Episode
Have $1M-$30M? DON'T use the 4% rule
- Podcast
- Managing Tech Millions
- Published
- Aug 25, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 853
- Processing state
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- http://www.managingtechmillions.com/
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Summary
In 2012 I had millions in the bank and no income strategy. Every advisor told me the same thing: 60/40 portfolio, 4% rule, you're set for life. Then I went and read the research behind that rule. It comes from a 1994 study, and what it leaves out is the thing that can end a retirement in the first three years. So I spent the next decade studying how ultra-wealthy families actually pay for their lives. I interviewed Chief Investment Officers at Single Family Offices and took their portfolio structures apart. What I found made me angry. The strategy isn't complicated. It's been kept quiet by firms charging you 1% a year to sit in the same cookie-cutter portfolio they sell someone with $500K. Families with generational wealth follow one rule about their assets, and everything else is built around it. Follow it and a 30% market drop stops being a threat to your retirement. In this video I walk through the structure I built, what my own numbers looked like the year I walked away at 51, and the four steps I'd take if I were starting from scratch today.