By Dr. Jim Dahle, WCI Founder
When it comes to planning for retirement, there are three concepts that physician investors often misunderstand. Unfortunately, two of these three constitute “bad news” that I hate to deliver to the “patient.”
However, just like in medicine, you have to understand the bad news to plan your life and treatment plans appropriately.
The Bad News for Physician Retirement
The 4% Rule
As an investor begins learning about investing for retirement, one of the first concepts they come in contact with is the idea of a safe withdrawal rate (SWR). This is a percentage of their initial portfolio, indexed to inflation, that they can withdraw each year which will give them a very low chance of running out of money in retirement. Many investors (and their advisors) thought this number was as high as 6%, 8%, or, even, 10% before they were disabused of this notion by a Trinity University study first published in the 1990s. The most important table from the Trinity Study is Table 2, reproduced below with data updated through 2009.
As you can see, if you want your portfolio to last 30 years, you can’t withdraw 10% of it a year. You can’t even withdraw 6% from a typical 50/50 portfolio and expect it to have better than a 50% chance of lasting 30 years. Experts like to argue about whether the SWR is 3% or 4% or even 4.5%, but that wasn’t really the point of the Trinity Study. The point was that the SWR isn’t 8%.
The implications of this fact are that on the eve of retirement, you need a portfolio approximately 25 times as large as your desired annual income from the portfolio. This is far more money than most beginning investors generally think they will need. A million dollars seems like a lot of money—until you realize a portfolio that size can really only support an income of $40,000 per year.
For a physician who has been making $200,000, $300,000, or even $400,000 per year, the thought of living on only $40,000 per year might be downright depressing. If a physician wanted to replace their entire $200,000 income, they would need a $5 million portfolio. To achieve that over a 30-year career with a 5% annualized return, they would need to put $73,000 per year toward retirement—or nearly 37% of their income! If they wanted to retire early after 20 years of practice, that number rises to 72% of their income—a nearly impossible figure.
This is bad news indeed.
Returns Must Be Inflation-Adjusted
To make matters worse, many novice investors use nominal return figures when making calculations. While that is probably fine for short time periods, inflation must be taken into account if you are making plans that span several decades (like retirement planning).
Historically, inflation has averaged around 3% per year. At that rate, $1 million worth of purchasing power today will require $2.4 million in 30 years. If you decided you needed a $2 million portfolio in today’s money to retire in 30 years and estimated your portfolio would earn 8% annualized returns, you might make the erroneous assumption that you only need to save $17,000 per year. However, if you properly take inflation into account, you would adjust that return down for inflation, perhaps to 5%, and realize you actually need to save $29,000 per year.
More information here:
How Big Does My Nest Egg Need to Be to Retire?
The Best Way to Create a Retirement Income Plan (and a $1 Million Example)
The Good News
You Need to Replace Much Less of Your Income Than You Thought
If this is the first time you’ve read about the concept of an SWR and the perils of inflation, you might be reaching for the Prozac. Hold off for just a minute while I share one of the few pieces of good news out there for physicians planning for retirement.
Many physicians mistakenly assume they’ll need to replace their entire income with their portfolio. Even if they ask a financial advisor for a rule of thumb, they might be told they will need 70%-80% of their pre-retirement income to comfortably retire. The truth is that the vast majority of doctors will need a MUCH lower percentage of their pre-retirement income to retire comfortably.
For a typical physician who plans well for retirement, their expenses will decrease dramatically by the time they retire. Consider all the expenses you’re paying now that you won’t be paying in retirement. 
Now, everyone’s situation is a little different, and a few expenses may even go up (such as greens fees, travel expenses, and healthcare costs). But these pale in comparison to the biggies, such as a mortgage, the high tax burden most doctors pay, and retirement savings.
Most physicians who go through this exercise will realize they probably only need 20%-50% of their pre-retirement income to have a very comfortable retirement. Things look even nicer once Social Security is taken into account. While Social Security will replace a much lower percentage of a physician’s pre-retirement income compared to a lower earner, a typical doctor can still expect it to replace about 10% of their pre-retirement earnings.
If you put all this together, a physician now earning $300,000 may find that they will have a very comfortable retirement if their portfolio will provide an income of just $100,000. They can achieve this by saving a very reasonable 15% of their income every year for 30 years and earning a 4% after-inflation return on that savings.
More information here:
Are Physicians Who Retire Early Abusing the System That Made Them Rich?
The First 9 Months of Semi-Retirement: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
A comfortable retirement is within reach for any physician willing to start early, learn a little about investing, and be disciplined about saving a reasonable portion of their income each year.
What do you think? Does the 4% rule reflect bad news to you? Did you think you could take out 10% of your portfolio every year? Are you comforted that you don't actually need to replace your entire annual income with your portfolio? Comment below!
[This updated post was originally published in 2013.]The post The Good and Bad News of Physician Retirement appeared first on The White Coat Investor - Investing & Personal Finance for Doctors.
