Will it last?

Retirement planning is usually framed around income, but the arithmetic runs on spending. The common starting point — the 4% rule — says a portfolio can support annual withdrawals of about 4% of its starting value, adjusted for inflation, with a high chance of lasting thirty years. Inverted, that means you need roughly twenty-five times your annual spending saved. Someone who needs $60,000 a year is aiming at about $1.5m, whatever they happen to earn now.

This projection tests your current trajectory against that target and shows the gap. Three levers close it: save more each month, work a little longer, or spend less in retirement. The last is the most powerful and the least discussed — every $1,000 of annual spending you remove from the plan cuts about $25,000 off the target.

What the model deliberately excludes matters. Social Security will cover a meaningful share of most Americans’ retirement income, which reduces the portfolio you need; taxes on withdrawals from traditional accounts work the other way. And a single average return conceals sequence-of-returns risk: a bad first few years of retirement does far more damage than the same years later, which is why drawdown plans usually hold several years of spending in safer assets.

Read the shortfall as a signal rather than a verdict. Thirty years is long enough that small, early adjustments — one more point of salary saved, one year later retiring — reshape the outcome more than any market timing decision you will make.