"David Blanchett of Morningstar ... finds in reality, real retiree spending decreases slowly in the early years, more rapidly in the middle years, and then less slowly in the final years, in a path that looks less like a slow and steady decline and more like a 'retirement spending smile' instead.... The implications of this research are not only that financial planners should be more cognizant to assume some level of real spending decreases throughout retirement ... but also that the traditional research may be somewhat overestimating the amount of funds needed to retire in the first place, as a lower average spending level across all the retirement years means it simply may not take quite as much to retire as is typically assumed or modeled in a typical financial plan!"  MORE >>