Your ability to spend money has an expiration date in retirement

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]The 4% rule is a 30-year-old academic theory, and if you follow it, you're probably going to spend less money when you're young and healthier and die with more money than you need. Here's my contrarian take. You should spend more earlier in retirement. I know that sounds a little like sacrilege, but the research backs all of this up. Spending in retirement isn't flat. It actually follows a curve. You know that retirees spend the most in their go-go years, roughly 60 to 75. They pull back in their slow-go years, and they spend the least in their final years. Studies consistently show real retirement spending drops at least 1 or 2% per year after those early years. But wait, there's more. Your ability to convert money into meaningful experiences has an expiration date as well. $10,000 spent on a trip at 65 delivers far more value than the same trip at 82, if you can take it at all. The 4% rule doesn't account for any of this. It assumes you'll spend the same inflation-adjusted amount at 90 as you did at 65. You won't. So, if the math says you can spend more now, maybe you should. Thanks for watching.