David Blanchett

You know, if you take out 6% in year one and then you go back and kind of readjust that over time, it's possible you might have to cut back.

Okay, but I think most Americans are going to be okay with that because, like, when you get older, we can make choices.

We can say, I'm not going to go to Florida.

I'm going to go to Dollywood.

I mean, like, whatever.

You can pick based upon where you live what you're going to do.

But I think the problem with a lot of models is that they don't acknowledge that adaptability.

And the more adaptive you are...

The more you can take out and enjoy early retirement.

So I do think that 4% is probably way too conservative.

I think 5% is probably close to the floor.

But for most Americans, it could be higher, again, based upon how much guaranteed left-hand income do you have, how flexible you are, things like that.

I think every American-ish should have all of their essential expenses covered with lifetime income, right?

And the best place to get that is social security.

Again, let's ignore like the trust fund madness going on today.

But like, there's two key reasons here, okay?

You know, one is just the economic benefits of risk pooling.

Any kind of serious retirement academic who has thought about retirement, you know, has probably acknowledged to some extent that like the movement to 401ks and 403bs is really structurally inefficient.

We all have to worry about like how long we're going to live in the markets.

And that's just not a good way to design strategies, given all the uncertainties.