Please stay tuned for important disclosure information at the conclusion of this episode.

Welcome to Investing Insights. I'm your host, Margaret Giles, filling in for Ivana Hampton.

Most retirees want to spend as much as they can without having to worry about running out of money.

Morningstar's state of retirement income research analyzes retirement spending strategies to

determine the highest safe starting withdrawal rate for new retirees in 2026. Morningstar's

Director of Personal Finance and Retirement Planning, Christine Benz, breaks down the research and

shares some ideas about how you can boost

your retirement spending. Christine is also co-host of the excellent podcast, The Longview.

Well, Christine, thanks for being here.

Margaret, it's great to see you.

So each year, you and your colleagues produce this really comprehensive research around

retirement income. And as part of that research, you try to identify what a safe

starting withdrawal rate will be for the coming year, 2026. So what is that safe withdrawal percentage?

And how did you come to that conclusion? Right. It's meant to be a starting safe withdrawal for someone

just embarking on retirement. What percentage could they take if they're expecting a 90%

probability of success or they want a 90% probability of success and they're expecting a 30-year

time horizon. So if they're retiring at 65, they're thinking that they'll live until age 95 or so.

So when we ran the data for 2025, which incorporates our team's forward-looking outlook

for asset class returns and inflation, was actually kind of right in line with what it was

last year, 3.9%. It was 3.7% last year. That's a little bit of a head scratcher, but it, in part, is driven by a

methodology change in terms of how we're calculating those forward-looking asset class return

forecasts. So I would kind of say it's very comparable to what we came up with last year.

...