5 Steps for Defining Your Retirement Drawdown Strategy

If you’re reading this, you’re likely someone who: saves money, has built up some assets, and is starting to think about how to create a retirement drawdown strategy – a plan for how to turn your assets into income that will last for life.

Retirement Drawdown StrategyHaving a sound retirement drawdown strategy and keeping to it is crucial if you want to be able to live comfortably in retirement and not spend time worrying about outliving your savings. Most of the financial services industry has been focused on helping people accumulate or save and invest (and their business models are built on this).

How to decumulate, or drawdown, and generate retirement income in a tax efficient way is a complex topic that is starting to get more attention. Here are five steps to decumulation – a retirement drawdown strategy:

1. Determine What You Need to Withdraw

In order to set your withdrawal plan you first need to know how much you’ll need and want. From a risk management perspective – try to get the “need to live on” amount as low as possible.

Optimize Your Lifestyle & Expenses

Take a hard look at your expenses and find ways to get as efficient as possible – this is a huge driver of how much you need in retirement. Build a budget, go through all of your expenses – especially recurring expenses. Get rid of bad debt (credit card, car payments, student loans – ideally pay off your mortgage). Consider where you want to live, since that is a huge driver of taxes and expenses in retirement – here are some lower cost/higher quality of life places in the US, and here are some places to retire abroad.

Budget for Out of Pocket Healthcare

Consider health care and insurance costs. Out of pocket healthcare costs for a 65 year old couple are more than double what the average household has saved. Read up on how Medicare and Medicare Supplemental Insurance work

Go Really Frugal

There is an interesting movement called Financial Independence Retirement Early (FIRE) – the FIRE Community has some great lessons for traditional retirement people around being frugal/efficient and mindful.

Get Detailed About Future Budgeting

What you are spending today. Is not what you’ll be spending next year or in 10 years.  The reality is that for most people their expenses drop by ~ 10% per decade in retirement.

Here are 9 tips for estimating future expenses.

2. Consider Guaranteed Income and How You’ll Generate It

The more income you have in retirement, the less you need to draw down from your assets, so think carefully about this one.

Factor in Part-Time Work

When many people think of retirement they think “no more work” – the reality is that part-time work is part of many people’s retirement – for income, for engagement, to give back, or for social reasons.

It can be a way of breaking down the problem of retirement income into smaller pieces – for example, if you were making $100K a year and think you only need $75K in retirement, then Social Security ($25K) + part-time work ($25K) + drawdown savings ($25K) sounds like a more achievable plan.

Working part time also gives you a hedge if there’s a big market correction – you’ll give yourself more time for your investments to rebound and you might be able to dollar cost average into the lower market prices. Here are some ideas to find a new chapter for yourself by working in retirement.

Maximize Social Security

Recently more people have started getting smarter and are delaying the start of Social Security benefits.

However, about 33% claim Social Security at 62 – which is generally a bad idea. Basically – if you think you’ll have a long life – then you should delay as long as possible since you’re effectively “buying” an inflation adjusted lifetime annuity backed by the US government at a lower rate than you could buy it on the private market. You can explore your breakeven age Social Security here. If you’re married, have the highest earner delay until 70 – here’s why.

Explore Income-Generating Investments

Originally, most equity investments were made with an eye towards how much income they would pay to the stock holder; today dividend paying stocks (or ETFs or mutual funds) play that role along with fixed income (bond/debt) investments, and increasingly more sophisticated investors are looking into alternative investments (“alts” include private equity, hedge funds, managed futures, real estate, commodities, and derivatives contracts). In an ideal world, your investments generate enough income to cover your expenses, but very few people achieve that.

Consider Whether You Want to Buy an Annuity

Annuities are contracts with insurance companies that allow you to “buy” guaranteed income – they can be purchased with qualified or non-qualified money. Qualified Lifetime Annuity Contracts (QLACs) are growing in popularity. These allow you to use qualified savings to buy an annuity for guaranteed income, and as an added bonus, they allow you to delay RMDs until 85.

