Should Your Retirement Plan Reflect Your Biological Age?
It’s important to consider your unique health circumstances during retirement planning. Exercise is an important ingredient for longevity. Photo by bruce mars on Unsplash.
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Disclaimers: I am not a financial adviser, and the content in this website is for informational and educational purposes only. Please consult a qualified financial adviser for personalized advice tailored to your situation.
We’ve written extensively about retirement withdrawal strategies like VPW, Guardrails, bond tents, and even Bengen’s revised 4.7% rule—this post builds on that foundation with a health-focused lens.
I’ve been pursuing Financial Independence for 7 years and writing about it for the last 3—sharing real-world strategies that have helped me and others make steady, tangible progress.
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How Your Health and Life Expectancy Should Shape Your Retirement Plan
Why Biological Age Matters in Retirement Planning
Retirement planning should be a deeply personal endeavor, yet most tools and rules out there treat us as identical spreadsheets. Many would-be retirees tend to follow the 4% rule (of thumb), which assumes a 30-year time horizon, regardless of our health status, genetics, or lifestyle.
But what if your retirement plan should reflect your biological age—not just your calendar age?
In today’s post, we’ll show you how to estimate your life expectancy using free online calculators—and how this estimate could reshape your retirement planning. We’ll assess how health influences both when you retire and how much you actually need through the popular Variable Percentage Withdrawal (VPW) strategy.
We’ll walk through four different retirement scenarios—from early retirees to traditional ones, healthy and unhealthy—to show that your biological age can shift your portfolio target dramatically. In some cases, this could mean retiring substantially earlier than expected or spending more confidently during your healthiest years.
Whether you’re planning for 15 or 50 years of retirement, aligning your strategy with your biological age—not just your birthdate and some average life expectancy table—can lead to smarter and more intentional decisions about your money, time, and lifestyle.
One way to meaningfully influence that biological age is through intentional health systems—what Bryan Johnson calls algorithmic living—where daily decisions around sleep, food, and habits are guided by structured rules rather than willpower.
Limitations of the 4% Rule for Modern Retirement Planning
The 4% rule is one of the most cited rules of thumb in retirement planning. Its simplicity is one of its main advantages—spend 4% of your portfolio during your first year of retirement, then adjust for inflation in each subsequent year.
The 4% rule (of thumb) is based on historical backtesting of market performance over 30-year periods. Given that it was designed to work under some of the worst conditions in history—like poor market returns combined with high inflation—it also represents a very conservative strategy for most traditional retirees. If you are facing a 30-year retirement period, you can likely increase your withdrawals with a less conservative approach to better enjoy the fruits of your labor.
That’s exactly the 4% rule’s limitation—it’s a one-size-fits-all rule meant for a fixed 30-year horizon. While the 4% rule assumes a 30-year horizon, adjusting it for your age and retirement timeline can give you a safer and more realistic withdrawal plan. In most cases, it also means you get to spend more of your hard-earned portfolio.
But in real life we are looking at very different retirement horizons—some people simply choose to retire early and others later. Some pursue FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) and wish to retire in their mid 40s, while others enjoy their job so much they may stay on until 70.
What does your current health and lifestyle look like? The answer to this question affects importantly your retirement timeline. Diet is a key factor influencing longevity. Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash.
If you’re in the first camp, you may be facing a 40-50 year retirement horizon. As we’ve covered previously, longer retirement periods are exposed to Sequence of Return Risk (SORR). In a nutshell, SORR means the order of investment returns—especially early in retirement—matters more than the average return, as early losses can permanently derail your portfolio.
It’s common practice to take steps to mitigate SORR, either by implementing more conservative safe withdrawal rates (e.g., 3.5%) or by using bond tents.
In contrast, consider a 70-year-old retiree that has a 15-25 year retirement timeline to consider. Given that the 4% was “designed” to withstand the worst periods over a 30 year period, implementing it in this case may be extremely conservative—you’d not only be leaving money on the table, but you could have also retired many years earlier while you were still young and healthy.
The bottomline is that applying the 4% rule blindly might lead you to take on unnecessary risk—or hoard money you’ll never need to spend. That’s where dynamic withdrawal strategies like VPW or Guardrails come in—VPW adjusts spending based on age and portfolio size, while Guardrails adjusts based on portfolio performance and market conditions.
