The Grow Your Wealthy Mindset Podcast

Episode 119: The 4% Rule and How 4% Became the Safe Withdrawal Rate for Retirement

Elisa Chiang Season 3 Episode 119

You may have heard that your retirement portfolio should be 25 times your spending or your income for you to retire. This is actually derived from The 4% Rule, which is the commonly held belief that you an safely withdrawal 4% from your retirement portfolio invested in stock and bonds and not run out of money before you die. In this episode, I look at the original published research where the 4% rule originated, which has been nicknamed the Trinity Study. I also talk about the paper published by William Bengen, who inspire the authors of the Trinity Study.  

 

The key take home points are:

1.      If you withdrawal 4% of your retirement portfolio in your first year of retirement, and then withdraw that amount adjusted for inflation in each subsequent year, then there is a 95% chance your portfolio will last at least 30 years. This assumes a portfolio that is invested at least 50% in an S&P 500 Index fund with the rest invested in long-term high-grade corporate bonds. 

2.      Have at least 50% of your stock and bond portfolio invested in stocks. A portfolio of 75% stocks and 25% bonds results in more upside with no significant downside compared to investing 50% stocks and 50% bonds. A portfolio of 100% stocks does have the possibility of significant downsides compared to a 75/25 stock/bond portfolio. 

 The original papers:

Cooley, Phillip L., Carl M. Hubbard, and Daniel T. Walz. (1998). "Retirement Savings: Choosing a Withdrawal Rate That Is Sustainable." AAII Journal, 20(1), 10-14.

https://www.aaii.com/journal/199802/feature.pdf

 

Bengen, William P. (1994). "Determining Withdrawal Rates Using Historical Data." Journal of Financial Planning, 7(4), 17-26.


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Dr. Elisa Chiang is a physician and money coach who helps other doctors reach their financial goals by mastering their money mindset through personalized 1:1 coaching .

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