Are You Saving Too Hard for a Retirement You Won't Enjoy?

Iran opened the Strait. Oil crashed 9%. Markets surged to new records.

The quick scan: Friday delivered the week's most significant session – not because of earnings or economic data, but because Iran announced it was reopening the Strait of Hormuz for non-Iranian commercial vessels. The market's response was immediate and emphatic. Oil fell nearly 10%, the Dow surged nearly 900 points, the S&P 500 hit yet another all-time high, and the week closed with markets having fully digested – and then some – everything the Iran war threw at them since late February.

S&P 500: +1.20% to 7,126.06 – a new all-time closing record; the index is up more than 12% since its war-period low and has now closed above 7,000 for four consecutive sessions
Dow Jones: +1.79% to 49,447.43 – gained 868.71 points, the biggest single-day gain in weeks; led by Sherwin-Williams (+3.83%), Home Depot (+3.62%) and Merck (+3.13%) as the energy price relief flowed through to consumer and industrial sectors
NASDAQ: +1.52% to 24,468.48 – another record close; the week's cumulative gain for the NASDAQ was 5.2%, its strongest weekly performance since the early days of the AI rally.

What's driving it: The Strait of Hormuz reopening removes the single biggest geopolitical risk that has been overhanging markets since the blockade was announced on April 13. Oil at $82.59 (WTI) is still elevated relative to pre-war levels but represents a near-$30 fall from the $113 peak. The stagflation scenario – oil-driven inflation forcing the Fed to hold rates higher for longer – has materially diminished. VIX fell to 17.48, its lowest reading of the entire war period. The week as a whole was extraordinary: five consecutive record closes for the S&P 500, the NASDAQ's longest winning streak since 2009, and a complete recovery from war-period losses.

Bottom line: The Iran war's market impact is effectively over – at least for now. What the past five weeks demonstrated, for anyone paying attention, is the full arc of a geopolitical shock: rapid sell-off, followed by grinding recovery, followed by a surge to new highs as the crisis resolved. For L-Plate Retirees who stayed invested through all of it, the reward is new portfolio highs. For those who moved to cash at the bottom, the question of when to get back in is now the problem. The answer, as always, was to have a plan before the crisis, not during it.

The Richest One in the Cemetery

The scoop: Let me ask you something uncomfortable.

What is your retirement savings number – and where did it come from?

If you're like most people, you have a figure in mind. Something that feels like safety. And if you're honest about where it came from, the answer is probably: vague cultural osmosis. A round number big enough to stop worrying.

According to Northwestern Mutual, the average American's "magic number" for a comfortable retirement is $1.26 million. Repeated often enough in financial media that it has taken on the quality of fact. But it's an average of what people feel they need – which is a very different thing.

A new analysis published this week on Moneywise draws on hedge fund manager Bill Perkins' book Die With Zero to argue that most of us have the whole thing backwards. We optimise our lives around a number. We should be optimising our number around our lives.

The gap between accumulation and satisfaction.

Perkins' central argument: people spend millions of hours working for money that is never meaningfully spent. The result of a lifetime of disciplined saving is often not a rich retirement – it's an over-funded account and an under-lived life.

He frames it as the difference between net worth and what he calls net satisfaction. Most of us are maximising the former at the expense of the latter, without noticing the trade-off.

Federal Reserve figures show median net worth for households aged 55–64 is around $364,500. For those aged 75 and older, it's $335,600 – lower. People are drawing down in retirement. The accumulation machine eventually reverses. The question is whether you're drawing it down on the right things, at the right time.

The body keeps score.

Here's the part of this conversation that retirement planning tends to ignore: physical capacity declines.

Research published in the journal Science confirms what most of us already know from watching our parents – energy levels and physical capability generally decline beyond age 60. The trip to Japan that would have been exhilarating at 62 may be manageable at 70 and difficult at 78.

Perkins calls the solution "time-bucketing" – matching experiences not just to financial readiness but to physical readiness. The order matters. Delaying the active experiences until the sedentary decade is the wrong sequence. All those extra hours of saving mean little if the reward is unused wealth at the end of life.

The magic number problem.

The $1.26 million figure is not useless – it gives people an orienting target at a stage when any target feels better than none. But its dangers are real.

First, it's an average of self-reported feelings, not a calculation based on actual spending needs. Your retirement costs depend on where you live, how you live, whether you have a mortgage, what you want to do. Someone who owns their home in regional Australia with simple tastes needs a very different number from someone in Sydney with expensive habits and a taste for international travel.

