A. There is a rule of thumb from the Vanguard Group founder John Bogle - investors should have a bond allocation roughly akin to their age, and the “bond” part should include pension and Social Security payments.
For retirees, this means a higher allocation of the actual investment portfolio in equities. How high? Let's see an example.
An Example
If you are around age 65, here is another rule of thumb - the overall value of your social security benefits in today’s dollars is the annual social security payment amount times 15. For example, if you receive $20,000 a year in Social Security, the value of those payments as an asset would be about $300,000.
If you have $1 million in investments, now add this $300K to it, your total asset is $1.3 million. Using Bogle's rule of thumb, you should invest $545,000 in bonds (in addition to your "mandatory" $300,000 Social Security "bond"). This leaves $455K in equities.