Featured and Latest Posts

How Should You Spend in Retirement? Fixed vs Dynamic Withdrawal Strategies
Retirement doesn’t mean the end of financial planning—it’s just the start of a new phase. The big question shifts from ‘how much should I save?’ to ‘how much can I safely spend?’ This deceptively simple issue—known as your withdrawal strategy—has generated decades of research, debate, and rule-of-thumb solutions.
Should you stick to a fixed rule like the classic 4% approach? Or should your spending flex with the markets to reduce the risk of running out of money?
In this post, we examine fixed vs dynamic withdrawal strategies, the academic evidence behind them, and—crucially—how to balance what’s financially sound with what’s emotionally sustainable. Because at the end of the day, retirement is about living well—not living anxiously.
Good financial decisions aren’t about predicting the future—they’re about following a sound process today.
In investing, outcomes are noisy. Short-term performance often reflects randomness, not skill. Yet fund managers continue to pitch five-year track records as if they prove anything. They don’t.
As Ken French puts it, a five-year chart ‘tells you nothing’. The real skill lies in filtering out the noise—evaluating strategy, incentives, costs, and behavioural fit.
Don’t chase what worked recently. Stick with what works reliably.