Andrew Shilling at MarketWatch called inflation the silent killer for retirement portfolios, and the numbers backed him up: 3.8% in April 2026, up from 2.4% in February, at a time when a lot of retirees had built plans around 2%. He asked what I am seeing.
I had a client come in recently who had modeled out a comfortable retirement on a 3% withdrawal rate. After two years of elevated inflation, that same spending required closer to 4.2% just to maintain their lifestyle. Nothing changed about how they lived. The cost of living the same way went up, and the withdrawal rate followed.
The first thing I do in that situation is a full review of expected income. Social Security, pensions and annuities should cover baseline fixed expenses. If there is a gap, that is where rising prices hit first, because the portfolio has to fill it and the portfolio has no cost-of-living adjustment. Closing that gap, whether with a guaranteed income source or a lower fixed-cost base, is the structural fix.
The second thing is equity allocation. A retiree who went very conservative at 65 is exposed to a different risk than a market crash: a portfolio that cannot outgrow prices over 25 years. Some growth has to stay in the mix.
Inflation does not announce itself in a retirement plan. It shows up as a withdrawal rate that drifted while nobody was looking.
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