Can you retire at 60 with $1M?

With $1M at age 60, you can safely spend about $43,500/year after tax ($3,625/month) without running out over a ~35-year retirement — about a 4.3% withdrawal rate, a touch above the classic 4% rule, which a shorter horizon like this can support. Whether that's enough comes down to your lifestyle; here's the full picture.

How long $1M lasts at different spending levels

The 4% rule is a starting point, not a guarantee — especially retiring at 60, when the money may need to last 35+ years. Here's what $1M supports, spending from age 60 to 95 at a 6% nominal return and 3% inflation:

Why the answer isn't just $1M × 4%

A back-of-envelope "$1M × 4% = $40,000" overstates what you can safely spend at 60, for two reasons this projection captures:

• Taxes. A dollar in a traditional 401(k) or IRA is taxed as ordinary income on the way out; taxable-brokerage gains are taxed too. Only Roth and cash are tax-free. So the safe spendable figure ($43,500) sits below the headline 4% draw.
• A long horizon. Retiring at 60 can mean 35+ years in retirement. The 4% rule was calibrated to about 30 years — stretch it further and a lower rate (nearer 4.3% here) is what actually survives a bad early market.

The portfolio, year by year

Spending the sustainable $43,500/yr from $1M at age 60, here's how the portfolio holds up in today's dollars (inflation-adjusted, so it reflects real spending power):

Assumptions: single filer, TX (no state income tax), 60% taxable / 30% traditional / 10% Roth split, 6% nominal return, 3% inflation, no Social Security. Add Social Security, a pension, part-time income, or a spouse in the calculator and the safe number rises — often substantially.

Retiring at 60: bridging the gap years and respecting early sequence risk

Sixty is an in-between age. You are past 59 and a half, so withdrawals from IRAs and old 401(k)s are penalty-free, but you still face about five years before Medicare at 65 and, if you choose, several more before Social Security. Those gap years usually mean buying coverage through the ACA marketplace, where subsidies depend on your modified adjusted gross income, so the mix of taxable withdrawals, conversions, and cash matters more than usual.

The Social Security decision deserves patience. Delaying past your full retirement age of roughly 67 raises the benefit about 8 percent per year up to age 70. Because that larger check is inflation-adjusted and lasts as long as you do, waiting functions as longevity insurance for the decades a 60-year-old may still have ahead.

Finally, respect sequence-of-returns risk. A poor market in the first decade, while you are drawing the portfolio down, does far more lasting damage than the same loss later. Keeping a spending cushion and some flexibility in those opening years protects against exactly that timing.

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