Retirement Spending Plans: EDU #2616

The Retirement and IRA Show

Jim Saulnier, CFP® & Chris Stein, CFP®

Business, Investing

4.3 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 22 April 2026

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Chris’s Summary
Jim and I discuss retirement spending plans through the lens of a New York Times article titled “You Saved and Saved for Retirement. Now You Need a Plan to Cash Out,” reviewing its key arguments about decumulation and where we agree, question, or hold no opinion. We cover why the Minimum Dignity Floor rarely fails in projections, why the 4% rule may be an outdated framework for structuring retirement withdrawals, how individual inflation rates for specific expense categories can produce more accurate projections than a single blended rate, and why underspending on fun during the go-go years may pose a greater risk than outliving assets for many listeners.

Jim’s “Pithy” Summary
Chris and I dig into a New York Times article — “You Saved and Saved for Retirement. Now You Need a Plan to Cash Out” — and use it as a jumping-off point to talk about what spending in retirement actually looks like in practice versus what the industry has been selling people for decades.

Here’s what struck me most: the 4% rule was created in 1994 with rudimentary spreadsheets, and the recommended safe withdrawal rate swings from 2.8 to 4.7 depending on who you ask and what year it is. That’s supposed to be your anchor? Are you watching TVs that look like the ones from 30 years ago? Talking on the same phones? My beeper evolved into a smartphone with more computing power than the Apollo mission, and yet most of the industry is still essentially creating retirement spending plans with a beeper. What the Fun Number framework helps clarify is that you don’t need a universal withdrawal percentage. You need to isolate your actual expenses, inflate each one at the rate that reflects how that spending actually grows — not some blended average — and then see clearly what’s left for fun.

The article also makes the point that fearful retirees may scrimp during their go-go years when they could afford to spend — and that’s something my dad reinforced in his own way. He’d watch people in his retirement community who had money but couldn’t bring themselves to spend it on fun, and he called them Debbie Downers. For many people listening to this podcast, that’s the real risk — not outliving your assets but failing to spend on fun while you still can.

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Transcript

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0:12.1	All economic and performance information is historical in nature and is not indicative of any future results.
0:16.5	Any indices mentioned on the show are unmanaged and cannot be invested indirectly.
0:20.0	Diversification and asset allocation strategies do not assure profit or protect against loss.
0:23.9	Never make any investment or financial decisions based on information offered on this show without first consulting your financial legal or tax advisor.
0:29.7	Financial planning services offered through Jim Solnior and Associates LLC, a registered investment advisor.
0:47.2	This is the retirement and IRA show coming to you from beautiful Northern Colorado.
0:52.8	Join us as certified financial planner Jim Sonier, as well as Colorado State University Finance instructorructor and certified financial planner, Chris Stein, teach you about IRAs,
0:58.3	borrow-in-case, annuities, social security, pension plans, and estate planning in a fun and enjoyable show.
1:05.4	Whether you are listening live in Colorado or streaming from their website or iTunes podcast,
1:12.5	Jim and Chris want you to know that they're available to help you plan for your retirement. Just visit their website at JimHelps.com.
1:18.6	That's Jim H-E-L-P-S dot com and click the Meet the Team button on the homepage.
1:24.8	Now here's Jim and Chris with today's show.
1:31.5	Thank you. button on the homepage. Now here's Jim and Chris with today's show. Well, hello everybody and welcome to the Retirement and IRA show EDU edition for this week.
1:37.7	On today's episode, we're going to review an article, I guess, is the type of show. There's an article that technically
1:49.3	came out last year in 2025. Jim's been holding on to it for an opportunity to discuss it.
1:56.8	Today is that opportunity. The article comes from the New York Times, and it was originally released. It was back in July, so it was a little ways ago, but it's entitled, You Saved and Saved for Retirement. Now you need a plan to cash out. And that title, as you might expect, means it's going to talk about what we generally
2:22.5	talk about here is how do you actually use the money that you've actually, that you've spent
2:29.1	all that time amassing, the various income sources you might have, how do you put it all
2:34.0	together to come up with a
2:35.7	spending plan for retirement that can be quite daunting at times? Saving for retirement?
	...

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