cost of a Carefree Retirement

So you’ve run the numbers and are ready to pull the rip cord on retirement. Florida looks good. And you’re not looking to build Miralago, but you are looking at building somewhere on the Gulf Coast–either in Naples, Bonita Springs or possibly Fort Myers.

Filled with golf courses, marinas, fountains, winding paths and palm trees, a modest three-bedroom, three-bath home is all yours for around $200 per square foot. There’ll be about $5,000 a year in fees, and an annual real estate tax bill of $11,200.

Let’s assume you sold a median-priced home in New Jersey and used the proceeds towards your unfurnished $700,000 home. The cost of your sunny Florida home works out at about $64,000 a year.

OK, “doable” you say…maybe even “comfy.”

So, you’ve picked out a nice spot in Pelican Bay, and are now looking forward to dinners at the country club and a springtime Parisian stroll down the Champs-Elysees. You and your wife have taken the 4% withdrawal blood oath so, but you have this nagging feeling that you’ve forgotten something…that would be the extra million you need in your portfolio before you set sail in Biscayne Bay!

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Why a Million Doesn’t Cut It Anymore

Here’s where many investors make a crucial retirement mistake. If you plan on drawing a modest 4% a year from your portfolio to live on, you’ll need closer to $1.6 million. Add in some new golf shoes, a car, income tax and food, your golden egg now needs to be in $2 million range (more if you’ve got a great golf swing.)

This is the true cost of a “carefree” retirement. Not a luxury retirement, but nice one… that’s unfortunately well beyond the means of 99 retirees out of a hundred.

Here’s why: Over the span of 30 years, as a retiree, there’s a 90% chance you’ll still have money left even if you “only” start with a million. At a slightly higher 5% withdrawal rate, your chances of having cash in hand 30 years from now drops to only 33%.

Get Twice as Much From the Right Vanguard Funds!

Knowing this, let’s quickly take a look at a million-dollar portfolio, invested in January 1998, that used a careful mix of Vanguard Award winners for that year, funds like Primecap (VPMCX), Windsor II (VWNFX) and HealthCare (VGHCX).

Over the next 3 years, that portfolio, as published in The Independent Adviser for Vanguard Investors, grew to be worth $2,026,699.Well, you say, that was a pretty good time to invest. I’ll agree.

Then let’s go back to 1991, when the economy was much less certain. Our published Growth portfolio (again just using Vanguard Award winners) doubled to $2,006,838 by January 1997. That took just 6 years.

See, turning a one-million-dollar nest egg into a two-million-dollar carefree retirement on Pelican Bay isn’t difficult and doesn’t take long. It just takes the right Vanguard funds.

Vanguard’s Top Fund for Retirement

If you could buy just one fund from Vanguard to make your retirement dreams come true, this would be the one.
This Vanguard fund pretty much guarantees you two things that I think you’ll value:

#1: A good night’s sleep. In a world where madness stalks, the value of discipline, logic and accountability is great. That is one reason my subscribers have loved this fund since I began recommending it.

#2: An impressive performance with an average annual return of 15.1% over just the last 5 years.

What’s This Fund’s Secret?

Well, if Warren Buffett has a long-lost brother, his name would be James Barrow!

Jim Barrow is this fund’s secret to success. Barrow doesn’t “pick” stocks, any more than Buffett does. He collects, and owns, companies. Companies that have high cash flow, companies that are unaffected by business fads and companies that Vanguard investors can hold onto for a long time.

As loyal Vanguard investors, you and I are blessed to have access to James Barrow. But be careful. In the fund he’s best-known for, Windsor II, you only get Barrow at “half-strength.” Yes, Windsor II is a great fund, but he has another fund, much smaller, and it is majority Barrow, and leaping ahead right now.

The name of this “pure-Barrow” fund, and the complete particulars are in my latest special report. I’ll send it to you FREE when you subscribe to my advisory, The Independent Adviser for Vanguard Investors, where I give tens of thousands of investors unbiased, in-depth, actionable guidance on Vanguard funds–including the best funds to buy, those you should dump, changes in management, and much more! Check it out today! It could truly be the best thing you can do for your retirement!