Motley Fool Money - The Truth About Spending in Retirement and Why It’s Good News

Episode Date: July 18, 2026

Knowing how much income you’ll need in retirement is a key variable in determining how much you need to have saved before you stop working. But what many people believe about how spending progresses over the course of retirement is wrong. Host Robert Brokamp speaks with David Blanchett, the head of retirement research at Prudential Financial and a portfolio manager for PGIM, about what the data shows about real-life retirement spending. Topics covered include: -Why retirees may not need as much inflation protection as is commonly recommended-Healthcare expenses: the retirement wildcard-Why the reality of retirement spending could result in a higher withdrawal rate-Other factors that suggest retirees could withdraw more than the “4% rule” Host: Robert Brokamp, CFP®, EAGuest: David Blanchett: Ph.D., CFP®, CFAEngineer: Bart Shannon, Kristi Waterworth 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

Higher spending may change in retirement and why it might mean you could withdraw more in retirement. That's the topic of discussion on this Saturday Personal Finance Edition of the Motley Fool of Hidden Gems Investing podcast. Knowing how much income you'll need in retirement is a key variable in determining how much you need to have saved before you stop working. But retirement isn't just one financial goal, it's a series of annual goals. How much you need in the first year retirement, then how much you need in the second year, and then the third year, and so on. You're to talk about how spending changes over the course of retirement is David Blancher. the head of retirement research at Prudential Financial and a portfolio manager at PGM. David, welcome back to the show.

Good to be here. So when it comes to retirement planning, the default assumption is that retirees need their income to go up each and every year with inflation. And we see this assumption in most retirement calculators, I think most financial planners assume that, and even most of the research into retirement, including, you know, the old 4% rule. For over a decade, you've been doing research that has questioned this assumption, including in a recent study.

So tell us about your latest thinking about how spending changes over the course of a retirement. Sure, I mean, to be fair, you know, I still do research where I assume penny rises by inflation. So it's a very common assumption, like I still use this out there a lot,

but I think that, like, one of the most important questions we've got to ask ourselves looking about retirement is like, how do we think spending is going to change over time, right? You know, and the most common assumption that we use in research and financial planning tools and all this is that spending, is going to increase every year by inflation. So effectively, what you're going to spend in the future is the same as what you spend today in today's dollars, right? So historically,

inflation is averaged about 3% a year. So we would assume that every year you'll spend effectively 3% more. And a piece of research I wrote that was published about a decade ago and then an updated piece that was just released the financial planner review. I kind of revisit this topic of, well, how does spending change over time? And there's pretty convincing evidence that most people as they move through retirement won't increase their spending by the full amount of inflation. So, for example, if inflation is 3% a year, you might only spend 1% a year per more, and that kind of compounds over time. So is this due to choice, or is it people not having enough money and they realize, oh, no, I shouldn't have retired. I need to cut back my spending.

That's one of the most common questions I get asked about this research, both currently and then historically. And I think it's a mix of both, right? But one thing that we can do is look at retirees who have lots and lots of money and see how they're spending changes. And so even if you just focus on retirees who could spend more, so they're very well funded, they actually tend to cut back as well. So I think that a lot of this actually just is choices. It's kind of fun model. People talk about like the go-go, the slow-go and the no-go years. I think that for a lot of people, as they age, they slow down. Part of that is because they have health issues. But part of just because we just don't want to do as much the order we get sometimes.

Is there anything else going on here? So, for example, according to the Federal Reserve, about two-thirds of the people in the age ranges of 65 to 74 have debt. So is it, you know, maybe they're paying off a mortgage or is there anything like, you know, people enter retirement married, but sadly one spouse passes away and expenses drop. Is there anything specific about that?

Or is it just a general decline in spending? It's just a general decline. I mean, I've looked at it through a lot of different lenses through a lot of different kind of cohorts and retirees. And I think that it's very messy. Now, to be clear, like year over year, some household spend a lot more, some spend a lot less. But there's actually kind of this really large body of research now

looking at variety of data sets that does really strongly suggest that as people move through retirement, they don't increase their spending every year by inflation. You mentioned you took a look at people who have very well-funded retirements, and you calculated that about 35% of people enter retirement not well-funded. And some people can look at that and say, they use the term retirement crisis. When you look at that as someone like you and me, you know, who educate people about how to save retirement, do you feel like, oh, no, there is a crisis? We need to do a better job of teaching

people how to determine whether they're financially ready to retire. Or do you feel more like, eh, people retire when they retire, they figure it out, they drop their spending. And as you cite in this research and other research you've done, retirees on the whole are pretty, pretty satisfied with their lives. Yeah, so I think first, like, I do think we need to do more to help more Americans save more for retirement. Okay. But if you look at kind of like any objective or subject measure of like retirement well-being of overall financial satisfaction, when people retire, they are a lot happy. Very anecdotal when I was at a wedding last week and talking to someone who is at a significant

cut in their overall spending level, but like they're, they couldn't be happier. They have a lot more freedom. So I think that, yes, like we need to help folks be better prepared for retirement, but if you look at the research and the surveys, most Americans find a way to make it work. I mean, if anything, like what this research would suggest is that, you know, a lot of the models talk about, like crisis, for example, assume that people need to increase their spending by inflation. That doesn't track with reality. So people are actually better off than a lot of these models could suggest. The Hulu original series Furious is coming to Disney Plus, starring Emmy Rosson.

