Over the last few decades, anyone who is moving into a mindset of retirement planning has been fixated on one thing and only one thing: the size of a portfolio. The mindset has long been that if you accumulate enough money, you’ll hopefully enjoy your golden years comfortably. The challenge with this argument is that every quarterly statement leads to the same question, and that is “Do I have enough to keep going?”
However, something has shifted as a growing number of retirees are trying to jump off this treadmill and redirecting their focus from total portfolio value to the income that the portfolio generates. The question is changing from “How much do I have?” to “How much does it pay me?” This reframe might sound like a subtle change, but it’s transformative all the same.
This post originally appeared at 24/7 Wall St.