How quickly do we blow through what often takes a lifetime to accumulate? The Employee Benefit Research Institute found out. EBRI studied the extent to which the non-housing assets of certain retirees changed during their first 20 years of retirement (or until death, if earlier).
The study relied on income and asset data from its Health and Retirement Study (HRS), as well as on spending data from the Consumption and Activities Mail Survey (CAMS).
Surprisingly (at least to some), it showed that retirees generally exhibit very slow decumulation of assets.
More specifically, within the first 18 years of retirement:
- Individuals with less than $200,000 in non-housing assets immediately before retirement had spent down (at the median) about one-quarter of their assets;
- Those with between $200,000 and $500,000 immediately before retirement had spent down 27.2 percent.
- Retirees with at least $500,000 immediately before retirement had spent down only 11.8 percent within the first 20 years of retirement at the median.
EBRI added that “while some retirees do spend down most of their assets in the first 18 years following retirement, about one-third of all sampled retirees had increased their assets over that period.”
“Pensioners” were much less likely to have spent down their assets than non-pensioners. During the first 18 years of retirement, the median non-housing assets of pensioners (who started retirement with much higher levels of assets) had gone down only 4 percent, compared to 34 percent for non-pensioners.
“The median ratio of household spending to household income for retirees of all ages hovered around one, inching slowly upward with age,” it concluded. “This suggests that majority of retirees had limited their spending to their regular flow of income and had avoided drawing down assets, which explains why pensioners, who had higher levels of regular income, were able to avoid asset drawdowns better than others.”
With more than 20 years serving financial markets, John Sullivan is the former editor-in-chief of Investment Advisor magazine and retirement editor of ThinkAdvisor.com. Sullivan is also the former editor of Boomer Market Advisor and Bank Advisor magazines, and has a background in the insurance and investment industries in addition to his journalism roots.