You can do everything right for 20 years of saving and still get retirement withdrawals wrong in a way you never see coming.
Often, the biggest risk in retirement isn’t a bad year in the market — it’s a bad year happening at the wrong time.
Two investors can retire with identical portfolios and identical average returns over 25 years and still end up in completely different financial positions, with one comfortably sustaining their lifestyle and the other running out of money years early. The difference isn’t skill, luck or even market performance. It’s timing.
This is exactly what Session 3 of our upcoming AAII Retirement Workshop with Craig Israelsen, Ph.D., is built to address.
In our last two emails, we covered how to spot hidden redundancy in your portfolio (Session 1) and what diversification is actually designed to do (Session 2).
Session 3 brings it all together by showing you how to turn that understanding into a withdrawal strategy you can trust using real historical data instead of guesswork.
Session 3: How to safely withdraw money without stressing out
This session introduces Israelsen’s proprietary Retirement Portfolio Analyzer (RPA) — a tool built to answer the question every retiree eventually asks: “Will my money actually last?”
Israelsen will walk through:
A live demonstration of the RPA, analyzing diversified retirement models over rolling 25-year periods
How to build a realistic retirement budget you can plan around
How sequence-of-returns risk affects different asset allocation models — and why it matters more than average returns
Inflation-adjusted withdrawal results, so you’re planning with real purchasing power in mind, not just nominal numbers
Three live sessions with Israelsen, walking you through portfolio redundancy, true diversification and safe withdrawal strategies, step by step
Downloadable resources and materials you can reference time and time again as you plan and adjust your own retirement portfolio
Lifetime access to every recording and resource so you can revisit any session, anytime, at your own pace
Live Q&A with Israelsen, where you’ll get a chance to receive direct, personalized answers about how these concepts apply to your specific situation
A repeatable framework, not just a one-time lesson, with tools and thinking you’ll use to evaluate your portfolio for years to come
Retirement Workshop Details
Format: 3 live sessions + Q&A, small-group format
Dates: Thursdays, July 16 – July 30
Time: 1:00 p.m. Central Time
Session duration: 1 hour and 15 minutes
Includes: Lifetime access to all recordings and materials
Price: $99 — limited to a select group of investors
Retirement doesn’t just ask you to be right once. In fact, it asks you to be right for 20, 30 and sometimes even 40 years in a row, without the benefit of a do-over. A market downturn in your accumulation years is an inconvenience you have time to recover from. That same downturn hitting in your first few years of retirement can permanently reshape how long your money lasts, even if your average returns end up being exactly what you expected.
That’s the part of retirement planning almost no one prepares for: It’s not the market you need to fear, it’s the moment you’re forced to sell into it. And by the time most people discover that this risk exists, they’re no longer in a position to plan around it. They’re living the consequences of it.
In just a few days, our Retirement Workshop begins. We hope you’ll be there.
What Israelsen plans to cover across these three distinct sessions has the potential to reshape how you think about your own retirement for decades to come.
Disclaimer: This workshop is for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment, financial or tax advice. AAII does not recommend any specific securities, funds or investment strategies. Craig Israelsen, Ph.D., is presenting as an educator and researcher, and his comments do not constitute personalized investment advice. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
We make no representations or warranties that any investor will, or is likely to, achieve profits similar to those shown, because past, hypothetical or simulated performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. Before making an investment decision, you should consider your circumstances and whether the information on our content is applicable to your situation. This information was prepared in good faith and we accept no liability for any errors or omissions. The full disclaimer can be read here.
