FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE

Being almost at the draw-down phase of my investing and about to start a superannuation pension, I am interested in potentially drawing on my Pearler portfolio if the pension isn't quite enough or putting more in if there is a bit excess. Particularly concerned for a GFC type event. I see that there are some ETFs that are a premix of asset classes, shares (international, australian, emerging) and fixed income (bonds, hybrids). Maybe VDHG is an example. The rationale being in that in a market downturn, the fixed income portion won’t fall as much and act as a moderator. However, if you are in a draw-down and the income from these no longer covers your minimum needs, you have to sell down. If you are in the mixed class ETF, you are going to be forced to sell down both the share proportion which has been hit as well as the fixed income. If you did a roll yourself ETFs portfolio with a mixed class allocation, you could independently sell down the non-impacted fixed income part of the portfolio and let the impacted shares recover over time. I’d have thought you could do a model portfolio with some target allocations and dollar cost in or out to make it easy but be better protected against a down-turn. e.g. equal weight IOZ (Australian), IOO (International), NDQ (high growth), IEM (emerging markets), QPON (fixed income) A single diversified ETF seems to me to provide no significant protection.