How Long Will My Money Last in Retirement?

Last updated: October 12, 2026

The size of your savings matters less than three things you can actually control.

Here’s the question that matters more than the size of your savings: once you stop working and start spending, how long will the money actually hold?

The real answer surprises people. How long your money lasts depends less on how much you’ve saved than on three things: how much you pull out every year, whether the market has a rough stretch early (typically in the first five to ten years) in your retirement, and how much of your income is protected for life no matter what. Get those three right, and a smaller nest egg can outlast a bigger one.

What actually decides how long your money lasts

Three things move the needle, and two of them have nothing to do with how hard you saved.

There is a fourth thing, and it is the one nobody can control: how long you are here to spend it. J.P. Morgan gives a non-smoking couple in excellent health who are both 65 a 74% chance that one of them is still here at 90, and a 16% chance one of them makes 100.¹ Every answer to “how long will my money last” is really an answer to how long you are likely to last.

The first is your withdrawal rate, the share of your savings you spend each year. Pull a little, it lasts a long time. Pull too much, it drains fast.

The second is timing, and it’s the one almost nobody sees coming. If the market falls hard in your first five to ten years of retirement while you’re taking money out, you’re selling shares at a loss to pay your bills, and those shares are gone before the recovery. Retire into a good stretch and the same money can last decades longer. Same average return, opposite outcome. This is called sequence of returns risk, and it’s the quiet reason two people with identical savings can end up in completely different places.

The third is how much of your income is protected for life. Every dollar of your monthly need that’s covered by income you can’t outlive is a dollar you’re not pulling from savings during a downturn. That’s the lever most retirement advice skips.

The withdrawal-rate guessing game

For decades the answer to “how long will it last” was the 4% rule: pull 4% the first year, raise it with inflation every year after, and hope it holds for 30 years.² Newer research moves that number around, from a cautious 4% up to a guardrails approach near 5.5%.³ That higher number comes with a condition: you cut spending 10% whenever your withdrawal rate rises 20% above where it started.¹⁰ In real market history, a retiree using this rule who started in 2007 ended up spending 28% less than planned, and one who started in October 1965 ended up 54% below plan.¹⁰ The newer risk-based guardrails cut less, but still cut 32% in that 1965 case.¹⁰ All figures here are illustrative and vary by household.

Notice what every one of those rules has in common. They’re all a plan to spend your savings down and hope the markets cooperate. The rate you pick swings how long your money lasts by years. And none of them pay you for the rest of your life. They pay you until the money runs out.

How Many Years Will $500,000 Last in Retirement?

About 15 to 35 years in our illustration, depending on how much you take out and what the money earns. Here’s $500,000 with a first-year withdrawal that rises with inflation every year after:

Illustrative only, our calculation. 1.73% is the September 2026 national average 12-month CD rate.⁴ 4.47% and 5.60% are the 1-year and 30-year Treasury yields on October 9, 2026.⁵ Assumes 3.4% inflation, the 12-month rate through August 2026,⁶ a steady return every year, and no taxes. Real markets don’t move in a straight line, and a bad stretch in the first few years can shorten these numbers.

Living only on interest is a different plan. A 30-year Treasury at 5.60% would pay about $28,000 a year on $500,000, and return the $500,000 if held the full 30 years, assuming the U.S. government pays as promised.⁷ That payment doesn’t rise with prices,⁷ and selling early after rates go up could return less than you paid.⁸

Social Security’s actuaries put average life expectancy at 65 at about 18 more years for men and about 21 for women.⁹ Private-sector numbers run longer. For 65-year-old non-smokers in excellent health, J.P. Morgan puts a woman’s chance of reaching 90 at 54%, and a couple’s chance that one of them is still here at 90 at 74%.¹ We tend to plan with the private-sector numbers, to help our clients be ready for a longer life. For a couple, the money has to last as long as the one who lives longest.

For what $500,000 can produce as guaranteed lifetime income instead, see How Much Income Will $500,000 Generate in Retirement? and Is $500,000 Enough to Retire?