There are a lot of types of annuities and you need to be careful to make sure you buy one efficiently if you go down this path. See how much lifetime income you can buy with a lifetime annuity calculator.

3. Consider Other Ways to Hedge Risk in Your Drawdown Strategy

Many people have some other big levers that they could potentially pull which could significantly impact their retirement drawdown strategy, so it’s worth considering them before they execute their drawdown plan.

Manage Longevity Risk

The single biggest risk that everyone worries about is outliving their money, because no one knows how long they will live. There are a couple of ways to manage this risk:

  • Set your own planning timeline by buying Longevity insurance via a deferred annuity – this effectively lets you set a specific planning time horizon vs. having an open-ended timeline. The basic idea is that you buy an annuity today that doesn’t start until close to your expected mortality date – the cost is cheaper since the insurance company doesn’t think you’ll be around to collect. However, if you are going strong you’ve got income for life. You can get an annuity estimate here if you want.
  • Limit your withdrawals so that your portfolio will last a very long time – otherwise known as the “The 4% Rule.” Limiting withdrawals from your retirement account to be four percent annually in retirement age was thought of as a safe way to ensure that you will not outlive your retirement savings. The concept of limiting your withdrawals has merit (the idea being you mainly draw from expected returns and not principle), but realistically the “four percent rule” must be considered in conjunction with projected life expectancy, taxes, and actual portfolio returns.

Consider Home Equity

For most homeowners, their home equity is about half of their net worth – it ranks within the top ten retirement income tips on NewRetirement for good reason. There are several ways you can access this asset:

  • Downsize – Have property values increased since the time you moved to your current neighborhood? Connect with a residential real estate broker and have a conversation about downsizing, pocketing the equity your home has gained over the years, and potentially slashing more than the cost of your mortgage but of utilities and expenses as well.
  • Co-housing/renting out part of your home – if your home or property is large enough, you could rent out a room or portion of your house to collect a steady flow of rental income.
  • Rent out your entire home and move to a lower cost area or country.
  • Consider getting a reverse mortgage with a line of credit or lifetime income stream of payments.

Stay Healthy and Hedge Healthcare Risk

The main part of enjoying and getting the most out of your retirement is being healthy. Eat right, exercise, get enough sleep, don’t stress out, be mindful, stay social with your friends, and get out for some nice long walks in the woods – preferably with your dog.

If your health is compromised, you’re much more likely to burn up your hard earned savings. Consider different ways to hedge the risk you’ll need Long Term Care – many people can self insure or buy an annuity or hybrid annuity/LTC product vs. pure long-term care insurance which is being offered by fewer insurers each year.

4. Plan for Tax Efficiency

There are two key parts to a tax efficient retirement drawdown strategy.

Understand How Drawing Assets Impacts Taxes

Drawing assets from different kinds of accounts will impact the taxes you’ll need to pay when you draw down in retirement. There are essentially three places to hold your retirement savings, which are covered below. Ideally, prepare for your drawdown by positioning your savings and investments into the appropriate accounts so they can can be drawn down tax efficiently. The reality for most people is that most of their savings are in qualified accounts. How this money is held goes to the next item – tax efficient drawdowns of these assets.

  1. Pre tax/Qualified (401(k), IRA, HSA) – This is where most people have accumulated their savings since they were able to deduct it from their income when saving it. You save on income taxes now, but will pay income taxes (not lower long-term capital gains taxes) when you draw it out later. The hope is that income taxes are lower in retirement (which may not be the case). Note: if you have a bunch of company stock in your 401K, then read this.
  2. Post Tax /Non-Qualified (normal savings/brokerage accounts) – Some people that are good savers/investors have built up money here. You’ve already paid income taxes and you’ll only be subject to short- or long-term capital gains taxes (which are significantly lower than income taxes; for example, 15% long term capital gains vs. 25% income tax for married people making between $75K to $150K).
  3. Roth IRA – This is an IRA that is subject to the rules applying to a traditional IRA, except that it is post tax money that is invested in a Roth IRA where the savings grow tax free and are also not taxed when you withdraw the money. Note: Roths are not simple, but if you can manage to get more of your money into the Roth vehicle, it can be worth it for you and your heirs since it is not subject to required minimum distributions (RMDs) and it can be inherited.

