4% Retirement Rule Now 4.7%

I've been targeting taking ½ my portfolio gains. As the portfolio grows I can increase my withdrawals. This also builds a legacy for my kids.

Portfolios go up and down; so you can adjust your withdrawals

In my case, a big chunk is in Canadian Registered Retirement Income Funds. The drawback is that the entire amount is taxable income in the year you die making a big chunk taxed at the top rate. You might want to carry insurance to cover the tax hit in case of sudden demise. A diagnosis giving you a few years allows you to spread the withdrawals over your remaining time in a lower tax bracket.

Recent historical stock market returns have been very high, but to the extent that is due to higher valuations, future returns will likely be lower. There is obviously a tradeoff between higher initial spending and a higher chance of running out of money.

A Fortran simulation of spending rules assuming normally distributed returns is at https://github.com/Beliavsky/RetirementSpending . One can use the free gfortran compiler (part of gcc) to compile and run it.