Will Your Money Last 30 Years? What Georgia Retirees Get Wrong About Longevity

Think 4% is still the safe amount to pull from your retirement savings every year?

It might not be.

The man who wrote that rule has moved his own number up, and the researchers stress-testing a 2026 retirement have moved theirs down.

These are the things Georgia retirees get wrong about how long the money has to last.

Note: This is general information, not financial or tax advice. Tax rules, benefit amounts, and dollar figures are subject to change, so confirm the current details with a professional.

1. Planning to the Average

Longevity planning usually starts with a number off a chart, and the chart is where the trouble begins.

A man reaching 65 this year can expect to live to 84.2, and a woman reaching 65 can expect 86.8, according to the Social Security Administration.

Those are averages, and a large share of people live well past them.

Of the women who reach 65, about one in three sees 90, and about one in seven sees 95, going by the agency’s own life table.

Georgians start from a lower baseline, with life expectancy in the state at 75.9 years against 77.5 for the country.

Your own number differs.

No table accounts for your family history, your blood pressure, or whether you ever smoked.

Build a plan that stops paying out at 85, and you’ve funded the shorter half of your own odds.

2. Running the Math for One

Whose life expectancy should a married couple plan around?

Running one life expectancy answers the wrong question.

For a healthy 65-year-old couple, there’s close to a 50% chance that at least one spouse reaches 95, going by the mortality tables insurers use to price lifetime income.

The runway is 30 years.

The money doesn’t get to stop when the first spouse dies because the survivor still needs the roof kept up, the car insured, and the Medicare premium covered.

So a plan has to fund the longer of two lives, never the average of them.

3. Treating 4% as Law

The 4% rule shows up in nearly every retirement conversation as though somebody carved it into a wall.

William Bengen built that rule in 1994 by testing a 30-year retirement against decades of market history, and he now puts the safe first-year withdrawal closer to 4.7%.

Morningstar went the other direction for anyone retiring in 2026, landing on 3.9% over a 30-year retirement with a 90% success rate.

It’s one rule with two different answers.

On a $700,000 balance, that spread is the difference between taking $32,900 in your first year and taking $27,300.

That’s $5,600 a year.

Both figures assume the money has to run 30 years, and that assumption matters more than the withdrawal rate does.

4. Ignoring the Order of Returns

Two retirees can earn the same average return across 30 years and end up in different places.

Sequence-of-returns risk is the plain name for that problem: The order of the good years and the bad years decides the outcome once you start pulling money out.

Charles Schwab ran the comparison with two $1 million portfolios, the same $50,000 first-year withdrawal, and the same 15% decline.

For one retiree, the drop hit in years one and two.

The second retiree didn’t see it until years 10 and 11.

Same decline, ten years apart, and the early portfolio was empty in roughly 18 years while the other still held close to $400,000.

The order did that.

5. Claiming at 62 by Reflex

Claiming Social Security the month you turn 62 feels like collecting early, and longevity is what makes that choice expensive.

About 1.5 million retired workers in Georgia collect a monthly benefit, and the age each of them claimed set that amount for good.

With a full retirement age of 67, that early check arrives at 70% of your full benefit, and it stays there.

Wait past 67, and the Social Security Administration adds 8% a year until 70, which brings you to 124%.

That gap never closes.

The larger check works as longevity insurance because it keeps arriving at 92 and at 96.

Social Security also figures every cost-of-living raise on that bigger base, so the head start compounds for as long as you live.

Claiming early makes sense when your health or your bank balance leaves you no choice.

It costs you the most if you end up living a long time.

6. Expecting Your COLA to Keep Up

A cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) sounds like it settles the inflation question for the next 30 years.

Social Security’s 2026 raise came in at 2.8%, worth about $56 a month for the average retired worker.

The standard Medicare Part B premium rose to $202.90 a month for 2026, up from $185.

Part B comes out of your Social Security payment before the deposit lands, so about a third of that $56 went right back out the door.

The raise was never yours.

The Part B deductible went up in the same year, from $257 to $283.

Nearly 1.9 million Georgians are on Medicare, so that increase reached a lot of households in one January.

Your budget has to cover twenty-five more years of that same math.

7. Betting on a Short Stay

Long-term care is the line many retirement plans leave blank, and a long life is exactly what fills it in.

Someone turning 65 today has almost a 70% chance of needing some kind of long-term care, according to the federal Administration for Community Living.

Women need that care longer, 3.7 years on average, against 2.2 years for men.

Medicare doesn’t pay for long-term care because most of that care isn’t medical.

That surprises people.

A private room in a nursing home ran a national median of $355 a day in 2025, and assisted living ran about $6,200 a month.

Those are national figures, and the bill arrives by the day whether the bed sits in Rome or in a memory care unit off Georgia 400.

Three years at that daily rate comes to roughly $389,000, paid out of the same savings the rest of your plan leans on.

8. Missing the Exclusion Gap

Georgia's retirement income exclusion is one of the better-known reasons couples point a moving truck down I-75, and its age rules catch them off guard.

Social Security is already exempt from state tax, so the exclusion covers your pension, your withdrawals, your interest, and your dividends.

At 62, you can exclude $35,000 of that income per person.

Turn 65, and each spouse can exclude $65,000.

Those three years matter.

Retire at 62 and budget on the bigger figure, and you've overstated your take-home for three straight years at a flat 4.99%, the rate Gov. Brian Kemp signed in May, down from 5.19%.

One more catch sits inside the rule: Only $5,000 of earned income counts toward the exclusion, so a part-time job at a hardware store in Blue Ridge falls mostly outside it.

9. Skipping the Survivor Math

Most couples' retirements end with one person living alone, and the plan changes the day that happens.

Social Security hands the survivor the larger of the two benefits, and the smaller payment stops because the two checks don't add together.

The household income drops overnight.

One $65,000 exclusion goes away too, and the survivor files as a single taxpayer instead of jointly.

The mortgage, the property tax bill in Hall County, and the homeowners insurance all stay right where they were.