A small adjustment to the 4% withdrawal strategy for financial freedom.
I previously shared a topic about financial freedom, which is to reach a certain level of total savings and then invest in different categories of assets. If you can withdraw 4% each year to cover daily expenses, you achieve financial freedom.
For example, if the total savings is 1 million, withdrawing 4% means 40,000, which averages to about 3,300 per month.
The premise for funds never running out is that the investment return must be greater than 4%, with 4% used for daily withdrawals, and the remainder must outpace inflation, which can be approximately calculated at 3%. This requires our investment return to reach 7%.
We have now entered a low-interest rate era, making it a bit challenging to achieve a long-term annual compound return of 7%. Therefore, I optimized the withdrawal method, which is to dynamically adjust the withdrawal ratio based on the year's return.
If this year's return is greater than 4%, then next year withdraw 4% for living expenses.
If this year's return is between 3% and 4%, then next year withdraw the actual return for living expenses.
If this year's return is less than 3% or even negative, then next year withdraw 3% as a safety net for living expenses.
I think the benefit of this approach is that it is not rigid; during good market conditions, you can withdraw a bit more to improve your life, and during poor market conditions, you can just get by.
If you fix it at 4%, you would have to withdraw that much in years with negative returns, which would be very stressful.
The current thought is like this: in the future, as knowledge increases, there may also be partial adjustments~[designated to work]