What’s your retirement spending reality?

What do you envision for your retirement? Traveling the world? Frequently entertaining friends and family at home? Delving into pastimes you had little leeway for during your working years? Whatever your pursuits, it’s essential to plan ahead for your spending needs to help ensure that you can afford your dream retirement.

Dan Hunt, Senior Investment Strategist at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, leads a team who examines how spending tends to evolve over the course of retirement and how lifestyle choices can affect retirement readiness. One thing they have consistently found: Spending rarely stays constant in this stage of life.

Some investors may assume that planning for retirement means replacing a salary, while perhaps accounting for increases in the cost of living due to inflation. In reality, retirement spending typically varies substantially over three distinct phases:

• The active early years of retirement when spending rates are highest but gradually decline with age.
• The mid-retirement years when activity slows and spending rates are lowest.
• The later years when medical and long-term care needs cause spending rates to rise again.

To be sure, spending choices in retirement have many individual variations, but the “retirement spending smile” is a pattern that describes the lived experience of many households, and can help retirement savers build a plan that better reflects their anticipated needs.

The Retirement Spending Smile

Spending tends to evolve over the course of retirement

Of course, no two retirements look alike. One person’s idea of a “dream retirement”—and the associated costs—may be very different from someone else’s. That’s why it’s essential to plan ahead, with an eye toward your unique lifestyle preferences and spending needs.

To explore this idea further, we created six hypothetical retiree profiles and then used financial modeling to test how each retiree’s unique habits would affect their retirement readiness.

Specifically, we looked at:

• Home Hobbyists spend heavily on home remodeling and may also pursue other pastimes, such as restoring antique cars or donating to community projects, resulting in above-average spending early on.
• Entertainers spend more of their income on food and beverages to entertain friends and family at home. Their overall spending tends to decline more rapidly early in retirement than other groups.
• Globetrotters spend a large fraction of their budget on travel prior to retiring. Once they retire and have more free time, travel expenses increase even more, especially in the early and middle years of retirement.
• Early Birds live by the motto “you only live once.” Early Birds tend to retire early, and have higher spending rates, especially on travel and entertainment.
• Health-Care Spenders use a significant share of their disposable income on higher insurance premiums for supplemental policies, prescription-drug expenses, and special treatments in excess of insurance coverage.
• Average Retirees set the benchmark by which the other five types can be compared. Their spending most closely resembles the “retirement spending smile.”  

How did each hypothetical retiree make out in their modeling?

Assuming everyone starts retirement with a $2 million tax-qualified retirement account, 60% in stocks and 40% in bonds, could they successfully cover their costs? The good news is that all six retiree types had a very high likelihood of being able to cover their essential expenses, such as food and housing, throughout retirement. However, some hypothetical retirees had an easier time than others affording both their essential and discretionary expenses.

The probability of success in retirement

This graph is for illustration purposes only and may or may not reflect the probability of success in retirement

No matter your retirement lifestyle, there are steps anyone can take to increase the odds of a successful retirement. Here are three steps, that the team particularly points to, for retirees who spend more heavily:

The bottom line: If you’ve saved diligently and made strategic investment decisions⁵ during your working years, a dream retirement is within reach—but it’ll likely require careful planning and, for some retirees, a willingness to make certain tradeoffs to make your dream a reality.

The source of this article, What Kind of Retiree Do You Want to Be?, was published on March 14, 2024.

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