These approaches aren’t magical solutions, but safeguards designed to help you avoid two major pitfalls—either overspending during a downturn or hoarding your money well past your biological peak. In the following sections, we’ll revisit both approaches because they allow to build a retirement plan that responds to the reality we live in—both financially and biologically.
Whether you’re young and healthy or face health challenges, these strategies will provide a practical mental model for aligning your spending with both market conditions and your personal health horizon.
Santorini, Greece. Greece was highlighted in Netflix’s latest show on Blue Zones as a hotspot for centenarians. In addition to our individual lifestyle, location, culture, and social norms also impact our health. We recently covered some of the best “Blue Zone” locations to retire early and stretch both your healthspan and budget. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.
Estimating Your Retirement Horizon with Life Expectancy Calculators
To make this exercise concrete, I ran three life expectancy calculators: the Blue Zones calculator, Northwestern Mutual’s LifeSpan Calculator, and Livingto100.com. If you’re a regular reader on our site, you know I’m interested in Blue Zones—we’ve even covered in the past how you could retire earlier and healthier by relocating to a Blue Zone in retirement.
It’s interesting to see that most life expectancy calculators use different questions and models to estimate your life expectancy. All three are free, take five minutes to complete, and consider factors like BMI, exercise, diet, stress, and family history. Despite their different methodologies, they gave me remarkably similar results: 93, 93.1, and 94 years.
While there are things I can still do better—this is really motivating to see. I do try to implement a healthy routine in my lifestyle. In the long term, I do see health as an important pillar of The Good Life Journey—we should be optimizing for wealth, happiness, and health.
It’s striking to see my life expectancy could be 17 years longer than the US male life expectancy average (75.8 years; 81.1 years for females). This also means I face a retirement timeline 17 years longer than a traditional retiree.
The takeaway is that choosing the right life expectancy for retirement planning is crucial—and tools like these can help you move beyond averages and tailor a more accurate financial horizon. Using these tools gives us a more nuanced estimate of how long our money needs to last and what strategy is best to implement to avoid either running out of money or passing with too much unspent.
For a very healthy 45-year-old early retiree, a 50-year retirement timeline is a real possibility. On the flip side, for someone with a chronic health condition and a family history of early death, the realistic planning horizon could be only 20 years.
In this post, we’ll use the 94 estimate as our “healthy” scenario for both the early and traditional retiree. For “unhealthy” cases we’ll conservatively assume a life expectancy of 75—again, this is the average male life expectancy in the US. The contrast between these scenarios will show how we can adjust our portfolio target up or down depending on our personal situation.
High quality sleep is tied to longer life expectancy. A stressful life of grinding away at your desk is not. Photo by iam_os on Unsplash.
* Further Reading – Article continues below *
What Die With Zero Teaches Us About Timing Retirement
In Die With Zero, Bill Perkins challenges the traditional career path of working very hard over 30-40 years so we can enjoy life later. It’s not only that nearly 80% of workers don’t find fulfillment in their jobs, but also about the model itself. He argues we’re simply waiting too long to retire and to enjoy life—only to find our health, energy, and curiosity fading by the time we finally step away from our careers.
Two solutions to this problem—amongst others—could be to pursue FIRE aggressively and retire very young, say in your mid-40s. You then have the energy, time, and financial resources required to pursue meaningful experiences—whatever these mean to you. If you’re wondering what those experiences could actually look like, here’s how to design a fulfilling and meaningful life after early retirement.
A second approach could be to pursue a softer approach to FIRE, say BaristaFIRE, balancing a slightly longer career, but one characterized by part-time and lower stress work.
Either way, we should consider our health and biological age to make life decisions, including when to retire and how long a retirement to plan for. I think this idea resonates with many in the FI community—after all, most of us are trying to maximize for freedom, autonomy, and joy. If your biological age suggests a very short window of health, then you probably shouldn’t be overworking in pursuit of a retirement nest egg you may never fully enjoy. Instead, it’s worth exploring how to create purpose and structure for the years you do have in early retirement.
