Motley Fool Money - Is Your Plan for Retirement Too Safe?

Episode Date: May 30, 2026

Determining when you can retire requires making several assumptions about the future. Some of the commonly recommended assumptions are very conservative, and may result in you working longer than necessary and spending less in retirement than you could. Robert Brokamp looks at some rules of thumbs that may be overly cautious.Also in this episode:-A study finds that financial mistakes can be a predictor of dementia-Saving more for retirement not only boosts your portfolio but lowers the amount you need to have saved before you retire because you learn to live on less-The father of the so-called “4% rule” says it’s 5.5% for someone retiring today-Money management tools not only track your spending but help you plan for retirement Host: Robert Brokamp, CFP®, EAEngineer: Bart Shannon Disclosure: Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. The Motley Fool and its affiliates (collectively, “TMF”) do not endorse, recommend, or verify the accuracy or completeness of the statements made within advertisements. TMF is not involved in the offer, sale, or solicitation of any securities advertised herein and makes no representations regarding the suitability, or risks associated with any investment opportunity presented. Investors should conduct their own due diligence and consult with legal, tax, and financial advisors before making any investment decisions. TMF assumes no responsibility for any losses or damages arising from this advertisement.We’re committed to transparency: All personal opinions in advertisements from Fools are their own. The product advertised in this episode was loaned to TMF and was returned after a test period or the product advertised in this episode was purchased by TMF. Advertiser has paid for the sponsorship of this episode.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is your retirement plan too safe and how financial mistakes could be a sign of cognitive decline? That and more on this Saturday personal finance edition of the Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing podcast. I'm Robert Brokamp, and for today's main segment, I'm going to discuss a few assumptions about retirement planning that might be too cautious. But for some recent headlines that caught my eye, I'll start with a segment from NPR's Planet Money with the title, How Your Bank Account Might Predict Dementia. It started with the story of Sandra Balaban, who hadn't been in close, contact with her father for a while. When she visited him, his house was a mess. And amidst the clutter were a credit card statement showing purchases of scammie-seeming health products and

online subscriptions. Her father couldn't explain them. He had also lost the one to two million dollars he had in his retirement accounts. When Sandra reviewed his brokerage statements, they didn't make sense. She described them as an extremely erratic pattern of investments. He also hadn't paid his taxes in years. The segment then brought in Lauren Nicholas, who is a professor of geriatrics at the University of Colorado, and she contributed to a study which found that wealth begins to decline about six years before a dementia diagnosis due to impaired financial decision making. As Nicholas said in the interview, quote, dementia is one of the diseases where you lose a lot of cognitive capabilities over time that are unfortunately closely tied to our ability to

manage our own money. We actually see some of the earliest signs show up in financial portfolios and checkbooks, end of quote. On last week's show, we talked about. We talked about. We talked about. We talked about about estate planning with attorney Jill Maastriani, the host of the death readiness podcast. But as we discussed, estate planning isn't just about death. It's also the planning and legal documents you need when you or someone you love is no longer able to handle their own affairs. So if you have older relatives, discuss with them in a very loving, gentle way, what's their plan for if and when they're no longer able to take care of themselves financially or otherwise? And look for signs of money-related mistakes that could be an indication of

cognitive decline. things like new spending patterns, bills and taxes not getting paid, or being doubly paid, calls or letters from companies or charities you never heard of, evidence of falling for, get-rich-quick scams, a declining credit score, even basic math mistakes. And if you're getting up there in years, have a plan for how your family will be able to step in and protect you and your financial legacy. Next up, CNBC recently highlighted an article by Fran Walsh, who is the co-founder of Opulus, a fee-only financial planning firm in Pennsylvania,

the article highlighted how saving more for retirement can move up your retirement date in an underappreciated way. Of course, saving more will accelerate the growth of your portfolio, that's obvious. But to save more, you have to spend less. And when you learn to live on less, you've lowered the cost of your retirement because you won't need as much income each year.

