There’s a point in retirement planning when the question changes.
For most of your working life, the question is straightforward: Am I saving enough?
You work. You save. You invest. You avoid unnecessary risks. And, over time, those habits help you build something substantial.
Then retirement arrives, and the question becomes very different: Can I actually use this money without worrying that I’ll regret it later?
For some retirees, that question is surprisingly difficult to answer.
The financial plan may say they’re fine. Their investments may be substantial. Social Security and pension income may cover a meaningful portion of their expenses.
Even after accounting for healthcare, inflation, taxes, market downturns, and a long retirement, the numbers may still show plenty of financial flexibility.
Yet the fear remains.
What if we live longer than expected?
What if the market falls?
What if healthcare becomes more expensive?
What if our kids eventually need help?
What if something happens that we haven’t thought about yet?
Those aren’t unreasonable questions. In fact, asking them is part of responsible retirement planning.
Research from the Society of Actuaries continues to show that running out of assets, inflation, healthcare costs, and unexpected financial shocks remain meaningful concerns for retirees.
However, there comes a point when prudence can quietly turn into paralysis.
And when that happens, the biggest risk to your retirement may no longer be running out of money.
It may be reaching the end of retirement with plenty of money left, but too many things you never gave yourself permission to do.
The Habit That Built Your Wealth Doesn’t Automatically Retire With You
There’s a reason this transition can be so difficult.
The behaviors that helped many successful families accumulate wealth are almost the exact opposite of the behaviors retirement eventually requires.
For decades, the formula was simple.
Earn more than you spend. Save the difference. Invest it. Leave it alone. Repeat.
Every dollar you didn’t spend strengthened your financial position.
Then one day, retirement asks you to reverse a habit that may have been reinforced for 30 or 40 years.
Now you’re supposed to withdraw money from accounts you spent decades filling.
You’re supposed to book the trip rather than save for someday.
You’re supposed to help your children or grandchildren while you’re alive rather than simply leave everything behind.
And you’re supposed to trust that spending money today won’t somehow jeopardize tomorrow.
That’s a big psychological shift.
One useful way to understand that tension comes from research on what psychologists and financial therapists call money scripts.
Money scripts are underlying beliefs about money that can influence the financial decisions we make.
Researchers Bradley Klontz, Sonya Britt, Jennifer Mentzer, and Ted Klontz originally identified four broad patterns: money avoidance, money worship, money status, and money vigilance.
More recent research examining the revised Money Script Inventory continues to find support for those four categories.
For the kind of retiree we’re talking about here, money vigilance is particularly interesting.
Being vigilant about money isn’t inherently bad.
Quite the opposite.
Being careful, prepared, private about finances, and concerned about maintaining adequate savings can support many of the behaviors that help someone build wealth in the first place.
That’s why I wouldn’t look at this as something that suddenly needs to be “fixed” when you retire.
The problem is that a belief can continue doing its old job long after your circumstances have changed.
The voice that once said, We need to save because we don’t have enough yet, may still be saying the same thing after you’ve accumulated enough to fund the retirement you planned.
The circumstances changed.
The script didn’t.
The Numbers Can Say Yes While Your Instincts Still Say No
I see variations of this tension regularly in financial planning conversations.
Someone will tell me that one of their primary goals is making sure they never run out of money.
That makes sense.
So, we build the plan around that concern. We model retirement income.
We evaluate investment risk.
We account for healthcare.
We build cash reserves. We examine taxes and withdrawal strategies. Then we stress-test the plan against different assumptions.
And once we’ve established what needs to be protected, we can begin asking a different set of questions.
Could you travel more?
Could you comfortably spend a little more each month?
Could you take the bigger family vacation?
Could you help your children or grandchildren today?
Could you replace the car, renovate the house, or make another large purchase without undermining the rest of the plan?
Sometimes we’ll model those scenarios too.
And occasionally, something interesting happens.
The plan still works.
Yet the client remains hesitant.
At that point, we’re no longer dealing primarily with a math problem.
We’re dealing with the emotional residue of a lifetime spent protecting against the possibility of not having enough.
That’s where the money-script concept becomes useful.