It can be a wake-up call for high earners or late FI starters who feel a bit “behind”. If you’re 55 with only 10–15 healthy years left, is it worth to grind for another decade to hit a theoretically perfect FIRE number? Often, running a few alternative scenarios with variable spending rules and flexibility can show you may already have enough—or at least that you may be much closer than you think.
To make this concrete, let’s look at how the Variable Percentage Withdrawal (VPW) strategy performs across different combinations of age and health. This will help to illustrate both points: how your biological age may influence when you decide to retire, and how much money you’ll actually need to support your lifestyle.
What does your lifestyle look like? How physically active are you? What does your diet look like? Is sleep a key priority for you? Are you engaged in your local community? Embracing healthy lifestyles can lead to significantly longer lives. Photo by Colin Moldenhauer on Unsplash.
Using VPW to Compare 4 Retirement Scenarios by Health & Age
To illustrate how much biological age can influence retirement planning, we’ll test four types of retirees using the VPW strategy—highlighting how life expectancy and health status can dramatically alter your financial needs. We’ll also examine how the results compare to each other and to the classic 4% rule (of thumb).
These are the four main scenarios—each of which is presented with VPW and Guardrails.
Early Retiree in Good Health (age 45, life expectancy 94)
Early Retiree in Poor Health (age 45, life expectancy 75)
Traditional Retiree in Good Health (age 60, life expectancy 94)
Traditional Retiree in Poor Health (age 60, life expectancy 75)
For each of these, we’ll assume a desired annual spend in retirement of $60,000. That allows us to test what portfolio size is required using the VPW method, with the retirement timeline determined by expected biological age. We’ll use the Bogleheads VPW tables (tab “Tables”) to estimate first-year withdrawal rates, then back-calculate the necessary portfolio size.
As we’ll see, those with lower life expectancy may need far less than what the 4% rule suggests—potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars less. Meanwhile, a healthy 45-year-old will require a larger portfolio to sustain a longer retirement—but still one that requires less than the rigid 4% approach.
Building community and having meaningful relationships is an important predictor of a longer life. Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash.
VPW Results for Early Retirees: Healthy vs Unhealthy
As observed in Table 1 below, a healthy early retiree (Scenario 1) could theoretically withdraw 4.8% of their portfolio in the first year of retirement. In this first scenario, the 45-year-old, healthy retiree is looking at a 49-year retirement timeline, assuming a 94-year life expectancy. Using the VPW tables (tab “Tables”) provided by the Bogleheads community, and considering a 80/20 stocks-to-bonds portfolio, the VPW approach would allow to use an initial 4.8% withdrawal rate.
For a $60,000 annual spend in retirement that would mean targeting a portfolio of $1,250,000 ($60,000/0.048), substantially less than what the 4% rule would suggest ($1.5M). Remember, though, that the VPW approach increases its withdrawal rate over time, but the actual amount withdrawn depends on portfolio size—if there is a large market downturn, you are required to be fairly flexible in your spending to follow this approach.
The same unhealthy early retiree (Scenario 2) looking at a 75 year life expectancy could target an even larger initial Safe Withdrawal Rate—5.8%, and an associated portfolio of $1,035,000. As observed, this scenario could potentially target a nest egg that is over $200,000 less than the healthier version of the early retiree—and nearly $0.5M less than the 4% rule.
These two early retiree scenarios highlight just how much your health and expected longevity can shape your retirement plan. A healthier lifestyle requires a higher savings rate; not as punishment, but simply because it buys you more years—in this case, almost 2 decades—to enjoy.
Table 1: Retirement portfolio targets for different scenarios (age, health, and retirement horizon)
| Scenario | Age | Life Expectancy | Retirement Horizon | VPW % (Year 1) | Target Portfolio | 4% Rule Equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Early Retiree, Good Health | 45 | 94 | 49 years | 4.8% | $1,250,000 | $1,500,000 |
| Early Retiree, Poor Health | 45 | 75 | 30 years | 5.8% | $1,035,000 | $1,500,000 |
| Traditional Retiree, Good Health | 60 | 94 | 34 years | 5.5% | $1,100,000 | $1,500,000 |
| Traditional Retiree, Poor Health | 60 | 75 | 15 years | 6.8% | $680,000 | $1,500,000 |
VPW Results for Traditional Retirees: Healthy vs Unhealthy
Now let’s shift to traditional retirees starting at age 60. Our 60-year-old traditional retiree in good health (Scenario 3) has a projected life expectancy of 94, which gives us a 34-year retirement horizon. According to the VPW table for an 80/20 portfolio, that corresponds to an initial withdrawal rate of 5.5%. To fund a $60,000 annual spend, this retiree would need a portfolio of approximately $1,100,000—again, much less than the $1.5M required under the 4% rule.
