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It's a valid question. The honest answer could simply be "yes." Depending on your circumstances. The more nuanced answer is... Look at things like The Trinity Study / Monte Carlo simulation, https://www.cfiresim.com/, https://engaging-data.com/visualizing-4-rule/, https://firecalc.com/intro.php, https://retirementplans.vanguard.com/VGApp/pe/pubeducation/c... and so on. To start, we assume that 1) we cannot predict the future but 2) the best predictor of the future is the past. Then we make some assumptions that we think we could apply to the future, like how much we'll spend each year, how we'll allocate our assets / investments, and how long we need our money to last. From there, we take historical data and apply our unique assumptions to the historical data simulating each time period available, and we take a close look at the results. To get 100% success, you'd need something like no inflation, or invested assets greatly exceeding our expenses. For example, if you spend $100,000 / year, and you have $4 million invested, even if inflation matched your investment return, you could still live off this money for 40 years. But you probably don't need a true 100% success rate. More likely, you need just a bit of flexibility, and a backup plan. Most failures happen due to something like stagflation or negative returns very early into your retirement. Your best option at that point is to return to work and reduce expenses until you've passed some of the worst, and then return to retirement with a much higher predicted success rate. If you retire without flexibility and a backup plan, blindly spending 4% of your assets each year regardless of the market and inflation, staglation could ruin your chances of success. But why would anyone choose to do that? |