Second, chasing a number never calibrated to your actual life means you may reach it only to discover it feels arbitrary – or that you sacrificed real things to get there. The Wheatley Institute's American Family Survey found that 43% of US adults said they were having fewer or no children because of financial concerns. Some of those decisions will have been right. But some of those people will be 70 and wishing otherwise.

Third – and this is Perkins' sharpest point – money not spent represents time and energy traded away for accumulation that never translated into life.

What net satisfaction actually looks like.

The alternative isn't to stop saving. It's to reverse the relationship between the financial plan and the life plan.

Instead of building a life around reaching a savings number, identify what actually makes your life satisfying – experiences, relationships, freedoms, contributions – and build a financial plan that funds those things when you can best enjoy them.

This sounds obvious. In practice, it requires sitting with the question: what is this money actually for? Not what number do I need, but what am I trying to buy with a decade of disciplined saving?

Perkins calls memorable experiences "memory dividends" – investments that pay returns in recollection and meaning for decades. A trip at 58 gives you decades of stories, not just the holiday.

The richest one in the cemetery, as the saying goes, doesn't win anything.

Actionable takeaways for L-Plate Retirees:

• Work out what your number is actually for. Before your next financial review, spend 30 minutes writing down what a genuinely satisfying retirement looks like – specifically. Travel where? How often? Supporting who? Doing what? Then reverse-engineer a savings target from those actual plans, not from a culturally averaged figure that has nothing to do with your life.

• Time-bucket your experiences. Some things you want to do in retirement are time-sensitive in a way that financial planning rarely acknowledges. Active travel, physical adventures, grandchildren in their young years – these have windows. Build your drawdown strategy around those windows, not around a generic "spend less in early retirement, more later" rule.

• Recognise that the median retiree draws down. Federal Reserve data shows median wealth actually declines slightly from the 55–64 bracket to the 75+ bracket. Most people do eventually spend their savings. The question is whether they spend it on what matters, or whether they spend the best years in accumulation mode and the later years in cautious drawdown of money they never quite felt was theirs to spend.

• Challenge the inheritance assumption. Many people over-save because they want to leave something to their children. Perkins argues that giving earlier – when children are in their 30s and 40s and genuinely need help with mortgages, education or businesses – creates far more value than a late bequest. The money given at 75 arrives when your children may be in their own retirement.

• Don't confuse security with accumulation. Having enough to not run out of money is a legitimate goal. But beyond a well-calculated floor – your actual projected expenses with a sensible buffer – additional accumulation is optional. Know the difference between your security number and your aspiration number, and be honest about which one you're chasing.

• The physical window is real. Energy and physical capacity are finite. The retirement you imagined at 55 is best lived closer to 60 than to 75. Plan accordingly.

Your Turn:
What's your retirement number, and where did it actually come from? Has anyone ever sat down with you and calculated it from your specific projected costs – or did it come from somewhere vaguer than that?
If money were genuinely not a constraint, what would the first year of retirement look like for you? And does your current savings plan actually fund that, or something considerably more modest?
Perkins' argument is that money given to children or causes you care about earlier in life creates more value than a late bequest. Does that idea sit comfortably with you – or does leaving something behind feel like an important part of what you're working toward?

👉 Hit reply and share your thoughts – your answers could inspire fellow readers in future issues.

☕ If today's issue made you think differently about your number, consider supporting L-Plate Retiree on Ko-fi.

Resources:

Super Investors’ Club (SIC) – monthly membership subscription that aims to
make learning about investing more hands-on and accessible to individuals on a mission to become financially free. Join here.

* * * * *

The IRIS Stock Sniper Masterclass is a complete, systematic education for the stock market. It’s built on a foundation of proprietary analysis methods that help you filter out noise and spot only the best setups.

Inside, you’ll learn advanced charting techniques, position sizing for risk control , and a rule-based approach to trading that eliminates emotion. This is the definition of structured trading education designed for consistency.

See exactly how this program can transform your approach to stocks. See what’s included:
👉 Explore the Stock Sniper webinar

* * * * *

The Next Level Options (NLOMBA) course is a solid, all-in-one roadmap for mastering options investing. You’ll learn what options really are, how to invest in different market conditions, and how to pick strong companies using Buffett-inspired fundamentals.

Inside, the lessons walk you step-by-step through strategies like BOSS and Strategy X, so you’re not guessing – you’re following a proven structure that helps you invest with clarity and confidence.

What to see everything that’s included?
👉 Check out the Options Workshop