You Saved for 40 Years. 48% of Retirees Have No Plan for Spending It. Here’s What a Plan Looks Like.

Two surveys published this year describe the same problem from different angles. The Allianz Center for the Future of Retirement 2026 Annual Retirement Study found that 48% of Americans have no written financial plan, and Corebridge Financial’s June 2026 research reported that only 29% of pre-retirees age 55 and older have a plan for withdrawing money from their retirement accounts. The saving problem is one thing. The spending problem is the one nobody rehearses. After 40 years of contributions, roughly half of retirees reach the finish line without instructions for what happens next.

The hesitation shows up in behavior. Corebridge found that only 28% of respondents are comfortable with the idea of their retirement savings declining to the point that they can no longer cover living expenses, and 38% of retirees say they have spent less than they wanted to preserve the size of their nest egg. When asked which outcome they would regret more, 56% chose running out of money while still alive, versus 6% who worried about dying with money left over. A decade of saved-up experiences gets postponed indefinitely because the withdrawal math was never done.

Why the Fear Is Rational

The macro backdrop makes the hesitation understandable. The Consumer Price Index reached 335.1 in May 2026, the high point of the trailing 12-month period, and Core PCE inflation is 3.4% on a 12-month basis. The LSEG/Ipsos Primary Consumer Sentiment Index reads 49.6 as of May 2026, stable from the previous month but reflecting a cautious outlook. Retirees on fixed incomes are watching their purchasing power erode in real time, which raises the practical value of having a spending plan.

What a Spending Plan Actually Covers

A written retirement spending plan answers four questions that the account balance itself does not.

1. The income target. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the average U.S. household spent $78,535 in 2024. A plan starts by translating that baseline into a personal number in today’s dollars, then applies an inflation assumption.
2. The Social Security decision. The 2026 cost-of-living adjustment was set at 2.8%. Because COLA compounds on whatever benefit level is chosen, the age at which benefits are claimed permanently changes the size of the inflation-adjusted paycheck.
3. The withdrawal sequence. Which accounts get drawn first, and in what order, determines the tax bracket each year of retirement. Corebridge found that only 14% of retirees have a detailed strategy for managing their Required Minimum Distributions.
4. The safe-income floor. The 10-year Treasury yields 4.55% as of July 7, 2026, and the 30-year sits at 5.05%. A laddered mix of Treasuries and CDs, with the FDIC national average 12-month CD at 1.65% APY and top online banks paying multiples of that, can cover essential expenses that Social Security does not.

The withdrawal-rate debate matters here, too. The classic 4% guideline was written for a different rate environment, and the person who invented it has since revised his own thinking. A closer look at how those assumptions hold up today is covered in The 4% Rule Is Broken, which walks through the mechanics for anyone building a withdrawal schedule from scratch.

Turning the Balance Into a Paycheck

Social Security transfer receipts reached $1,630.3 billion in the first quarter of 2026, and Medicare receipts reached $1,301.0 billion. For most retirees, those two programs form the base. A spending plan layers personal savings on top to fill the gap between guaranteed income and the amount the household actually spends.

Three concrete steps close the planning gap for households in the 48%. First, write down a monthly retirement budget in today’s dollars, using current expenses as the baseline. Second, map each expense category to an income source: Social Security, pension, RMDs, taxable brokerage, Roth. Third, build a two- to three-year cash and short Treasury reserve so that a bad market in year three does not force the sale of equities at a loss. A written plan is what turns the account into a paycheck. The gap between the balance and the paycheck it is supposed to produce is where the missing 48% live.

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