A few months ago, Lisa M., a longtime listener in Chicago, sent me an email that I think captures

something many retirement savers wrestle with. She wrote, Taylor, my husband and I have done everything

right. We saved, we invested, we kept our expenses under control. But now that we're retired,

we're really struggling to actually spend the money. Every time we book a trip, write a big

check, or think about helping our kids out,

there's this nagging voice asking, can we really afford to do this? What if we overspend and run out?

Lisa and her husband are not alone. In fact, there is no shortage of research showing that many

retirees spend far less than they likely could. In one study, married retirees aged 65 and older with at least

$100,000 in financial assets withdrew just 2.1% of their savings per year on average.

Another study found that higher net worth retirees who entered retirement with at least $500,000 had spent

less than 12% of their savings nearly 20 years later, and more than a third had actually grown

their wealth. In other words, the dominant fear in retirement is running out of money, which is

valid, but for many people, the bigger risk may be under spending. And that's

exactly what inspired today's episode. A recent research report examined nine different

retirement withdrawal strategies, and the findings suggest that many retirees may be able to

start retirement with meaningfully higher withdrawal rates than the traditional 4% rule implies.

So today, I'm going to break it all down.

I'm going to walk you through the five strategies that stood out,

exactly how they work, the tradeoffs involved,

and what they teach us about building a smarter retirement income plan.

I'm also sharing the three levers you can pull to safely push your starting withdrawal rate to as high as

six and a half percent. Welcome to another episode of the Stay Wealthy Retirement Show. I'm your host,

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