A projection can show us whether a particular level of spending appears financially sustainable. However, it can’t automatically erase a belief about money that’s been reinforced for most of someone’s adult life.
That’s an important distinction because another spreadsheet may not solve a problem the spreadsheet has already answered.
When “Enough” Never Feels Like Enough
One of the most difficult questions in wealth management is deceptively simple: How much is enough?
There’s almost always another level of financial security available.
If $2 million feels safe, perhaps $3 million would feel safer.
If $3 million feels comfortable, perhaps $4 million would remove the uncertainty.
Then $4 million becomes $5 million.
The finish line can keep moving because the real objective was never a particular portfolio value. It was the feeling of certainty that the portfolio was supposed to provide.
Unfortunately, money can reduce uncertainty, but it can’t eliminate it.
You can’t know exactly how long you’ll live.
You can’t know what markets will do every year.
You can’t know exactly what healthcare will cost.
And you certainly can’t anticipate every financial need your family may have over the next several decades.
A good financial plan accounts for uncertainty. It doesn’t pretend uncertainty can be eliminated.
That distinction matters.
Otherwise, you can continue accumulating more financial security while never actually feeling more secure.
Why Spending From the Portfolio Can Feel So Different
There’s another wrinkle here.
Not all money feels the same when it’s time to spend it.
Research by David Blanchett and Michael Finke using Health and Retirement Study data found that retirees consumed a much larger percentage of available lifetime income, such as Social Security and pension income, than they did from accumulated savings.
Their findings suggest that retirees’ willingness to spend can depend partly on how the money reaches them.
That makes intuitive sense.
A Social Security check arrives and feels like income.
A pension payment arrives and feels like income.
But taking $10,000 out of an IRA can feel very different.
You’ve watched that account grow for decades. You’ve been taught not to touch it. You’ve probably celebrated when the balance went up and worried when it went down.
Now your retirement plan is telling you that the account exists, at least in part, to be spent.
Financially, that may be completely rational.
Emotionally, it can feel like moving backward.
And that’s why the transition from accumulation to retirement can’t be treated as purely a portfolio-management exercise.
Consider the Couple Who Keeps Saying “Maybe Next Year”
Imagine a retired couple who has done almost everything right.
They saved consistently.
They invested prudently.
They avoided excessive debt.
Their retirement income is coordinated. They maintain appropriate reserves. And their portfolio gives them considerably more flexibility than their basic lifestyle requires.
For years, they’ve talked about traveling more in retirement.
They’ve also talked about helping their grandchildren while they’re young enough to see what that help makes possible.
Yet every year, the conversation sounds roughly the same.
Maybe we’ll take the trip next year.
Maybe we should wait before giving the kids anything.
Maybe the market will be better.
Maybe we should keep a little more in reserve.
So, the money stays invested.
Another year passes.
Then another.
Nothing is necessarily wrong with that decision. Some people genuinely prefer spending less. Others intentionally want to leave a larger estate. Those are perfectly legitimate choices.
The question is why the decision is being made.
Is keeping the money part of the plan?
Or does spending it simply feel dangerous?
Those are two very different things.
This is a composite example based on recurring themes I’ve encountered in financial planning conversations. It doesn’t represent the circumstances of any one client.
Your Financial Plan Should Help Separate Fear From Fact
This is where I think financial planning can play a role that goes beyond calculating a withdrawal rate.
The purpose isn’t to convince someone to spend more money.
It’s to help separate three things that can easily get mixed together: what needs to be protected, what the financial plan can reasonably support, and what fear is preventing you from doing.
First, we have to protect what matters.
That means understanding your recurring lifestyle needs, maintaining appropriate reserves, considering healthcare and long-term care risks, evaluating taxes, testing the portfolio against difficult markets, and accounting for the legacy you actually want to leave.
Those aren’t fears to dismiss.
They’re planning problems to address.
Then, once we’ve established those guardrails, we can test what’s possible.
What happens if travel spending increases?
What happens if you help the family today instead of leaving all of the money later?
What happens if you spend more during the early years of retirement?
What happens if markets disappoint us?
What happens if inflation remains higher than expected?
The objective isn’t to figure out the maximum amount you could possibly spend.
