&gt; Not for over a century, including the Great Depression and the .com crash, according to various studies as well as publically available data from which anyone can make the same calculations. Evidence, please?<p>1) Even the author of the study doesn&#x27;t say what MMM does in regards to the 4% rule.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bogleheads.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Safe_withdrawal_rates#Limitations_of_the_Trinity_study" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bogleheads.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Safe_withdrawal_rates#Limitat...</a>
<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bogleheads.org&#x2F;forum&#x2F;viewtopic.php?p=717195#p717195" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bogleheads.org&#x2F;forum&#x2F;viewtopic.php?p=717195#p7171...</a><p>&gt; &quot;The word planning is emphasized because of the great uncertainties in the stock and bond markets. Mid-course corrections likely will be required, with the actual dollar amounts withdrawn adjusted downward or upward relative to the plan. The investor needs to keep in mind that selection of a withdrawal rate is not a matter of contract but rather a matter of planning.&quot;<p>&gt; What the &quot;4% SWR&quot; means is not that you can treat a portfolio as if it were a guaranteed annuity.<p>2) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ideas.repec.org&#x2F;p&#x2F;ngi&#x2F;dpaper&#x2F;10-12.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ideas.repec.org&#x2F;p&#x2F;ngi&#x2F;dpaper&#x2F;10-12.html</a><p>&gt; . From an international perspective, a 4 percent real withdrawal rate is surprisingly risky. Even with some overly optimistic assumptions, it would have only provided &quot;safety&quot; in 4 of the 17 countries. A fixed asset allocation split evenly between stocks and bonds would have failed at some point in all 17 countries.<p>3) <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usatoday.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;money&#x2F;personalfinance&#x2F;2014&#x2F;11&#x2F;08&#x2F;cnbc-four-percent-withdrawal-retirement-rule&#x2F;18509395&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usatoday.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;money&#x2F;personalfinance&#x2F;2014&#x2F;11&#x2F;...</a><p>4) Even if you believed in the 4% rule, it was designed for 30 years. Long periods raises the failure rates.<p>etc.<p>You need to realize the 4% rule is a cute thing that journalists latched onto in the 90s and was never intended to provide 100% coverage. It also has a non-zero failure rate. Under certain market conditions it does fail. Pretending it doesn&#x27;t is silly and even in the Trinity paper it is stated its not 100% reliable.<p>I&#x27;m really not going to get into the rest of it since you don&#x27;t even know the basics of what you are talking about and I&#x27;ve wasted enough time arguing with you.<p>What you fail to grasp, and what I am pretty sure you are going to refuse to believe at this point, is the 4% rule applied as you and MMM are suggesting is the same trap of overfitting that many people who engage in backtesting do.<p>If you are not in the historical US, you have a success rate of ~23% with the 4% rule. Even the US? Is not the historical US. Its a new entity that is not guaranteed to perform 100% identically to the historical entity.<p>Best of luck to you, believe what you want, I honestly don&#x27;t care.<p>I get that you want to believe a bunch of optimistic assumptions about reality but the reality is, they are optimistic.