Stop Chickening Out
If you believe in safe withdrawal rates, it's time to act like it.
There’s a particular bone I keep picking, even though I swear I’m done with it. I tell myself I don’t want to talk about safe withdrawal rates anymore… and yet here we are, because the conversation is so packed with confusion, contradictions, and borderline superstition that I feel obligated to speak up.
Everywhere I look, people are still obsessing over the “correct” safe withdrawal rate.
Is it 4.0%?
4.1%?
Does Bill Bengen’s newer research push it to 4.7%?
Should we round that to a nice clean 5%?
The debates go on ad nauseam, and honestly, none of that is the crazy part.
Here’s the crazy part:
The very same people who argue endlessly about the “right” safe withdrawal rate also brag about their backup systems—their yield shield, their “living off dividends,” their three years of cash “just in case,” their guardrails, their bucketing strategy… the whole personal-finance Swiss Army knife.
And that’s when I want to scream.
Because if you genuinely believe in the safe withdrawal rate—if you believe in Bengen, the Trinity Study, the decades of market data behind it—then you shouldn’t need any of that other stuff.
That’s the whole point.
Safe Withdrawal Rates Are Built for the Worst-Case Scenarios
The safe withdrawal rate (SWR) was designed specifically to survive horrible market sequences. It’s intentionally conservative because it’s built around the belief that you should be able to retire during the worst possible time in history and still make it through a 30-year retirement.
And by conservative, I don’t mean “comfortable.” I mean ultrasafe.
If people accepted a 75% success rate, retirement calculators would spit out withdrawal rates of 6–7%.
At a 50% success rate? You could withdraw 10% a year.
But that’s not the world SWR lives in.
SWR lives in the world of nearly 99% survival.
It already assumes terrible bear markets.
It already assumes inflation spikes.
It already assumes bad sequence-of-return luck.
So what happens when someone uses a safe withdrawal rate and dividends and buckets and guardrails and multiple years of cash?
They’re no longer conservative.
They’re paranoid.
They don’t want 98% survival. They want 100% certainty, which doesn’t exist—not in markets, not in life, not anywhere.
The Hidden Cost of Ultra-Safety
You know what happens when you stack conservative protection on top of conservative protection?
You die with way more money than you need.
People think they’re protecting themselves, but really they’re just over-insuring their retirement to the point of self-sabotage.
Retirement is a leap of faith.
Drawing down assets is a leap of faith.
But instead of leaping, many retirees are still standing on the edge, building more handrails, adding more guardrails, reinforcing the bridge, getting a second opinion on the reinforcement, and then asking their dividends for emotional support.
At some point, it becomes absurd.
If you want zero risk, there is only one retirement strategy for you:
Don’t retire.
If you want perfect safety:
Don’t spend.
But if you want to actually live your life—retired, relaxed, spending money, enjoying your time—then you need to accept that some risk is built into the deal.
Otherwise, you’re not retiring.
You’re just hoarding.
Pick One Strategy and Stick With It
I honestly don’t care which strategy someone chooses.
Guardrails? Great.
Buckets? Fine.
Five years of cash? Sure, if you understand the trade-offs.
A 30-year TIPS ladder? Knock yourself out.
But mixing half a dozen systems together because you’re terrified of uncertainty?
That’s not a plan.
That’s fear masquerading as wisdom.
If you choose a safe withdrawal rate strategy, then use it as designed:
Calculate your withdrawal amount once at retirement.
Adjust it for inflation each year.
Stop recalculating your SWR annually based on market performance.
Stop second-guessing it.
Stop layering more conservative tools on top of an already conservative foundation.
You either trust the method or you don’t.
And if you don’t, then stop pretending you do.
Retirement Requires Courage
People don’t talk about this enough, but the hardest part of retirement isn’t the math—it’s the courage.
It takes courage to stop earning a paycheck.
Courage to draw down savings.
Courage to trust a plan that says “yes, you can spend this money even when the market crashes.”
Courage to say, “I don’t have infinite time left, and I want to enjoy the time I do have.”
This is why so many retirees build layers of unnecessary protection.
They think they’re being prudent.
But they’re often just scared.
And I understand that.
It’s human.
But fear will not give you a meaningful retirement.
It will only give you a postponed one.
Stop Chickening Out
If you’re going to retire, retire.
If you’re going to trust the SWR research, then trust it.
If you’re going to follow the guardrail system, follow it.
But don’t combine everything because you want a guarantee.
There aren’t guarantees.
There never were.
Retirement has always been—and will always be—a leap of faith.
So pick your strategy.
Commit to it.
And stop chickening out.
Did you catch this week’s episode of Earn & Invest (Click to listen)?
The Purpose Code is Now Available!
Someone needs to provide the contrarian perspective here.
While Jordan makes many great points (I agree with much of what he said and have recommended The Purpose Code to several people!), a couple counterpoints need to be said:
1) Risk tolerance differs from person to person, and needs to be factored into how safe an option is appropriate for that individual. Based on Jordan's writing, it is obvious that he has a somewhat high risk tolerance for financial security. It is presumptuous to declare that higher risk tolerance is appropriate for everyone. I don't mean 100% guarantees either - it is a sliding scale.
2) While I agree that several layers of backup plans may be paranoid, one or two backup layers is reasonable for someone with a low financial risk tolerance. Historical Safe Withdrawal Rates (SWR) are far from the worst possible case. They just happened to be the worst case seen in the US over a hundred years or so. Most countries have far worse SWRs than the US (the US is not immune to some of those reasons) and Monte Carlo simulations will show higher failure rates than historical backtesting with the same historical dataset (real risk is likely between backtest and Monte Carlo, as "past performance is not a guarantee of future results" but Monte Carlo can generate crazy sequences that are exceedingly unlikely to happen).
Bottom line: Jordan is far more knowledgeable on the psychological considerations (as a Hospice Doctor) but far less on the econometrics (not his expertise, though he does say he is mathematically inclined) needed to determine the econometric risks to an SWR strategy. This post is good food for thought, but shouldn't necessarily be blindly followed by someone with a low financial risk tolerance.
What people really want is control and certainty. They’ll never get it.