How to Money · Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Jean Chatzky introduces her book, 'The Forever Paycheck,' which addresses the psychological hurdle of spending retirement savings. She observed her mother's reluctance to deplete her retirement account, even when financially secure, illustrating a common fear of seeing the balance decrease.
“The other problem with that four ish percent rule, besides the fact that the ish means every year, morning Star tells us that the number is somewhat different.”
“The other problem is that we don't know what the markets are going to do. And if you hit a year like twenty twenty two or two thousand and eight within the ten year period surrounding your retirement before or after, the chance that the four percent rule succeeds for you goes way down.”
“So my mother was sixty three years old when my father died in two thousand and five. He died way too young. She was set up very, very nicely. She had a paid off apartment in Philadelphia. She had my father's pension, not a huge pension, but one of his jobs left him with a pension. She had Social Security, and she had a retirement account.”
“And over the next twenty years, I watched her spend but not spend, because she didn't want to see the balance in that retirement account get any smaller than it was when my dad died.”