CHICAGO (AP)—Avoiding the nightmare financial scenario in retirement—running out of money—is getting trickier.
Rising life expectancy means having to pay for a longer retirement. The lack of a pension or frozen benefits translate to fewer, smaller checks from ex-employers. And the days of being able to count on averaging 10 percent annual returns from the stock market are over.
All that makes it even more important for retirees to know just how much they can take out of their portfolios every year without drawing them down too fast.
There isn't one model that fits all. It depends on individual circumstances, best reviewed with a financial advisor.
But the classic guideline long followed by many, and still respected, is widely known as the 4 percent rule. It holds that if you withdraw no more than 4 percent from your savings the first year of retirement and adjust the amount upward for inflation every year, you can be confident you won't run out of money during a 30-year retirement.
The strategy is credited to financial planner William Bengen, who published his research in the Journal of Financial Planning in 1994.
The twist is this: The father of the 4 percent rule says the complete number is actually 4.5 percent.
"A 4 percent rule is just so easy to think about. People just kind of ignore the extra half," chuckles Bengen, 64, who operates Bengen Financial Services in La Quinta, Calif.
Bengen spoke about his rule and the proper approach to withdrawals in a recent interview. Edited excerpts follow:
Q: How did the rule come about?
A: I started getting clients who were thinking seriously about retirement. They asked me, "How much can I take out of my portfolio when I retire?" I really hadn't a clue. So I started looking and I found no substantial information anywhere. I looked at data on investments and inflation going back to 1926 and reconstructed the investment experience of retirees over the decades.
Q: The Wall Street Journal characterized your findings at the time as "scary for retirees and depressing for everybody else" because they suggested you can't squeeze nearly as much income out of retirement savings as had been thought. Did financial planners resist the new number?
A: It met a lot of resistance initially. I was surprised, too. People were assuming it was 6 percent, 7 percent. But they were using average rates of return, which is very dangerous.
It's like the guy who drowned in a lake with an average depth of three feet. You go out to the middle of the lake and it's 10 feet. So that doesn't help you to know what the average depth is. You have to be able to survive worst-case scenarios.
Q: What has changed, if anything, since you did your research?
