Can you retire at 60 with $750k?

With $750k at age 60, you can safely spend about $33,000/year after tax ($2,750/month) without running out over a ~35-year retirement — about a 4.4% 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 $750k 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 $750k supports, spending from age 60 to 95 at a 6% nominal return and 3% inflation:

Why the answer isn't just $750k × 4%

A back-of-envelope "$750k × 4% = $30,000" 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 ($33,000) 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 4.4% here) is what actually survives a bad early market.

The portfolio, year by year

Spending the sustainable $33,000/yr from $750k 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.

A short runway rewrites the math at sixty

At sixty, the distance to Social Security is short — a couple of years to the earliest claim, a handful more to full retirement age — and that proximity reshapes how hard the portfolio has to work. It no longer needs to self-fund an open-ended retirement; it mainly has to cover a brief bridge until guaranteed income arrives.

Because you are past 59½, withdrawals from IRAs and 401(k)s are already penalty-free, which simplifies the mechanics. The live decision is the claiming strategy: spending down a bit of the pot now to delay Social Security raises the benefit for life, while claiming sooner preserves the portfolio but locks in a smaller check.

The remaining gap is health coverage for the five years until Medicare at sixty-five, typically an ACA marketplace plan whose subsidies depend on managed income. With a modest bridge, lower fixed costs, and a deliberate claiming choice, this pot at sixty is meaningfully more workable than the same balance a decade earlier.

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