Which Are You More Worried About: Running Out Of Money While You’re Alive Or Dying?

As David Blanchett says: failure is really only failure if wealth is depleted while you are still alive, not just over an arbitrarily long time period.
How Much You Should Spend In Retirement Depends On How Long You Think You’ll Live

In regards to my last column, I find it helps to visualize the data, and Exhibit 1 shows the specific spending rates for a variety of asset allocations and retirement lengths. It also shows the withdrawal rates implied by the required minimum distribution (RMD) rates set by the IRS for tax-deferred retirement accounts.
Should You Plan On Your Retirement Lasting 30 Years Or 40?

The 4% rule has a planning horizon of thirty years. But is that a long enough horizon?
How Long Can Retirees Expect To Live Once They Hit 65?

Life expectancy is tricky. Average life expectancy at birth is 71 years, but it’s constantly changing depending on your age and myriad other factors.
Three Questions To Evaluate Longevity Risk For Retirees

Longevity risk—the risk of running out of assets before running out of time—is fundamental to retirement. We know about the distribution of longevity for the overall population, but an individual cannot know in advance precisely where he or she will fall in the distribution.
Retirement Spending Increases And Decreases Over Time

An important simplifying assumption in William Bengen’s research is that retirees spend constant inflation-adjusted amounts throughout retirement. This may be at odds with the spending patterns of many retirees.
What If Retirees Don’t Want To Run Out Of Money In 30 Years?

Traditional safe withdrawal rate literature regularly makes the assumption that retirees will choose a withdrawal rate that will leave precisely no wealth after the final withdrawal in the thirtieth year of retirement. This can leave them playing a game of chicken as their wealth plummets toward zero.
Sustainable Retirement Spending and Market Returns

What happens to sustainable spending rates as the planning horizon extends, or
if we build in a constraint to preserve wealth and avoid portfolio depletion?
With Retirement Longer Than Ever, What Is the New 4% Rule?

One of the most hotly contested debates in personal finance is over the safe withdrawal rate for retirement. How much can you expect to spend sustainably from your investments during retirement? What do we need to do to be safe?
Does Your Retirement Plan Account For Your Own Cognitive Decline?

When it comes to financial planning, Vanguard’s “Alpha” and Morningstar’s “Gamma” are really just the tip of the iceberg.