The 5% rule
The short answer
Withdrawing 5% a year means saving 20.0 times your annual spending. Across 69 historical 30-year retirements since 1928 it survived 74% of them, against 94% for the 4% rule. Stretch the retirement to 50 years and it falls to 49%.
How it held up, by how long the retirement lasted
The rule is usually quoted without a horizon attached, which hides the part that matters. The original research tested 30 years. An early retirement is a different question.
| Retirement length | Periods tested | Survived | Success rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20 years | 79 | 73 | 92.4% |
| 30 years the classic test | 69 | 51 | 73.9% |
| 40 years | 59 | 37 | 62.7% |
| 50 years | 49 | 24 | 49.0% |
1928 to 2025 market data, 70% stocks and 30% bonds, spending raised by actual inflation each year. Longer horizons have fewer complete periods to test, which is why the count falls as the length rises.
The horizon is the whole story: the same 5% rule went from 73.9% over 30 years to 49.0% over 50. That is 24.9 points lost to nothing but time. Anyone retiring in their forties is planning for the second number, not the first, which is why a single rate quoted without a horizon is close to meaningless.
What the 5% rule demands
A rate is really a multiple in disguise. 5% means 20.0 times spending, and that multiple is what you spend working years buying.
| Spend per year | At 5% | At 4% |
|---|---|---|
| $40,000 | $800K | $1.00M |
| $60,000 | $1.20M | $1.50M |
| $80,000 | $1.60M | $2.00M |
| $100,000 | $2.00M | $2.50M |
Every row costs less than the 4% column, which is the appeal: $400,000 less capital on $80,000 a year. That is years of working life you do not spend saving.
What you are buying with those years is a 26% historical failure rate over 30 years. The failures were not randomly distributed either. They fell on people who happened to retire into 1929, 1966 or 1973, which is sequence risk and not bad luck spread thinly.
Common questions
What is the 5% rule?
Withdraw 5% of your portfolio in the first year of retirement, then raise that dollar amount with inflation each year after. It implies a target of 20.0 times your annual spending, against 25 times for the better known 4% rule.
Does the 5% rule work?
Across 69 historical 30-year retirements since 1928, it survived 51 of them, or 74%. The 4% rule survived 94% of the same periods. Over 50 years the 5% figure falls to 49%, which is the number that matters for an early retirement.
How much do you need for the 5% rule?
20.0 times your annual spending. Spending $40,000 a year needs $800,000, and $80,000 needs $1,600,000. That is the whole cost of the rule: a lower rate is safer and demands a larger portfolio, so it is bought with working years.
Should I use 5% instead of 4%?
Only with something else absorbing the risk: a pension, a paid-off house, part-time income or genuine willingness to cut spending after a bad year. At 5% the historical failure rate over 30 years is 26%, and the failures were not spread evenly. They landed on people who retired just before a crash.