James' World 2

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Across the globe, millions of people believe the Earth — that whirling blue sphere, spinning through space — is, in fact, a flat plane. Believers diverge on the specifics but tend to understand that we all live beneath a dome that floats through space, or perhaps, hovers above primordial waters.

It’s unclear how many people believe some version of Flat Earth theory. Tens of thousands of people belong to social media accounts dedicated to these theories, and popular videos explaining the theory have hundreds of thousands of views. Some high-profile figures, including NBA star Kyrie Irving and rapper B.o.B., have flirted with or even openly endorsed the theory. Flat Earth believers held conferences before the covid-19 pandemic and showed up at anti-mask and anti-vaccine protests throughout it.

And polling gives us some sense of the scale of this belief system: As many as 1 percent of Americans (that’s more than 3 million people) and 7 percent of Brazilians (11 million people) say they believe the Earth is flat, for example.

The modern Flat Earth movement has its origins in a snake oil salesman and utopian named Samuel Rowbotham, said Kelly Weill, a journalist who covers fringe movements for the Daily Beast and spent years researching this movement and its adherents. In her book, “Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything,” she traces the conspiracy theory’s resurgence in about 2015, when it began spreading across social media.

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Illustration: Mae Decena

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During your working years, your largest income stream is generally from employment. When you retire, however, your income will likely need to come from a variety of sources, such as retirement accounts, after-tax investments, Social Security, pensions, or even continued part-time work. For those looking to create a retirement income stream, there are a variety of strategies available depending upon your specific income needs and lifetime goals. Two simple retirement income strategies include the total return approach and the bucket approach.

Total Return Approach to Retirement Income

The total return approach is probably the best-known strategy. With this approach, assets are invested with a focus on diversification, using a portfolio of investments with a varied potential for growth, stability, and liquidity, based on your time horizon, risk tolerance, and need for current and future income. There are three defined stages within this approach, which are contingent upon how near you are to retirement:

• Accumulation phase: During peak earnings years, the objective is to increase total portfolio value through long-term investments that offer growth potential.

• Pre-retirement phase: As you approach retirement this should include a gradual move toward a more balanced growth and income-based portfolio, with an increased allocation toward stable and liquid assets as a means of preserving your earnings.

• Retirement phase: Once retired, maximizing tax-efficient income while protecting against principal decline may result in a portfolio heavily weighted toward income-producing liquid assets.

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