The move that changes the answer

Here’s something the industry won’t lead with. You don’t have to make your savings last as long as you live. You can build an income floor of guaranteed lifetime income, which we call Protected Lifetime Income (PLI), underneath the life you want, income that keeps paying for as long as you live, no matter what the market does.

Once your essentials and the non-negotiables, the adventures, the experiences, and the memories with the people you love, are covered by protected income, the question changes. A market crash becomes a headline, not an emergency. Your remaining savings can stay invested and growing instead of being sold off in a panic. And for a married couple, an income floor built right keeps paying the one who’s left, for as long as they live. That includes the bills that keep coming every month or year. Here’s what a country club membership costs.

That’s the difference between “I hope it lasts” and “it lasts as long as I do.”

Does anyone actually run out of money?

I’m not convinced people actually run out of money, though I suppose some could.

What I’ve seen happen is people watch their account balances drop to very low levels and stop spending on anything other than the bare essentials, just to get by.

What’s interesting is that they are not necessarily the ones you would expect.

The retirees who run into trouble are often not the ones who saved the least. They are the ones who followed traditional planning’s probability-based model, the safe withdrawal rate and the success score, which typically leans on Social Security as its main or only source of guaranteed income.

Then a rough market hits in the first several years of retirement, and they keep pulling the same money out of their accounts.

Here is the way I explain it when someone asks.

Picture two sources of water. One is a river. It flows whether it rains or not, and you can draw from it whenever you need to. The other is a lake. Every bucket you take lowers the shoreline, and in a dry year the level drops on its own before you have taken anything at all.

Many people retire with a lake and only a slow flowing creek, which is just their Social Security income.

A lake can last a long time. It can also get low at exactly the wrong moment, and once you are drinking out of a shrinking lake in a dry year, every choice in front of you gets worse.

The point of building the right amount of protected lifetime income is to create a river, not just a slow flowing creek, next to the lake. Not to replace it. The lake is still where growth happens. But when the essentials and the non-negotiables are coming from the river, a bad market can become a headline instead of an emergency.

Which brings up the question I usually get next. How big does the river need to be?

How big a river depends on whether you are a spender or a leaver

I ask this before I build anything, because two people can walk in with the same balance and need two very different rivers.

A spender plans to use most of the money themselves. The savings are the paycheck for the go-go years, the trips and the projects and the time with the people they love. That person needs a river built high enough to carry the life they actually want, not just the light bill.

A leaver lives mostly on Social Security and a little else, and the retirement account is really the children’s money. That person may need a smaller river, because the lake was never meant for them in the first place.

Plenty of people who would never call themselves wealthy are leavers. Social Security, a small pension, and an IRA they have quietly decided not to touch.

This is why I do not start with the balance. The same number can hold up fine for one of these two and come up short for the other, because they are not trying to make the money last for the same reason.

And here is the part none of us gets around. I do not know how long you are going to live, and neither do you. I say it to clients this way: if you could tell me when you are going to die, I could build you a perfect plan. But you cannot. And would you really want to know?

That is the reason the river matters as much as it does. Whichever one you are, it may be the only part of this that does not have to be guessed at.

See what your own numbers look like

The fastest way to see where you stand is to run your numbers. It costs nothing and asks nothing of you.

How long it lasts depends heavily on the assumptions a safe withdrawal rate is built on.

Frequently Asked Questions

When you want to see what a protected income floor could look like for your own situation, a free Retirement Income Blueprint Call is the next step. No pressure, no pitch, just your real numbers.

About Kurt H. Jackson

Experience: Since founding KJ Financial in 2010, Kurt H. Jackson has worked with retirees and pre-retirees across Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, and Florida who discovered that the retirement plan they had built around a fixed withdrawal rule was far more fragile than they realized. He has worked directly with clients coming out of the 2008 crash, and with clients who retired into the 2020 COVID drop and the inflation spike of 2021 to 2023, and he has seen firsthand what sequence of returns risk does to a withdrawal-only strategy versus a Lifestyle-First plan with a guaranteed income floor. Before founding KJ Financial, he spent 20 years as a Certified Mortgage Planner working with more than 1,000 clients on major financial commitments, giving him deep insight into how financial decisions compound over time.

