As I move deeper into my 50s, the idea of retirement starts to feel less theoretical and more real. Now, I can’t picture myself going “cold turkey”, at a desk full time one day and on a golf course full time the next day. For one thing, I have never golfed. I could take it up, but I’m not sure it is the first thing I would take up if I had more leisure time. I picture myself more fading out of the full time work force, working part time or taking on work-like projects and hobbies whether paid or unpaid, and gradually exploring different ways I could be spending my dwindling mortal time until I figure out how I actually want to spend it. (You would think I might know that, but I don’t, and people who do are lucky. Then again, maybe it is more of a journey than a destination for most people, and the best I can do is mindfully be on that journey rather than die at a desk.)

Anyway, enough philosophy. One study that gets mentioned a lot is the Trinity Study, which is where the idea of a “safe withdawal rate” of about 4% of your savings each year comes from. It’s a starting point, but a few issues as I understand them are that (1) the study assumed you drop dead 30 years after retiring, which most people don’t actually want to do, (2) it didn’t consider inflation, and (3) it didn’t consider that you might want to leave money to a spouse or heirs. So it’s better to project your savings and spending out to the end of your life (which you might want to take an optimistic view of, because that is the conservative choice in this particular context, because technology is improving, and because it is the only life you have), set objectives (like no more than 10% chance of running out of money and leaving $XYZ to a spouse), project it out probabilistically (using DIY methods if you really know what you are doing, a professional if you don’t, or my favorite, DIY without really knowing what I am doing and an independent opinion from an expert), and make decisions from there. The good thing is that if you make decisions and/or the external world changes, and you don’t like how that changes the projection, you can adjust your decisions any time. Anyway, here is one blogger who goes into extreme detail on all this. I am sure he is one of many professionals and amateurs out there and I can’t vouch for him, but he appears to have credentials, cites evidence, and the articles are interesting.