Will Low Returns Ruin Your Retirement? (How to Interpret Goldman Sachs 3% Forecast) | Root Talks

Ready For Retirement

James Conole, CFP®

Investment Planning, Bonds, Education, Stocks, Cash, Business, Dividend Investing, Retirement Planning, Retirement, Investing, Tax Planning

5 • 706 Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2025

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What if the next 10 years bring just 3% returns from the S&P 500? In this episode, we turn that forecast into a real-world retirement plan—not panic. You’ll learn how to stress test your portfolio, build flexibility into your spending, and design a withdrawal strategy that can survive tough markets. Listen as James and Ari break down: Sequence-of-returns risk — why bad early years hurt more than bad averages. The modern 4% rule — how to use it as a guardrail, not a guarantee. Diversificat...

Transcript

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0:00.0	James, just before we started recording, we were talking about family. And I am recently married,
0:05.0	and there's talk of children who knows exactly when. You have two children at the moment.
0:10.2	I imagine a lot of people listening right now. There might be some grandchildren on the way,
0:14.7	but that's maybe not the only thing you're thinking about. If you are thinking about an early
0:19.0	retirement or retirement at any time,
0:21.4	there's probably a small part of you going, well, what if my returns don't do what I expect
0:26.0	them to do? How will that change my retirement? And the last thing you want is for your returns
0:31.0	to not maybe do what you hope. And now your grandchildren, maybe you can't support them to the
0:35.8	degree you want. Or worst case, you have to go back to work, which we certainly want to avoid.
0:40.1	So today's topic has actually been brought by a comment on YouTube.
0:44.3	So for those of you who are leaving comments on YouTube, thank you, because that is how
0:48.1	we actually decide what we talk about today.
0:50.5	And I'm going to go ahead and read that comment now.
0:53.1	So this comes from UT Savradi, who says, what's your perspective on the recent strategy
0:59.0	paper from Goldman Sach stating, we estimate the S&P 500 will deliver an annualized nominal
1:06.0	total return of 3% during the next 10 years.
1:10.0	Goes on to add some more contacts there, but he says would be great to see a video with
1:15.3	perspective.
1:16.5	Even with the diversified portfolio, the idea of retiring early at 48 is scary.
1:22.6	Thoughts on that, James?
1:24.1	What a segue.
1:25.3	You open that up with Grants and I was like, where on earth is already going with this?
	...

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