Expertise: Kurt is a Retirement Lifestyle Architect and the creator of the Lifestyle-First Retirement Income Planning framework. He builds guaranteed lifetime income, which he calls Protected Lifetime Income (PLI), under both his clients’ essentials and their non-negotiables, the adventures, the experiences and the memories with those they care about. With that income floor in place, the rest of their money no longer has to pay the bills, which means it doesn’t have to be sold in a down market. He is Life and Health Insurance Licensed in MO, NE, KS, IA, and FL. His practice focuses exclusively on insurance-based, tax-optimized retirement income strategies. He does not manage investments or sell securities.

Authoritativeness: Kurt founded KJ Financial and operates MaxMyRetirementIncome.com as a dedicated educational resource for retirees. His work is grounded in peer-reviewed and independently published research, cited directly on each page. He applies that research to the practical income planning decisions retirees face every day in the states he serves.

Trustworthiness: KJ Financial is a compliance-first firm. All figures and research citations on this page are sourced from publicly available, independently published studies and are linked directly in the content. Kurt is paid by commission from the insurance company that issues the policy. Kurt H. Jackson is not a securities broker, registered investment advisor, or CPA. Guarantees rely on the claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company.

Contact KJ Financial:
1014 E. 5th St., Maryville, MO 64468
Direct: 816.582.5532
Email: kurt@kjfinancialonline.com
Website: www.MaxMyRetirementIncome.com

Sources

1. J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Guide to Retirement 2026, the Life Expectancy Probabilities page. J.P. Morgan’s own longevity chart for a non-smoker in excellent health who is age 65 today, giving a man a 64% chance of reaching 85, 43% of 90, 21% of 95 and 6% of 100; a woman 73%, 54%, 30% and 11%; at least one member of a couple 90%, 74%, 44% and 16%; and both members of a couple 47%, 23%, 6% and 1%.
2. William P. Bengen, Journal of Financial Planning, Determining Withdrawal Rates Using Historical Data, October 1994. The original 4% rule paper, which concludes that assuming a minimum requirement of 30 years of portfolio longevity, a first-year withdrawal of 4 percent followed by inflation-adjusted withdrawals in later years should be safe.
3. Journal of Financial Planning, Guyton and Klinger, “Decision Rules and Maximum Initial Withdrawal Rates” (March 2006). The guardrails study itself, which concludes that initial withdrawal rates of 5.2% to 5.6% are sustainable at the 99% confidence standard for portfolios holding at least 65% stocks, provided the retiree follows its adjustment rules in bad years.
4. The FDIC’s national average 12-month CD rate for September 2026, published through the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
5. The U.S. Treasury’s daily par yield curve for October 9, 2026, shows the 1-year at 4.47% and the 30-year at 5.60%.
6. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that consumer prices rose 3.4% over the 12 months ending August 2026. (released September 11, 2026)
7. The SEC’s Investor.gov page on bonds explains that Treasury bonds typically mature in 30 years, return face value if held to maturity, and that inflation reduces the buying power of a fixed rate.
8. The SEC’s investor bulletin on interest rate risk explains that when market interest rates rise, prices of fixed-rate bonds fall. (June 2013)
9. Social Security’s Period Life Table for 2023, as used in the 2026 Trustees Report, shows 18.12 more years for a man at 65 and 20.66 for a woman.
10. Derek Tharp and Justin Fitzpatrick, Kitces.com, “Why Guyton-Klinger Guardrails Are Too Risky For Most Retirees (And How Risk-Based Guardrails Can Help)” (March 27, 2024). A study that ran Guyton-Klinger and risk-based guardrails through four real retirement start dates and measured how far spending fell below plan.

Illustrative guaranteed-income figures are current carrier estimates, are hypothetical, and depend on your age, your contract, and the carrier at the time of purchase.

All figures on this page are illustrative and hypothetical, current as of 2026, and will vary by individual circumstances. Nothing here is personalized tax, legal, or investment advice. Kurt H. Jackson is a licensed life and health insurance agent in Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, and Florida, and is not a securities broker, registered investment advisor, or CPA. Guaranteed income refers to products backed by the claims-paying ability of the issuing insurer.

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