Tax Efficiently Draw Down Assets

Tax efficiently drawdown these assets by managing how you draw the assets from each one. The order in which you approach your retirement matters greatly and can have a huge impact on your retirement income. If you have enough assets, you’ll need to plan your drawdown in a way to try to avoid being pushed into higher tax brackets. The rule of thumb for tax efficient drawdown is the following:

  1. Deplete assets that are already tax effected (non-qualified money above) since it buys you more time for your qualified money to grow.
  2. Use tax-deferred (qualified money) since it allows your tax free (Roth) money to grow. Note that your qualified money will be subject RMDs after age 70 ½ – the IRS has required minimum distributions from traditional IRAs and 401(k)s.
  3. Use Roth tax free money.

5. Manage Sequence of Return Risk

Otherwise known as “don’t be forced to sell during a downturn.” A huge risk that anyone living off of their investments faces is being forced to sell assets during a downturn in order to create income to cover living expenses. There are a few big levers to manage this risk:

  • Limit the amount of money you need to generate from selling assets (see expenses, Social Security, and part-time work above).
  • Many people use a “bucket strategy” to divide your retirement savings into “buckets” so your mind can be at ease knowing that you likely won’t need to immediately sell in a downturn. For example:
    • Keep two to five years of retirement income in cash, or cash equivalents like Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS).
    • Keep 25–50% of your retirement savings in a medium risk portfolio with a 5–10 year timeframe.
    • Keep the remainder in a longer term higher risk higher return portfolio.
  • Use some kind of low interest revolving credit facility that you can tap into and payback – for example a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) or a Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM), also known as a reverse mortgage line of credit.

What’s My Personal Plan?

It is always interesting to see how other people are planning. Here is my retirement drawdown strategy: I’m still under 50 years old and more on the accumulation side of things and also facing more than 10 years of college tuition, but here’s how I look at our situation.

Savings

  • Continue to monitor our spending and try to stay as efficient as is practicable .
  • Keep working hard and saving into qualified savings vehicles.
  • Develop a plan to migrate assets into a Roth for tax efficiency.

Investing

  • Like many risk averse investors, I’ve got too high a cash allocation, but I’m invested across a mix of roboadvisor, alts (commercial real estate, hedge fund, Angel investments), home equity, business, and cash.
  • Continue to work hard to make NewRetirement all that it can be and thus more valuable.

Life and Health

  • Continue to try to balance work and life and family and health. 
  • Keep Climbing Mt Tamalpaias on my mountain bike. Plus, other stuff like surfing, hiking, soccer, and skiing.

Drawdown

  • Maximize Social Security for myself and my wife by delaying my claim date until age 70.
  • Work part-time deep into “traditional retirement,” since I like working and find it engaging and rewarding.
  • Over time, shift our investments into income producing, lower volatility, inflation hedged vehicles. For example, commercial real estate.
  • Consider longevity insurance (deferred annuity) and leveraging our home equity (renting and relocating, maybe a HECM line of credit).
  • Continuous tax optimization as the tax regime evolves.

Final Thoughts

Retirement planning and decumulation is complex and involves big, sometimes long-term decisions. It can pay to have experts in your corner to review your plan or to help you take action to get it implemented. I have a CPA to help me with taxes and sometimes talk with expert legal or financial advisors who act as a fiduciary.

Today, you can find experts who you can pay for a specific service if you need or want help. The NewRetirement Planner is a comprehensive online tool that enables you to model and document most of the ideas and strategies outlined here. It’s a great way to build a free DIY retirement plan that is personalized for your situation. 

NewRetirement Planner

Do it yourself retirement planning: easy, comprehensive, reliable

NewRetirement Planner

Take financial wellness into your own hands and do it yourself retirement planning: easy, comprehensive, reliable.

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