It’s to understand the range of choices available to you without putting the priorities we’ve already protected at unnecessary risk.
Then comes the harder part.
If the plan says you can afford something and you still can’t bring yourself to do it, it’s worth asking:
What am I actually afraid will happen?
That’s a different question than, “Can I afford it?”
And sometimes, it’s the more important one.
The Goal Wasn’t Just to Accumulate
This matters because retirement isn’t simply the final stage of an accumulation plan.
It’s the stage when some of the money finally gets to do the job you spent decades preparing it to do.
Perhaps that job is providing financial independence.
Perhaps it’s creating experiences with your spouse while you’re both healthy.
Perhaps it’s helping children or grandchildren at a time when the money could materially change their lives.
Perhaps it’s giving more to organizations you care about.
Or perhaps it’s simply creating the ability to make ordinary financial decisions without worrying that one purchase will somehow undo 40 years of disciplined saving.
Research on retirement spending gives us some reason to pay attention to this issue.
Blanchett’s more recent work finds that inflation-adjusted household spending generally declines as retirement progresses, including among relatively well-funded households.
That doesn’t mean every retiree will spend less or that early retirement spending should automatically be increased.
However, it does challenge the assumption that every dollar preserved for later will necessarily have the same value to your life when later finally arrives.
At the same time, caution still matters. Research from EBRI shows that retirees face legitimate longevity and late-life financial risks, and asset-decumulation patterns vary considerably from household to household.
That’s why this isn’t an argument for reckless spending.
It’s an argument for intentional spending.
Give Yourself Permission to Trust the Plan
For some people, the hard part of retirement planning isn’t building the portfolio.
They’ve already done that.
The hard part is believing they no longer have to approach every dollar as though they’re still preparing for an uncertain future.
And that’s where I think good planning earns its keep.
The goal isn’t simply to produce a probability-of-success number and hand you a report.
It’s to help you understand what you can control, prepare for what you can’t, and make informed decisions about the life you want to live with the resources you’ve built.
Sometimes the plan will tell us to be careful.
Sometimes it will tell us to wait.
Sometimes we’ll need to change the investment strategy, reduce spending, increase reserves, or rethink a goal.
But sometimes the analysis has already done its job.
The risks have been considered.
The contingencies have been modeled.
The money is there.
And the thing standing between you and the life you planned isn’t the portfolio anymore.
It’s the fear that the portfolio was supposed to solve.
The goal was never to hold on tightest.
It was the freedom to use what you built.
So, name the fear. Understand where it may be coming from. Hold it up against the facts. Then give your financial plan permission to do something more than protect the money.
Let it help you use the money with purpose.
Because there comes a point when financial security isn’t just having enough.
It’s trusting that enough can finally be enough.
Sources
Klontz, Bradley T., Sonya L. Britt, Jennifer Mentzer, and Ted Klontz. “Money Beliefs and Financial Behaviors: Development of the Klontz Money Script Inventory.” Journal of Financial Therapy, Vol. 2, Issue 1, 2011.
https://journals.newprairiepress.org/jft/article/id/5669/download/pdf/
Reiter, Miranda, Jesse B. Jurgenson, and Dee Warmath. “Evaluating the Klontz Money Script Inventory-Revised (KMSI-R): Factorial Validity, Internal Consistency, and Measurement Invariance with a Diverse Sample.” Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 2025.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10834-025-10055-7
Blanchett, David, and Michael Finke. “Retirees Spend Lifetime Income, Not Savings.” Financial Planning Review, Vol. 8, Issue 3, 2025.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/cfp2.70010
Blanchett, David. “How Spending Evolves in Retirement: A Smile, a Smirk, or Something Else?” Financial Planning Review, 2026.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cfp2.70032
Society of Actuaries Research Institute. “2024 Retirement Risk Survey: Report of Findings.” Published 2026.
https://www.soa.org/globalassets/assets/files/resources/research-report/2024/2024-retirement-risk-survey-series-final-report.pd
Employee Benefit Research Institute. “Asset Decumulation Over Retirement and the Role of Guaranteed Income Streams.” EBRI Issue Brief, 2026.
https://www.ebri.org/content/asset-decumulation-over-retirement-and-the-role-of-guaranteed-income-streams