Can you retire at 60 with $1M?

With $1M at age 60, you can safely spend about $40,000/year after tax ($3,333/month) without running out over a ~35-year retirement — about a 4.0% withdrawal rate, right around the classic 4% rule of thumb. 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" is actually a conservative floor at 60 — the full projection supports more:

• The 4% rule is deliberately cautious. It's a single number meant to survive almost any 30-year retirement. Run this portfolio for real and the sustainable spend works out to about a 4.0% rate — above a flat 4% — even before any other income.
• Taxes still take a cut. Traditional 401(k)/IRA withdrawals are ordinary income and taxable-brokerage gains are taxed too; only Roth and cash come out tax-free. That trims the figure to $40,000/year after tax — still above the naive 4% draw at this age.

The portfolio, year by year

Spending the sustainable $40,000/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):

Retiring at a different age with $1M

Age is the single biggest lever here, because it sets how many years the money has to cover. The same $1M supports $25,500/year if you stop at 40 (a 55-year retirement) and $49,500/year if you wait until 67 (28 years) — the same portfolio, 1.9× the spending:

Retiring at 60 with a different amount

Your number may not be $1M, so here is the same calculation run for every rung of the ladder at 60 — from $500k ($17,500/year) up to $5M ($203,500/year), all after the tax owed on the withdrawals:

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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