Your retirement
Historical decade
Two oil shocks, a brutal 1973–74 bear market, and double-digit inflation — the classic worst case for retirees.
Where it lands in retirement
The 1973–1982 conditions apply from age 65 to 75.
Asset allocation
Set your target stock / bond / cash mix. It's the blend applied to that year's actual returns during the historical decade; the implied real return below is shown for reference against the “real return (outside the decade)” assumption above.
Implied return uses historical real averages: stocks 7%, bonds 1%, cash 0%. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results.
Load from calculator
Pull your retirement age, plan horizon, portfolio, spending, income, allocation, real return, and flexible-spending settings straight from the retirement calculator. The starting balance is the “Begin balance” (year 1) from that plan's Annual portfolio withdrawal card — its actual projected balance at retirement.
Outcome
Portfolio balance through retirement
Balances in retirement-date dollars. The shaded band is where the 1973–1982 decade is applied — drag the “decade begins” slider to move it.
Annual spending through retirement
What you actually get to spend each year of the 1973–1982 replay, in retirement-date dollars. The rigid plan holds $60,000/yr unless the portfolio runs dry. Pick a flexible spending strategy in the left column to see how it would reshape this line through the decade.
Economic conditions, 1973–1982
| Year | Stocks | Bonds | Inflation | Your mix |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1973 | −14.3% | 3.7% | 8.7% | −7.1% |
| 1974 | −25.9% | 2.0% | 12.3% | −14.7% |
| 1975 | 37.0% | 3.6% | 6.9% | 23.6% |
| 1976 | 23.8% | 16.0% | 4.9% | 20.7% |
| 1977 | −7.0% | 1.3% | 6.7% | −3.7% |
| 1978 | 6.5% | −0.8% | 9.0% | 3.6% |
| 1979 | 18.5% | 0.7% | 13.3% | 11.4% |
| 1980 | 31.7% | −3.0% | 12.5% | 17.8% |
| 1981 | −4.7% | 8.2% | 8.9% | 0.5% |
| 1982 | 20.4% | 32.8% | 3.8% | 25.4% |
Suggested safe withdrawal rate, 1973–1982
A valuation-aware take on the 4% rule for a retirement beginning in 1973: how expensively stocks were priced that January (the Shiller CAPE) sets the suggested first-year withdrawal rate, adjusted for your 60/40/0 stock/bond/cash mix and your 30-year plan. Hover the ? on each figure for the math.
The suggestion assumes withdrawals start when the decade does; it reflects valuations at that moment, not at age 65. A rule of thumb, not financial advice.
Current withdrawal rate through the replay
Bengen’s monitoring gauge: each year’s portfolio withdrawal as a share of that year’s starting balance (the current withdrawal rate, CWR). A gently rising CWR is normal — spending the portfolio down is the plan — but a steep climb early in retirement is the classic danger signal. Lines are clipped at 50% and stop if the portfolio runs dry; the dashed reference line is the suggested first-year rate above.
Why the placement matters
The same ten years of returns produce very different outcomes depending on when they hit. Early in retirement, every withdrawal during a downturn sells assets at depressed prices, permanently shrinking the base that later recoveries compound on. The identical decade arriving twenty years in — when the portfolio has (hopefully) grown and fewer withdrawal years remain — does far less damage. This is sequence-of-returns risk, and it is why two retirees with identical average returns can end up in completely different places.
Try the stagflation preset (1973–1982) at the start of retirement versus the final decade of your plan. High inflation compounds the problem: it raises every withdrawal at exactly the moment the portfolio can least afford it.
Historical figures are approximate: S&P 500 and 10-year Treasury total returns from the NYU Stern (Damodaran) historical-returns dataset; CPI-U inflation from the Bureau of Labor Statistics; CAPE ratios from Robert Shiller’s public dataset. Withdrawals are taken at the start of each year and the portfolio is rebalanced annually. Taxes and fees are not modeled. For educational purposes only — not financial advice.