Here's an illustration from Walsh's article. Let's say you have two households, both of which are 35 years old, earn $250,000 a year, and their portfolios grow 8% annually. Household A saves 10% a year, or $25,000 and spends $225,000. Household B saves 30%, or $75,000 and lives on $175,000. As a quick bag of the envelope estimate of how much they need to retire,

Walsh uses the rule of thumb that multiplies annual income needs by 25, because that's the inverse of the old 4% rule for how much you can withdraw from your portfolio in retirement. According to this math, household A needs $5.6 million to retire, whereas household B needs $4.3 million. So household B is saving much more for a smaller goal. It will be able to retire at age 57. Household A, on the other hand, won't be able to retire until age 73. And to me, this is the real magic of the fire movement, fire standing for financial independence, retire early. These are people who have cut their spending significantly in order to say, 30% to 50% or more of their incomes and retire well before their 60s. Now, I know that many people may not be comfortable with

the sacrifices these fire folks make, but I also believe that many Americans can cut their spending without a huge drop off in satisfaction, especially if it means they can retire sooner. Now, I will point out that the rule of 25 usually overstates how much someone needs before they can retire for a couple of reasons. First, it doesn't factor in Social Security. And the second reason brings us to the number of the week, which is 5.5%. That's how much a retiree could withdraw in their first year of a 30-year retirement, according to Bobangan, the father of the original 4% rule. He came up with that rule back in 1994, but has gradually ratcheted up over the years, including in a book published last year. As he explained when he was a guest on this show

at August, 4.7% is the historical worst-case scenario. And as he said on the show and has repeated in more recent interviews and LinkedIn posts, he'd recommend 5.5% based on today's market valuations and inflation levels. So instead of needing 25 times your annual retirement needs, you may need just 18.2 times that amount. And again, that doesn't factor in social security, so most people retiring around the mid-60s won't need nearly that much. Such overly conservative assumptions could result in people working longer than they needed to or spending less of retirement than they could, which is our next topic of conversation when Motley Fool a hidden gems investing continues. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this.

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assumptions. One key assumption is how long you'll live, since that will dictate how long you need your money to last. Most retirement experts recommend that you plan to live until your 90s, with 95 being the most common age. As I hinted at the previous segment, most of the research about safe withdrawal rates in retirement assumes a 30-year retirement, so someone who retires at age 65 will live to 95. And it's a prudent assumption. There's just one problem. You probably won't live that long. Using the longevity illustrator from the Society of Actuaries, I calculated the odds that members of a 65-year-old married, retired, heterosexual couple will live to age 95 based on their health status and assuming they don't smoke. So for a female in poor health, she has a 13%

chance of making it to 95, average health, 22%, excellent health, 30%. For a male in poor health, it's 7% chance of making it to 95, average health 14% excellent health, 21%. Now with Mary couples, it actually increases the odds that at least one of them will make it to an older age. So if both spouses are in poor health, there's a 19% chance that one of them will make it to 95. Average health, 32%, excellent health, 44%. So those are not high probabilities. But, you know, for those in excellent health, the odds that at least one spouse will live

to 95 is close to a coin flip. So using age 95 in retirement calculations could be reasonable. But how many older Americans are actually in excellent health? Not many, according to a report from Health News Services that questioned whether people should plan to live to age 95. According to the report, 95% of retirees and their 60s or older have at least one chronic health condition that will reduce their life expectancy. And the reduction will depend on the condition, so ranging from 1 to 2 years in the case of high blood pressure to 5 years in the case of obesity to 6 to 8 years if someone has cancer. When you input a life expectancy of 95 into a retirement calculator, the result will be that you have to work longer and or spend less in retirement than if you assumed a shorter lifespan.

So which life expectancy should you choose? Well, I think it's helpful to think through a range of possible scenarios and ask yourself how they make you feel and what would be your plan B if things don't turn out as well as you hope. So let's just consider two scenarios. And as I go through them, think about which you'd prefer. So scenario one, you plan to live to 95 and you spend accordingly in retirement. This may mean you have to work a bit longer.

It also limits the lifestyle you can enjoy retirement, and the trips you can take, the amount you can dine out, the adventures you can have, you actually end up dying at age 82 and leave a large bequest to your heirs. And to some degree, that inheritance represents all the experiences you could have had, but didn't, because you played it safe. Now here's scenario two. You plan to live to age 85, and that's the life expectancy of a 65-year-old woman in average health. And this allows you to retire sooner and spend more in retirement.

You travel, you dine out, you enjoy all the adventures you envision for your retirement, while still in good enough health and shape to do them. However, because you end up living to age 93 and have spent a good deal of your life savings, your last several years are pretty lean. You're living mostly on Social Security, maybe a little bit of savings, maybe a reverse mortgage on your home, there's not much of a cushion to pay for long-term care expenses, and the bequest that your heirs eventually get is pretty modest.

