6. You don’t have a long-term financial plan
“You should understand how long your savings will last and what spending level you can maintain over the coming decades,” Walters says. “No one knows exactly how long they will live, but expanding lifespans and the increasingly high costs of long-term care may mean your portfolio will have to last longer and stretch further than you once thought.”
There’s actually a debate about how much you should withdraw from your portfolio each year. The popular 4 percent rule, which says you can tap 4 percent of your retirement assets each year, is projected to allow your money to last at least 30 years in most scenarios.
And of course, you actually need to plan for your retirement in order to last 30 years or more, Smith says. “Based on actuarial statistics, for a couple retiring at age 65, there is a 50 percent probability that at least one will be living at age 92 and a 25 percent probability that at least one will be alive at age 97.”
So, based on your health, your portfolio composition, and your risk tolerance, you’ll have to create a plan for the percentage of your assets you’ll spend each year—it’s really hard to do this on your own. Call a professional financial planner, if you can’t manage to make a plan by yourself.