Finally, Scenario 4 represents a 60-year-old in poor health with a life expectancy of 75, implying a 15-year retirement. The VPW table allows a much higher withdrawal rate of 6.8% in this case, meaning the same $60,000 annual spend could be supported with just $680,000—over $800,000 less than the 4% rule would suggest.
Some of the differences with the 4% are really remarkable—think about the amount of years you may have “thrown away” in your job if you’re the unhealthy 60 year old targeting something similar to the 4% approach.
How VPW Helps Right-Size Your Retirement Portfolio
All four of these VPW-backed scenarios reinforce the same idea: retirement strategy shouldn’t begin with an arbitrary target portfolio—it should begin with your body. Health and expected longevity are key financial factors.
For early retirees, more years translate to more runway to cover—requiring comparatively larger portfolios and more careful planning. In contrast, for older retirees or those in poor health, the flexibility of VPW can free you to spend more confidently without hoarding money out of fear.
Interestingly, in all scenarios VPW produced lower portfolio targets than the commonly-cited 4% rule—sometimes by many hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It’s important to remember that while VPW increases your withdrawal percentage as you age, it doesn’t explicitly model the fact that most retirees spend less in their later years—a trend often referred to as the "Retirement Spending Smile". This is normally the case even after considering the relatively high end-of-life costs many retirees face.
If you think some of the withdrawal rates above look too aggressive, remember that people tend to slow down over time, travel less, and simplify their lifestyles in their mid-70s. That means that even VPW projections have a healthy buffer inside them and may be more conservative than many people think.
This entire approach aligns fairly well with the Die With Zero mindset, which prioritizes intentional spending that reflects your actual life horizon. Rather than following extreme delayed gratification—common in some corners of the FIRE community—or endlessly accumulating wealth for vague “just in case” scenarios, VPW encourages tailoring your plan to match your health, time, and energy.
According to Bill Perkins, our business in life should be to focus on the maximization of experiences and memories. Perkin’s Die With Zero emphasizes strongly the importance of taking care of your health to maximize our fulfillment of life. Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash.
Increasing your Safe Withdrawal Rate doesn’t have to be about recklessness, but about aligning your biological timeline with your spending. If your biological timeline is shorter, you should have permission to spend more now or retire sooner.
It’s also worth remembering that the original 4% was built on a very specific (and conservative) foundation—a 30-year retirement horizon and a portfolio of only US large-cap stocks and intermediate-term bonds. The creator, William Bengen, has recently revised his stance in recent years to a 4.7% rule (of thumb), based on a broader asset-class diversification.
One of the downsides of VPW is that the annual withdrawals in retirement respond directly to the stock market performance. Despite allowing for larger withdrawal rates, if you experience a stock market 30% decline, you may have to strongly reduce your spending to comply with VPW’s tables.
One solution could be to add a guardrails framework to your VPW baseline to help smooth out the spending volatility. It gives you permission to spend more when markets are strong, while helping you rein it in during downturns—without veering too far off course.
Bringing It All Together: Planning Retirement by Health Span
These VPW-backed scenarios make one thing clear: retirement planning isn’t just a numbers game, but a personal equation grounded in your health, lifestyle, and values.
Whether you’re 45 or 60, in perfect or declining health, the message is the same: your biological age should inform both when you retire and how much you actually need. Planning for a 30-year retirement when your health and family record suggests 15 years can lead to unnecessary overworking.
This is where flexible approaches like VPW can be useful. They offer a more precise, life-aligned framework than fixed rules like the traditional 4%. Not only do they better reflect your timeline, they also adjust as you age—granting you permission to use your hard-earned money more intentionally.
You can also add a bond tent to a VPW strategy to further reduce sequence risk—though doing so often delays retirement slightly, as you’ll need to save more upfront.