So the degree to which those two scenarios seem more or less appealing to you comes down to your risk tolerance for the possibility of outliving your money. The type of researcher Moshe Malewski calls this your longevity risk aversion, which he defined as, quote, different people might have different attitudes towards the fear of living longer than anticipated and possibly depleting their financial resources. Some might respond to this economic risk by spending less early on in retirement, where others might be willing to take their chances and enjoy a higher standard of living

while they're still able to do so. End of quote. In a recent article on advisor perspectives.com, William Bernstein and Edward Macquarie explained it as the fear of being the richest person in the graveyard, R-P-I-G, versus the fear of running out, or phoro. They propose that it could be quantified, calling it Omega, which of course is the last letter of the Greek alphabet, and it scales between zero and one. Someone with a lower number fears leaving money unspent,

whereas someone with a higher number worries about depleting their savings. I think it's best explained by a couple of paragraphs in their article, quote, Omega determines the spending path that optimizes utility during retirement. And I'll just add to here that utility is the economic turn for satisfaction and pleasure and things like that. Low Omega retirees who perceive themselves to have enough money spend freely, especially today, right now. The low Omega retiree does seek to steal the title of Bill Perkins' bestseller to die with zero. The high Omega retiree, on the other hand, fears that vengeful market gods or personal misfortune might send them spiraling down a white-knuckle toboggin'ride towards cat food and worse. The calendar always reads 1929. Dying with zero is a guess and a hope, a wish, not a plan.

At high omega, today's spending matters less than money kept in hand. Utility flows from having surplus funds that will never be spent. End of quote. So as you hear all that, what's your omega? You're likely somewhere in between the two extremes. You want to enjoy the retirement that you work decades for, but you also don't want to spend your last years pinching pennies, and perhaps becoming a burden to your family. Finding that balance starts first with determining how much you'll spend in retirement and how much it'll change over the course of your retirement. And this is an important point. Most retirement calculators, most financial planners, and most of the research on safe withdrawal rates of retirement all assume that a retiree's expenses

go up every year along with inflation. But the evidence is clear that this isn't what happens for most retirees. Their highest spending years tend to be the first decade, and they're not spending nearly as much once they reach their late 70s and 80s, in many cases, because their health prevents them from doing too much. This is another way that many retirement plans are likely playing it too safe, and why low-O-Mega retirees, you know, those willing to spend money while they can, may be on to something. It's also important to distinguish between essential and discretionary expenses so that you know the bare minimum income you need each year in retirement and how much you can cut back during bare markets. Being willing to pay back withdrawals after your portfolio

has lost value adds another half percent to one percent to the initial safe withdrawal rate in the first year of retirement. Under the category of discretionary expenses, have what you call your adventure fund. That's the amount that pays for the trips, excursions, the fun times. It can be adjusted year by year depending on your portfolio's performance, unexpected non-fund expenses and other factors, and this makes these expenses more intentional and puts them in the context of your overall plan. Here's another suggestion. Create a reserve fund where with, I don't know, 10% or so of your portfolio when you retire. It's an emergency fund to be left alone unless your other savings run too low.

It could also be used later in life to pay for long-term care. With such a fund, you'll feel more comfortable enjoying the other 90% of your savings. And finally, as stated at the beginning of this segment, using a tool is the best way to quantify the consequences and trade-offs of your choices. You'll find plenty of free tools on the internet, my favorite being the Calc XML Retirement Planning Module, but I also think it's worth the money to pay for access to a more sophisticated tool, some of the most popular being Maxify, Projection Lab, and Bolden,

and I'll once again disclose that Motley Fool Ventures, a sister company of the Motley Fool, has an investment in Bolden. With such a tool, you'll be able to incorporate your own longevity risk aversion and spending assumptions and see how they affect when and how you can retire. When you're a mid-sized business, you need every competitive advantage you can get, Like an AI solution that works for you, not against you. SAP Grow is built with AI embedded at its core, working across every system. And it's ready to go from day one so you can hit the ground running.

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2026 Financial Planning Challenge. As you may recall, we began the year recommending that you find a way to track your spending and net worth, perhaps using a tool such as Monarch Money, Quicken, Empower, Tiller, Wynab, or just spreadsheets. Knowing that information will be crucial in determining how much your expenses will be in retirement, which is a key variable when using a retirement calculator. Also, some of these tools actually have retirement calculators built. into them. So come up with a way to monitor your finances if you haven't done so already.

If you're already on board, dig around the services you use to see if they offer any retirement planning tools. And while you're in there, see if there's one expense you can reduce or eliminate and immediately have that money automatically sent to your IRA or 401k. And that, my fullest friends, is the show. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with us. And thanks to Bart Shannon, the engineer for this episode. My goodness, what a talented guy he is. As always, people on the program may have interest in the investments they talk about, and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against. So don't buy or sell investments based solely on what you hear.

All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards and is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. To say our full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes. I'm Robert ProCamp. Fool on, everybody.