How Sequence of Return Risk Can Devastate Your Retirement Lifestyle

There are three words that could have the biggest impact on whether you enjoy a comfortable retirement… or you have to struggle and forego life’s luxuries – and even life’s necessities.

But almost no one is talking about these three words. And there’s a good chance you’ve never even heard of them.

These three words could have more impact on your retirement lifestyle than living longer than you expected… or than being forced to retire sooner than you planned (which happens to nearly 50% of Americans, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute).

The three words may sound a little technical, but I’m going to make them brain-dead simple to understand.

The three words are: sequence of returns. Specifically, the “unfavorable” kind

Sequence of returns risk is a fancy way of saying that retirees who have a big portion of their assets in equities and mutual funds face the very real risk that the market will fall as they are withdrawing money from their accounts.

Many people plan to use the widely recommended “4% rule,” which advises retirees to take out no more than 4% of the value of their retirement accounts (adjusted for inflation) each year. Studies show that rate of withdrawal has a good chance of making your money last as long as you do. (It should be noted that more recent studies show that a 3% annual withdrawal is the maximum needed to make your money last.)

That means that if you have $100,000 in your retirement accounts, you can safely pull out $4,000 a year using the 4% rule. If you have $500,000, you can withdraw $20,000 a year, and if you have $1 million in your account, you can take out $40,000 a year.

If you haven’t thought much about what kind of lifestyle withdrawing 4% a year from your accounts would give you, I’m guessing you might be feeling a little queasy right about now. (Oh! And don’t forget to take whatever you’ll have to pay in taxes that you deferred in your 401(k) or IRA off the top of that number!)

It’s easy to see that if we experience another market crash of 50% or more – as has happened twice since 2000 – as you’re nearing or already in retirement, it could have a devastating impact on how much you can withdraw each year.

If your million-dollar 401(k) suddenly becomes a 201(k) worth $500,000, withdrawing 4% will provide you only $20,000 a year, instead of the $40,000 you had planned on.

But here’s where it gets really sticky… timing is everything…

When you run the calculations, you discover that the impact of a market decline in the first few years of retirement is even worse than in later years. It turns out that when you begin to take withdrawals, market volatility has a far greater impact than rate of return.

An unfavorable sequence of returns may make you have to cut back significantly on your retirement lifestyle, or force you to work longer than you had planned.

The BIG problem, of course, is that there is no way to accurately predict when the next market crash will happen, or where the markets will be when you’re ready to retire.

One way to protect yourself from this very real threat to your retirement lifestyle is to diversify your assets.

What if a portion of your savings were in an asset that is guaranteed to grow by a larger dollar amount every year? That would be a favorable sequence of returns that translates into financial peace of mind for life.

Such an asset exists, and it’s called Bank On Yourself. It’s never had a losing year in more than 160 years!

It also lets you fire your banker and become your own financing source for your cars, vacations, a college education, business expenses and more.

And the best part is that it’s easy to find out UP-FRONT what your bottom-line guaranteed numbers and results could be if you added Bank On Yourself to your financial plan!