If you're worried about spending volatility that can occur with VPW, e.g., during market downturns, other approaches like the Guyton-Klinger Guardrails method can complement VPW. You’d still use your biological timeline to set a base withdrawal, but add bands that tell you when to increase or decrease spending in response to market performance. Guardrails would be used to smooth the spending volatility in retirement versus following blindly the VPW tables.
Algarve region, Portugal. Looking to retire early abroad? Check out or ranking of best destinations to retire early in Europe. Photo by Artem Zhukov on Unsplash.
Following a higher initial withdrawal rate—like the ones suggested by VPW—may feel bold if you're used to the ultra-conservative mindset common in the FIRE community. In many FIRE forums, folks routinely advocate for 3-3.5% safe withdrawal rates.
But the withdrawal rates presented here aren’t reckless. In fact, when combined with the well-documented “Retirement Spending Smile,” where spending naturally declines in older age, these dynamic strategies may still be quite conservative over the long run.
Ultimately, the entire discussion of considering your biological age in retirement planning aligns with the Die With Zero mindset: don’t defer all your joy and experiences to an uncertain future. Design instead a plan that matches your expected horizon, your energy, and vision of a meaningful life. Here’s one approach to envisioning what your days could actually look like once you step away from work.
💬 I'd love to hear your thoughts—how are you considering your health in your retirement planning and withdrawal strategy? Was anything in today’s post unclear? Please let us know in the comments!
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🌿 Thanks for reading The Good Life Journey. I share weekly insights on money, purpose, and health, to help you build a life that compounds meaning over time. If this resonates, join readers from over 100 countries and subscribe to access our free FI tools and newsletter.
Don’t miss our articles on the Retirement Spending Smile or how retirees actually spend less as they age, or our Bogle-inspired post on how to invest your hard-won savings. Didn’t find what you were looking for? Check out our latest articles below.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
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Rather than relying on a single estimate or national average, use several life expectancy calculators—like Livingto100, Blue Zones, and Northwestern Mutual. Each asks different questions and captures unique aspects of your health and lifestyle. Averaging their results provides a more personalized and realistic planning horizon.
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Biological age reflects your body’s health and expected longevity—not just the number on your birth certificate. It can help you determine how long your money needs to last and whether you can retire earlier or spend more confidently based on your personal health outlook.
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While 3–3.5% is popular in some FIRE circles, it’s often overly conservative—especially for those with shorter retirement horizons or who adjust spending over time. In fact, our analysis shows that even 4% can lead to underspending. Using flexible strategies like Guardrails or VPW, which adapts withdrawals based on age and portfolio size, can allow for higher—and more realistic—rates without being reckless.
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It’s still a useful starting point, but it was built using a conservative 30-year model and a narrow set of assets. Even its creator, William Bengen, has revised the number upward to 4.7% based on broader diversification. Many people now combine it with more dynamic strategies like VPW or Guardrails.
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Variable Percentage Withdrawal (VPW) adjusts how much you withdraw from your portfolio each year based on your age and remaining life expectancy. The withdrawal percentage increases as you age, reflecting a shorter time horizon. It offers a flexible, life-aligned alternative to fixed rules.
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Yes—research shows that spending typically declines in later retirement due to reduced travel, lower consumption, and fewer discretionary expenses. This “retirement spending smile” means that dynamic plans like VPW may already contain a built-in buffer in later years.
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If you’re concerned about market drops forcing big spending cuts under VPW, you can add a Guardrails approach. This creates upper and lower spending bands based on portfolio performance—allowing for smoother adjustments without veering off course or reacting emotionally to short-term downturns.
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Based on a 45-year-old retiree in good health with a projected life expectancy of 94, our analysis using the VPW method suggests a first-year withdrawal rate of 4.8%. This reflects a 49-year retirement horizon and assumes an 80/20 portfolio. While higher than the 4% rule, it remains grounded in longevity-adjusted planning and requires spending flexibility during downturns.
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For a 60-year-old retiree with health concerns and a life expectancy of 75, the VPW framework indicates a much higher safe withdrawal rate of 6.8%. That reflects a 15-year retirement horizon—significantly shorter than the 30 years assumed in the 4% rule. This allows for more confident spending earlier on, especially if passing on a large legacy isn't a key goal.
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