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Use this sheet next year for your Recalculation of your Safe Spending Amount for 2024
Posted on December 9, 2022

This post contains a short form spreadsheet you can use to Recalculate your Safe Spending Amount (SSA) for spending for 2024. This sheet has an added column to last year’s sheet, since none of us could calculate to a real increase this year. If we don’t calculate to a real increase next year, we’ll add another column, and so forth. We only revert to a simpler, two-column sheet, when we finally calculate to a real increase in our SSA.

 

== The spreadsheet ==

 

You had to enter five numbers in the table in cells D30 and D32-D35 for this year’s calculation for your SSA for calendar 2023. (PDF provided here.) The sheet shows in cell D41 that our real return for our portfolio for the past 12 months was -18.4%. Next December 1, I’ll enter numbers in the five cells highlighted in yellow in Column E to find our real portfolio return for the 12 months ending November 30, 2023.

 

The spreadsheet calculates your real SSA for the upcoming year in Row 17. None of us calculated to a real increase in our SSA for the upcoming year. The spreadsheet shows the real SSA for our spending in 2023 stays the same at $50,500. Row 19 shows the inflation-adjusted amount is $54,900. The sheet will calculate your real SSA for spending in 2024 in cell E17 next year.

 

You have to decide what you are withdrawing from your Investment Portfolio for your spending to get your starting portfolio value for the upcoming year. The sheet would normally subtract the calculated SSA from your portfolio value on November 30. I decided Patti and I were using our Reserve (See Chapters 1 and 7, NEC), so in cell D21 I over-rode the subtraction and entered the same amount – $774,700 – that we had on November 30.

 

I entered our age-appropriate SSR% for next year: that’s 5.30%. A table from this post displays our age-appropriate SSR%s for a number of future years.

 

== Real increase in SSA next year? ==

 

I can calculate that Patti and I need > 23% real portfolio return to calculate to a real increase in our SSA next year – for our spending in 2024. You can use similar steps. I think your result would be similar.

 

 

I’ll test 5.30% as our SSR% next year. For a real increase in our SSA, the real or constant dollar value of our portfolio times 5.30% must be greater than $50,500.

 

Our real or constant dollar portfolio value next November 30 has to be greater than $953,000.

 

At the start of our calculation year, December 1, we have $774,700. We need a greater than 23% real increase in portfolio value.

 

That looks like an impossible target! It may be more than a few years to earn back enough of what we are withdrawing for spending to calculate to our next real increase in SSA.

 

 

Conclusion. I recalculate each year to see if Patti and I earned a real increase in our Safe Spending Amount (SSA) for the upcoming year. I show a history of nine years of calculations in the post last week. This week I provide a short form calculation spreadsheet that you can use for your calculation. It shows the result for this year: no real increase in our SSA and therefore adds a column for next year’s calculation to the sheet I provided last year.

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