At retirement, individuals stop working and no longer get employment earnings, and enter a phase of their lives, where they rely on the assets they have accumulated, to supply money for their spending needs for the rest of their lives. Retirement spend-down, or withdrawal rate, is the strategy a retiree follows to spend, decumulate or withdraw assets during retirement.
Retirement planning aims to prepare individuals for retirement spend-down, because the different spend-down approaches available to retirees depend on the decisions they make during their working years. Actuaries and financial planners are experts on this topic.
Importance
More than 10,000 Post-World War II baby boomers will reach age 65 in the United States every day between 2014 and 2027. This represents the majority of the more than 78 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964. As of 2014, 74% of these people are expected to be alive in 2030, which highlights that most of them will live for many years beyond retirement. By the year 2000, 1 in every 14 people was age 65 or older. By the year 2050, more than 1 in 6 people are projected to be at least 65 years old. The following statistics emphasize the importance of a well-planned retirement spend-down strategy for these people:
87% of workers do not feel very confident about having enough money to retire comfortably. 80% of retirees do not feel very confident about maintaining financial security throughout their remaining lifetime. 49% of workers over age 55 have less than $50,000 of savings. 25% of workers have not saved at all for retirement. 35% of workers are not currently saving for retirement. 56% of workers have not tried to calculate their income needs in retirement.
Longevity risk
Individuals each have their own retirement aspirations, but all retirees face longevity risk – the risk of outliving their assets. This can spell financial disaster. Avoiding this risk is therefore a baseline goal that any successful retirement spend-down strategy addresses. Generally, longevity risk is greatest for low and middle income individuals.
The probabilities of a 65-year-old living to various ages are:
Longevity risk is largely underestimated. Most retirees do not expect to live beyond age 85, let alone into their 90s. A 2007 study of recently retired individuals asked them to rank the following risks in order of the level of concern they present:
Health care costs
Inflation
Investment risk
Maintaining lifestyle
Need for long-term care
Outliving assets (longevity risk)
Longevity risk was ranked as the least concerning of these risks.
Withdrawal rate
A portion of retirement income often comes from savings, sometimes referred to as a nest egg. Analyzing one's savings involves a number of variables: how savings are invested (e.g., cash, stocks, bonds, real estate), and how this changes over time inflation during retirement how quickly savings are spent – the withdrawal rate Often, an investor will change some of their investment types as one ages. A common strategy to replace more risky investments with less risky investments as one gets older. A "risky" investment is an investment that has a higher potential return but also a higher potential loss. A "conservative" investment is an investment with a low potential return but a lower potential loss. A number of approaches exist to assist with choosing the correct risk level, for example, target date funds.
A common rule of thumb for withdrawal rate is 4%, based on 20th century American investment returns, and first articulated in , and is one conclusion of the Trinity study (1998). This particular rule and approach have been heavily criticized, as have the methods of both sources, with critics arguing that withdrawal rates should vary with investment style (which they do in Bengen) and returns, and that this ignores the risk of emergencies and rising expenses (e.g., medical or long-term care). Others question the suitability of matching relatively fixed expenses with risky investment assets.
New dynamic adjustment methods for retirement withdrawal rates have been developed after Bengen's 4% withdrawal rate was proposed: constant inflation-adjusted spending, Bengen's floor-and-ceiling rule, and Guyton and Klinger's decision rules. More complex withdrawal strategies have also been created.