[jIM_Ohio]

He should know a few things:

1) Recomendations are for a 4% withdraw rate. Meaning if he has 400k in assets, he should plan with withdraw no more than 4% (4% of 400k is 16k). The idea behind this is that the money would then "last forever", assuming it was invested with a moderate level of risk (60-40 portfolio was used in studies which came to this conclusion).

2) When someone is risk averse (as you father is in this case) the best way to deal with it is listen to him and do not have him invest in anything he is not comfortable with.

3) Have your father outline the following plans
a) what happens if he dies within a year?
b) what happens if he lives for 15 more years?
c) what happens if he lives for 40 more years?
d) what would happen if banks only gave him 1% interest?
e) what would happen if banks gave him 4% interest?
f) what would happen if he had 8% interest?
g) what would happen if the cost of gas doubled?
h) what would happen if cost of food doubles?
i) what would happen if cost of X doubled? (enter what your father spends most money on for X).

The issue is that he has 3 forces working in different directions, and a worst case might be c-d-g or c-d-i. He might want a plan for that. I could present a 5 force case to complicate things... just trying to use some examples to explain the "worst case" in his world.

If he expects to live for 20 years, he should consider investing a portion of assets in something getting higher than a 5% return (balanced fund works).