J.L. Collins

And he's even been on record of suggesting that that might be a little bit too conservative.

So one of the great pushbacks in recent years has been it's 4% too much.

And there's been all this angst about, you know, should it be 3.9, 2, 4, 6, 9, 7, 8%, you know?

And it's just, it's like theologians used to discuss how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.

It's just kind of silly stuff.

I would never say start withdrawing 4%, set it up to adjust for inflation, which is what the Trinity say suggests you can do, and then forget about it.

And I wouldn't do that for two reasons.

The less important reason is the fact that about 4% of the time it fails.

You will run out of money after 30 years.

It's not perfect.

And you certainly don't want to run out of money.

So you want to pay attention in case you get a bad sequence of returns risk, which is just the markets against you in the early years.

That's one of the key things that might lead to it failing.

You're going to want to make some adjustments.

But the other reason

larger the more important more compelling reason in my mind is if you look at the trinity study you see the vast majority of time not only does your money last if you're pulling that four percent adjusted for inflation every year it grows and in many cases it grows to pretty spectacular levels so your million dollars at the end of 30 years is 2 million or 4 million or 6 or 8 or 15 million

And the advantage of paying attention is presumably you want to enjoy that money as you go along, right?

So I think 4% is a great guideline for knowing where you are financially, how thoroughly FI you are.

You know, if you only have to draw 2% of your portfolio to meet your needs, then, wow, you're golden financially.

And by the same token, I've had people who've come to me, Robert, and said, JL, I've got a million dollars and I know I can spend 40,000, but I need 50,000 and I am in a soul crushing job.