Preserve Your Wealth in Retirement

We believe investing during retirement is critical to meeting your longer-term financial goals. It was important to invest in the years leading up to retirement, but your retirement date shouldn’t be a stopping point. Once you retire, you may need to continue investing to help ensure you are able to live comfortably and meet your other long-term goals.

Assess Your Current Financial Picture

To help ensure your money lasts for the long haul, it can help to gain a deeper understanding of your current financial picture by calculating your net worth and determining your expected time horizon. You can use this information to help determine the optimal asset allocation—mix of stocks, bonds and cash—to reach your long-term financial goals.

Think Long-Term

Retirees often fear running out of money in retirement. Here are some important considerations to help you avoid this worst-case scenario:

Investment Time Horizon

Given continued medical advancements, we believe many people could have a longer potential retirement than they may currently expect.

Unfortunately, many investors underestimate how long they will live and run the risk of depleting their retirement funds too early. Your age at retirement is less important than how long you need your money to last. It is more important to determine your investment time horizon.

This should generally include not only your life expectancy, but also the expected life spans of your spouse and, potentially, any dependents. You should also factor in goals that go beyond you and your spouse’s lifetimes, such as any legacy or donation plans.

Market Volatility

Volatile markets can be uncomfortable, especially for a new retiree. Daily market volatility is a normal part of investing, but overreacting to short-term market wiggles could put your long-term investing goals at risk. Instead of attempting to sidestep regular volatility by jumping in and out of the market—which requires impeccable timing—we believe staying disciplined to a sound investment strategy over the long term is the prudent approach for most investors.

Taking a longer view can help you understand stock market volatility and gain perspective. In the short term, security prices can swing unpredictably and unnerve investors. However, we believe the market tends to reward patient investors who tolerate market volatility over long periods.

Remember, market volatility is always present and doesn’t predict returns or tell you what direction stocks will go next. We view market volatility as the price investors pay in order to participate in stocks’ historically superior long-term growth potential.

Inflation

Don’t underestimate inflation’s impact. Inflation decreases purchasing power over time and can diminish savings and investment returns. Since 1925, inflation has averaged roughly 3% a year.¹ If that average inflation rate continues, a person who currently requires $50,000 to cover annual living expenses would need an annual income of approximately $90,000 in 20 years and about $120,000 in 30 years—just to maintain the same purchasing power.

You should determine your growth objectives and how much money you plan to have in your portfolio at the end of your investment time horizon. For example, if your portfolio grows 5% annually and inflation is 3%, you are essentially only getting a pre-tax 2% annual return (5% - 2% = 3%). If you require more growth from your investments in retirement, you may need to allocate a larger portion of your retirement portfolio towards assets with relatively high long-term expected returns, such as equities.

Withdrawal Amounts

The rate and amount you withdraw during retirement, can impact your overall retirement strategy. Remember that returns vary over time, so you may not be able to withdraw the same percentage each year without drawing down your principal. 

¹ Source: Global Financial Data as of 3/21/2023. United States Consumer Price Index from 12/31/1925 – 12/31/2022, average annualized inflation was 2.94%.