The Benefits of Gamifying Retirement Spending

Today’s guest post is from David, a long time blog reader. He retired early at age 52. In the five years since, he has lived exclusively off of his investments while leading an adventurous lifestyle.

David has experimented with gamifying the process of spending to help him overcome mental hurdles to drawing from his portfolio while simultaneously keeping spending in check.

Today he will share his process and the benefits he derives from it. Take it away David….

Early Retirement Growing Pains

I retired at 52 with no portfolio withdrawal strategy. I had a no-frills checking account, into which my paycheck had been direct-deposited bi-weekly while I was working, and from which recurring monthly payments like my mortgage, credit cards, and insurance were billed. Everything was automatic. I never had to think about it.

Related: Financial Autopilot

When the paychecks stopped, I simply transferred cash from my brokerage account to checking on an ad hoc basis, replenishing my checking account as necessary. This worked pretty well for a while. 

But as I started to travel a lot, monitoring my checking account balance–and doing manual cash transfers as needed–became an annoying distraction. As a result, I set up automatic, monthly transfers from my brokerage account to my checking account.

The Unintended Benefits of Automating Withdrawals

Automating my withdrawals had some unanticipated–and, as I argue in this post, incredibly beneficial–side effects.

First, it forced me to take careful stock of my monthly living expenses. I had to pick a transfer amount that was:

• Enough to cover my monthly expenses in the worst-case scenario (e.g., in the dead of winter, when my natural gas bills are astronomically high), and 
• Not so much as to overdraw interest-earning cash from my brokerage account. 

The goal was to keep the balance in my checking account as low as possible, because it pays no interest. Cash in my brokerage account is held in a fairly high-yielding money market mutual fund (VMFXX which, as I type this, yields north of 5%).

After several months of fine-tuning, I finally arrived at a number that balanced these requirements. I have only had to adjust it once or twice in the last couple years to account for the odd one-off expense.

Why was this exercise beneficial? Because it gave me a more precise answer to the question, how much does it cost me to live in retirement? 

And with a good answer to that question, I can answer the most important question of all, which is, is the value of my portfolio sufficient to fund that retirement? 

Without an answer to the first question, the second is kind of meaningless. Is $1 million enough to retire? $10 million? Unknown! Unless you know how much you will spend in retirement.

A second, more subtle side-effect of automating withdrawals is that doing so has encouraged me to be more frugal. In effect, it has gamified my spending habits.

Dopamine Hits

The game works like this: I get a little dopamine hit when I look at my monthly checking account statement and see that my balance is above water. This tells me I spent within my means that month. I get an even bigger dopamine hit when I see this month’s ending balance is greater than last month’s. This means I spent less than my automated monthly transfer amount. 

And I get an even bigger dopamine hit when, over a period of several months, my checking balance has grown steadily to some not-insignificant number. When that happens, I treat myself to a little reward (the expensive hitch-mounted bicycle rack I just bought for my Jeep, for example).

On the flip side, if my balance goes down from one month to the next, the dread of having to resort to a supplemental manual transfer creeps in, and this has the effect of steering me back to the straight and narrow.

Second-Order Effects

Because I like seeing my monthly checking account balance creep upwards (or at least not go down), I seek out all sorts of ways to make that happen; things I never would have dreamed of while I was still working. This includes:

• Clipping grocery store coupons, 
• Claiming gasoline discounts, 
• Comparison shopping, 
• Seeking out or waiting for deals on stuff that I need, and 
• Paying for everything with credit cards that pay me cash back. 

Even the insignificant act of scanning a grocery store coupon, and watching the total go down on the checkout screen, gives me a little dopamine hit.

It’s all of a piece of gamification of my retirement spending, and it all started with the simple act of automating my monthly withdrawals. This may all seem trite, or even silly. But trust me, if you are a metrics-oriented person like me–and I suspect many reading this blog fall into that category–the money-saving game becomes a fun and engaging challenge!

Related: The One Thing That Determines Financial Success or Failure

Gamifying Inflation Adjustments

One final note is worth mentioning. Since setting up automatic withdrawals about two years ago, I have not given myself a cost-of-living increase (notwithstanding the high inflation we’ve experienced over the last 18 months). 

This inflation adjustment is the standard advice if you are following a portfolio withdrawal strategy like Bill Bengen’s 4% rule. But I have eschewed this advice.

Instead, I am trying to see how long I can go without a raise. This encourages me to find even more novel ways to save. It’s just another part of the game.

An Argument Against Optimization

Some may read this and argue there are better withdrawal strategies. 

• Why don’t I set up a variable transfer system, whereby the amount of my transfers goes up when costs are high (e.g., in winter when my gas bills are high) and down when costs are low?
• What about switching to an interest-bearing checking account and putting my cash there? 
• Or why not set up direct-billing directly from my brokerage account?

These are good ideas in principle, but sometimes important financial considerations should include a dose of psychology, rather than reduce to a cold optimization problem. I worry that implementing any of these optimizations would dampen my incentive to save. 

Keeping the transfer amount constant, for example, incentivizes me to build up that cushion in my checking account, which in turn encourages me to save. Adjusting the transfer amount to meet demand, on the other hand, relieves me of that burden. I don’t think I want that.

Related: Financial Simplicity — How Much Is Your Time Worth?

What steps have you taken to gamify your retirement spending (or as an income-earner, for that matter)? Share your experiences below so that I and others might learn from them.

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[Chris Mamula used principles of traditional retirement planning, combined with creative lifestyle design, to retire from a career as a physical therapist at age 41. After poor experiences with the financial industry early in his professional life, he educated himself on investing and tax planning. After achieving financial independence, Chris began writing about wealth building, DIY investing, financial planning, early retirement, and lifestyle design at Can I Retire Yet? He is also the primary author of the book Choose FI: Your Blueprint to Financial Independence. Chris also does financial planning with individuals and couples at Abundo Wealth, a low-cost, advice-only financial planning firm with the mission of making quality financial advice available to populations for whom it was previously inaccessible. Chris has been featured on MarketWatch, Morningstar, U.S. News & World Report, and Business Insider. He has spoken at events including the Bogleheads and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants annual conferences. Blog inquiries can be sent to chris@caniretireyet.com. Financial planning inquiries can be sent to chris@abundowealth.com]

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