How to Retire on $5 Million and Make It Last

Retiring with $5 million offers a unique opportunity for a fulfilling post-career life. Even with significant savings, careful financial planning is essential for long-term stability. This guide covers managing funds, accounting for expenses, and navigating investment and tax considerations to ensure a secure retirement.

Determining Your Retirement Needs

Financial planning begins with understanding personal requirements. Calculating projected annual expenses involves distinguishing between essential spending, such as housing and utilities, and discretionary spending, like travel or hobbies. Households aged 65 or older spend an average of $57,818 to $60,087 annually. Housing often represents the largest expense category for retirees, consuming nearly a third of monthly expenditures, even if a mortgage is paid off, due to costs like property taxes and maintenance.

Inflation erodes purchasing power over time, a key factor for multi-decade retirements. Historically, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) has averaged about 3.0 percent annually, meaning costs will increase. Healthcare expenses, in particular, often increase faster than general inflation, requiring a larger budget allocation.

Life expectancy also determines how long retirement funds must last. With many individuals living into their 80s or 90s, a retirement horizon of 30 years or more is a common planning assumption. This longer timeframe requires a financial strategy accounting for extended asset drawdown. Projecting future needs involves assessing current spending habits and making realistic adjustments for a retired lifestyle.

Practical steps for assessing needs include tracking current expenses for several months to gain an accurate picture of spending patterns. Categorizing these expenses into essential needs, discretionary wants, and emergency costs provides clarity on where funds are allocated. While some general guidelines suggest replacing 55% to 80% of pre-retirement income, a personalized approach based on actual spending and desired retirement activities offers a more precise estimate.

Investment Strategies for Retirement Income

Investing a $5 million portfolio for retirement shifts the focus from aggressive accumulation to capital preservation and income generation. Balanced asset allocation distributes investments across asset classes like stocks, bonds, and cash. This diversification helps manage risk, ensuring underperformance in one area might be offset by positive returns in another.

As individuals progress through retirement, their asset allocation becomes more conservative. For example, ages 60-69 might hold 60% stocks, 35% bonds, and 5% cash. Ages 70-79 could shift to 40% stocks, 50% bonds, and 10% cash, further adjusting to 20% stocks, 50% bonds, and 30% cash for those 80 and above. These adjustments aim to reduce volatility while still providing for growth and income.

Diversification extends beyond just stocks and bonds to include various sectors, industries, and geographic regions. Investing in a mix of large-cap, small-cap, and international stocks can provide broad market exposure. Within fixed income, diversifying by maturity and credit quality helps create a more resilient portfolio. Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) and mutual funds can simplify this process by offering immediate diversification across a basket of assets.

The goal is to generate various income streams from investments, such as dividends from stocks and interest from bonds. A portion of the portfolio should be allocated to cash or highly liquid equivalents to cover near-term expenses without needing to sell growth-oriented investments during market downturns. Regularly rebalancing the portfolio is also important to maintain the desired asset allocation and align with evolving financial goals and risk tolerance.

Managing Withdrawals and Longevity

Managing withdrawals ensures retirement funds last a lifetime. A common guideline is the “4% rule,” which suggests withdrawing 4% of the initial portfolio value in the first year of retirement and then adjusting that dollar amount annually for inflation. This rule aims to provide a high probability that savings will last for approximately 30 years. For a $5 million portfolio, an initial withdrawal of $200,000 would align with this guideline.

The 4% rule, while a useful starting point, has nuances and does not fit every situation. It assumes annual spending increases with inflation regardless of market performance, which may not reflect actual retiree spending patterns. Some experts debate its efficacy, suggesting a safer withdrawal rate as low as 3% or as high as 5% in certain scenarios. The rule also assumes a balanced portfolio, often cited as 50% stocks and 50% bonds in its original context.

Sequence of returns risk refers to negative market returns early in retirement that can deplete a portfolio. If a market downturn happens just as withdrawals begin, the portfolio has less time to recover, and selling assets at depressed prices can severely impact its longevity. This risk is particularly pronounced for those relying heavily on investment income.

Dynamic withdrawal strategies can mitigate sequence of returns risk and enhance portfolio longevity. These strategies involve adjusting withdrawal amounts based on market performance and personal needs, rather than adhering to a rigid fixed percentage. For example, a “guardrails” approach sets upper and lower limits on withdrawals, allowing for increased spending in strong market years and reduced spending during downturns to preserve capital. Maintaining a cash reserve, such as one to three years’ worth of expenses, can also provide a buffer during periods of market volatility, reducing the need to sell investments at a loss.

Tax and Healthcare Planning

Strategic tax planning is key to managing a retirement portfolio. Different retirement accounts have distinct tax implications upon withdrawal. Distributions from traditional IRAs and 401(k)s, funded with pre-tax contributions, are taxed as ordinary income in retirement. This means withdrawals can be subject to federal income tax rates, which currently range from 10 percent to 37 percent. Conversely, qualified distributions from Roth IRAs and Roth 401(k)s are tax-free, as contributions were made with after-tax dollars.

Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) are mandatory withdrawals that must begin from most traditional, SEP, and SIMPLE IRAs, as well as 401(k)s, when the account owner reaches age 73. The RMD amount is calculated by dividing the account balance at the end of the previous year by a life expectancy factor provided by the IRS. Failing to take RMDs can result in a 25% penalty on the amount not withdrawn. While Roth IRAs are exempt from RMDs for the original owner during their lifetime, beneficiaries of Roth IRAs are subject to these rules. Tax-efficient withdrawal strategies often involve carefully sequencing withdrawals from taxable, tax-deferred, and tax-free accounts to manage overall income and minimize tax liability.

Healthcare costs are another increasing expense in retirement. Medicare provides health insurance for individuals aged 65 and older, covering hospital care (Part A), doctor’s services and outpatient care (Part B), and prescription drugs (Part D). While Medicare covers a substantial portion of healthcare expenses, retirees will still incur out-of-pocket costs, including premiums, deductibles, co-payments, and co-insurance.

Planning for long-term care expenses is also important, as Medicare does not cover most long-term care services, such as extended stays in nursing homes or in-home assistance for daily activities. These costs can be substantial, ranging from tens of thousands to over a hundred thousand dollars annually depending on care level and location. Options for addressing long-term care include purchasing long-term care insurance or self-funding these costs through dedicated savings or investments.