<prompt> Human: I would love peoples thoughts. When planning for retirement Ive heard that a good figure to estimate future returns is 6 on investments and 3-3.5 for inflation. Do you know if that 6 recommendation is a flat 6 or 6 above inflation?Also, does anyone have ideas on how to value the expected return of something like a Target Date fund as it will be changing its asset allocation over time. Any thoughts would be super helpful! Thanks!  <response>: The inflation adjusted historic return of the US stock market is 7. The nominal return is 9.7.When people do retirement planning they usually use todays money, so they use inflation adjusted returns.The reason they often use 6 is that over time some of their portfolio a growing portion will be in bonds, rather than stocks, so 7 is probably too high.If you use 6 and calculate everything in todays dollars, you will probably be in the ballpark.Good luck. 