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building up some karma as they get ready to meet their maker. That's right. Of course, is healthcare. And the thing about healthcare is it's so variable. It's such a wild card in terms of whether it's going to go up for you. So what does your research say about how likely it is that you're going to have a really big healthcare expense? And how do you account for that in a retirement plan? If you look at most retirees, most retirees don't experience significant unknown health care expenses, right? I mean, there's like the known stuff like Medicare, Part B premium, stuff like that that you're going to pay pretty much no matter what. I think where things get really tricky is later in retirement, you know, in your 80s and 90s, the implications of some kind of like long-term care event. And that can be cataclysmic, right?

That can be incredibly expensive. And that's really hard to plan for. And so in the paper, I kind of look at total out-of-pocket spending based upon age of death. And for most Americans, health care isn't that big of a deal. But there's going to be some minority, you know, 5%, 10%, 20%, where it is a really, really big deal. And it's really hard to plan for. So I don't want to kind of dismiss the implications of late life health expenses on retirement outcomes, but there is going to be some portion that it really does affect them.

So taking all of this, the real life spending of retirement. retirees, how should someone factor that into their retirement plan when it comes to determining how much they need before they retire and maybe how it affects their withdrawal rates once they retire? I mean, I think the first thing is for advisors and retirees, just be aware of this effect. I think there's reasons why you might want to run a financial plan where you assume putting increases by inflation. So you're kind of building this kind of implicit slush fund to pay for long-term care expenses. Okay, like that's there. But I think that it's about having honest conversations because a lot of people get to retirement and they're really not in the best financial

shape. You talked about a retirement crisis, for example. And so I think what this does is if you have this conversation with an advisor, you understand this effect, it might make you more comfortable spending earlier in retirement when you're going to be healthier and more active and we're able to enjoy that 30 or 40 years of savings. So I think that, you know, again, like everyone has a different retirement, different outcome. But when you incorporate this into a financial planning model, right, you might see, for example, in the research, you know, initial safe withdrawal rates go from five-ish percent to six, six and a half percent if we don't assume the spending every year rises by inflation.

You brought up safe withdrawal rates. Let's move on from this topic of whether retirees need their income to go up every year to the related topic of whether retirees can be flexible with their spending and how that affects the safe withdrawal rate. So this brings us to another recent paper of yours entitled Rethinking Safe Withdraw Rates, which you published in May. what's the main message you're trying to convey with that research? So with that research, it's that a lot of the models that we use to quantify retirement outcomes

really aren't very good. The most common outcomes metric we see in financial plans is the probability of success. And what that is, it's a metric where we do this thing called a Monte Carlo projection. We run like a thousand fake retirement. We vary market returns and we see what happened. And there's only one of two outcomes using that metric. There's either you accomplish your goal in its entirety. you get a one. If you fall a dollar short, you get a zero. And so then you average the percentage of

trials or runs or fake retirements where you fully accomplish your goal. And where that's problematic is, is like, I wouldn't define like falling a dollar short of your goal and the third of year retirement is a failure. Right. I think that you didn't accomplish all of your goal, but like using it's what's called a binary outcomes metric. There's just ones and zeros. It doesn't provide the right context on how you're actually doing. Right. So if you think about like how we quantify buy outcomes, if we think about the fact that certain expenses we have in retirement are really important for us to pay like health care, like our mortgage, like buying food, but others maybe like where we go on vacation, what we do with our time. If I have to cut back those, it's not that

big of a deal. When we kind of wrap this all together, what it suggests is that people can probably spend closer to like five, five and a half percent out of the gate retirement versus four percent, which you often see in, I think, more simplistic retirement income forecasts. People who are psychopathic just don't intrinsically value other people's welfare that much. Every interaction is about like, what can I get? What can I get out of this person? What can I get out of this situation? So that's why there's so much manipulating and lying in exploitation is it's because people most of the time are just sort of tools to get whatever the ultimate goal is.

All of us know somebody with psychopathy. To hear the science behind who actually does the most harm, check out episode 1293. It might change how you see everyone. around you. One of the things I thought was interesting in this research that you did was helping people sort of gauge their withdrawal, right, based on how much of their essential expenses need to be covered by their portfolio. And I think more retirees should think in terms of, right, this is what I absolutely need to cover versus this is the stuff that's a little more discretion. As you said, you'd cut back. And the research indicates that if you have a large part of your portfolio

covering basically a flexible portfolio, you really can start at a higher withdrawal rate. On the other hand, if your portfolio is covering a lot of essential expenses, maybe you need to start at a lower rate. Yeah, I think that like a really good rule of thumb in retirement is to have all of your essential expenses cover with lifetime income, right? What that does is it kind of, I think there is the more traditional kind of like economic benefits of allocating a lifetime income, but there's also just that behavioral component, right?

If you know that no matter how long you survive, you've got the basic cover, like that better enables you to spend from your portfolio. And the key to your point is that you can take out a higher withdrawal rate, right? If you're willing to cut back if you have to, then you can spend more initially. It's kind of a trade. And so the more flexibility you have around how much you spend in the future, the more you can take out today. Well, David, this has been another fascinating discussion. Thank you so much for joining us. True thing. And that, my foolish friends, is the show. Thank you so much for listening. and thanks to Bart Shannon, the engineer for this episode. 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 see our full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes. I'm Robert Brokamp. Fool on everybody.