See how long your portfolio lasts at any withdrawal rate, and whether your spending is actually sustainable.
Default 4%. Try 3.5% or 5% to compare.
A withdrawal rate is the percentage of your portfolio you spend each year in retirement. At 4%, a $1,000,000 portfolio supports $40,000/year in spending. The question this calculator answers: does your portfolio outlast your retirement, or does it run out?
The math comes down to your withdrawal rate, your investment return, and how much inflation eats into your purchasing power each year. This calculator runs all three together so you can see exactly what happens year by year.
The "4% rule" came from the Trinity Study (Cooley, Hubbard & Walz, 1998), which looked at historical US market data from 1925 to 1995. The study found that a 4% withdrawal rate from a 50/50 or 75/25 stock/bond portfolio had roughly a 95% success rate over 30-year periods.
The authors framed it as a guideline for a specific historical window, not a permanent law. Calling it "the 4% rule" was a simplification that stuck. A few things make it unreliable as a fixed number:
There is no universal safe withdrawal rate. Your number depends on how long you need the money to last, how much you can cut spending in a bad year, what you hold, and when you happen to retire relative to the market. Run a few scenarios in the calculator above rather than locking in on one figure.
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