Why It’s So Hard to Spend Money in Retirement
comentada em 01/10/2025 15:52

The Employee Benefit Research Institute performed a study in 2018 looking at the spending habits of retirees during their first two decades of retirement (or less if they didn’t make it that long).

Here are the results:
People with less than $200k in assets (not including their house) spent down around 25% of their savings in the first 18 years of retirement.
Individuals with between $200k and $500k heading into retirement spent a little more than 27% of their money.
Retirees with $500k or more at retirement spent less than 12% of their nest egg within the first 20 years of retirement (on a median basis).
People with a pension spent the least from their portfolio with assets down an average of just 4% (versus a 34% decline for non-pensioners).
The median household in this study simply spent the income from their portfolio and avoided taking from the principal portfolio balance.

These were median numbers so there were obviously some people who did spend most or all of their savings but one-third of retirees were found to have even more money than they started with.

Why It's So Hard to Spend Money in Retirement - A Wealth of Common Sense