Updated August 6, 2026. Quick answer: this is a different question from can I retire on $500,000, and it has a cleaner answer — because it is arithmetic rather than a judgement. The honest range is wide: at $20,000 a year it outlives most retirements; at $50,000 a year it is gone in about a decade. The table below is the whole of it, with the assumptions stated rather than buried.
The arithmetic
Two columns, because the return assumption does more work than anything else on this page and hiding it inside one number would be the trick this page exists to avoid. Both are real returns — after inflation — and the withdrawal is held constant in real terms.
| Withdrawn each year | Years, 0% real return | Years, 3% real return |
|---|---|---|
| $20,000 | 25 | 47 |
| $25,000 | 20 | 31 |
| $30,000 | 17 | 24 |
| $35,000 | 15 | 19 |
| $40,000 | 13 | 16 |
| $50,000 | 10 | 13 |
What this is not. It is not a projection. It assumes a steady return every year, which no portfolio delivers, and it takes no account of tax, Social Security or a spending pattern that changes with age. Every one of those makes the real answer differ from the table.
The assumption that breaks it
A steady 3% is not how returns arrive. The same average, delivered in a different order, produces very different outcomes — poor years early in retirement do damage that good years later cannot undo, because the withdrawals came out of a smaller balance. That is sequence-of-returns risk, and it is the reason a fixed withdrawal is a starting point rather than a plan.
The practical response is to let the withdrawal move with the portfolio rather than hold it constant — how guardrail approaches adjust the rate as markets move. Which accounts you draw from first also changes the lifetime tax bill materially — withdrawal order.
Is your spending number realistic?
The table is only as good as the figure you put into it, and most people guess. What households like yours actually spend is measured — the median for a 65–74 household is $50,068 a year, and it varies more by housing situation than by age. Benchmark your own figure against the data.
And $500,000 does not stand alone: Social Security usually carries a large share of spending at this level, which is why the portfolio has to last a shorter time than the table implies. Where $500,000 sits in the distribution, and what it produces alongside a benefit.
Sources
The table is arithmetic, computed here from the stated assumptions — there is no external source to cite for it, and that is the point: you can reproduce every row with a spreadsheet. The spending figures are from our own extract of the BLS Consumer Expenditure microdata, read 2026-08-06.
Honest gaps. No tax is modelled. No Social Security is included in the table. Returns are assumed constant, which is the single least realistic thing here. Treat the columns as bookends rather than forecasts.
See methodology and corrections. General information, not financial advice. No advertising appears on this page.