The Questions That Actually Build a Better Retirement Plan
The quality of a retirement plan depends heavily on the quality of the questions that built it. A lot of the standard questions — the ones the financial industry has been asking for decades — are the wrong ones.
Here's what I mean.
"What is my safe withdrawal rate?" is a reasonable question to ask. But a better question is: what is my safe savings rate across my working years?1 Research shows that sustainable withdrawal rates are lowest after prolonged bull markets — exactly the moment when most people feel most confident about retiring. Focusing on consistent savings throughout your career is more reliable than chasing a target number at the finish line.
"What is the probability that my plan will fail?" is a question that produces anxiety, not clarity.2 The better question is: what would it take to trigger an income adjustment, and how significant would it be? Retirees almost never spend blindly until they're broke. They adjust. A plan built around voluntary, manageable adjustments is more honest — and less frightening — than one framed around catastrophic failure.
"Which strategy is mathematically optimal?" is the wrong starting point. The right question is: what is my RISA® profile?3 There is no universally optimal strategy. There is the strategy most aligned with your preferences — your comfort with market exposure, your need for contractual guarantees, your appetite for flexibility versus commitment. That's where the conversation should begin.
"How do we avoid a market crash?" is unanswerable. The better question is: what buffer assets do we have in place to manage sequence of returns risk?4 Whole life insurance cash value and reverse mortgage lines of credit are tools that exist precisely for this — sources of income that don't require selling a depreciated portfolio.
"What will inflation do next year?" is noise. The more useful question is: how do long-term economic trends inform our current spending expectations?5 Decades of CAPE ratio and inflation data provide context that short-term headlines cannot.
Better questions lead to better plans. If you'd like to work through yours, I'm here.
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