年轻人怕通缩，老年人怕通胀。
The Worst Year to Retire Wasn't 1929. It Was 1968.
Updated April 20, 2026, 11:02 am EDT / Original April 19, 2026, 3:00 am EDT
The New York Stock Exchange in 1973. (PL GOULD / GETTY IMAGES)
Bull markets come and go. High inflation does lasting damage.
Barron’s asked financial researcher and author William Bengen, who conceived the 4% rule for safe portfolio withdrawals, to calculate the worst time to retire over the past century.
A reasonable guess might be October 1929, right before stocks crashed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 89% of its value by the summer of 1932. The Dow didn’t top its 1929 high until 1954.
You would be wrong. Retirees in 1968 fared worse when stocks encountered a prolonged bear market that persisted until the early 1980s. However, the real killer was inflation.
Prices nearly tripled from 1968 to 1983 with annual inflation peaking at 13.5% in 1980. The combination of high inflation and a weak economy—dubbed stagflation —decimated retirement portfolios.
It is an important period to understand because it bears similarities to today. The stagflation of the 1970s was brought on, in large part, by spiking energy prices. Now, oil prices are soaring again because of the Iran war. If cease-fire talks don’t lead to a long-term reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, higher energy prices will permeate the entire economy, pushing inflation up, and conceivably bringing on a new bout of stagflation.
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“There are other things going on now that could be inflationary,” Bengen tells Barron’s. “The huge budget deficits could be inflationary.”
Even before the war began, inflation had been running about a percentage point above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.
Why is inflation so detrimental for portfolios? For starters, understand how the 4% rule works. Bengen’s original research showed that is the percentage you can safely remove from a portfolio of stocks and bonds, adjusted for inflation annually, and be assured your savings will last a 30-year retirement. He later updated the percentage to 4.7% after further study where he added additional asset classes including international and small-cap stocks.
During periods of high inflation, your withdrawals increase dramatically each year, which rapidly spends down portfolios. “Once you increase your withdrawals, it’s effectively permanent. You’re unlikely to decrease them,” Bengen says. “Dealing with inflation is a lot more problematic than dealing with a bear market.”
To illustrate this, Bengen created a $100,000 portfolio of 65% stocks, 30% bonds, and 5% cash, allocations that he calls “pretty much optimal” under most situations. He calculated how this portfolio would have performed for someone retiring in October 1929 and making withdrawals for 30 years. He then did the same exercise for someone retiring in October 1968.
The annual ending balances were calculated in inflation-adjusted dollars so the exercise could tell how much spending power a portfolio retained over time.
Bengen found that if the 1968 retiree withdrew 4.66% annually, the account would be spent to zero in 30 years. By contrast, if the 1929 retiree took out this same percentage, he or she would have had a $105,000 account balance in inflation-adjusted dollars after the final withdrawal.
Put another way, despite retirement on the brink of the worst market crash of the 20 th century and 30 years of withdrawals, the ending portfolio was actually 5% higher in constant dollars than the beginning portfolio. “Amazing,” Bengen says. “It was a heck of a recovery.”
Now compare that with the retiree unfortunate enough to stop working in October 1968 and start spending down his or her nest egg when markets were also in a funk. The $100,000 portfolio dropped sharply in the early years and never recovered. In six years, it was worth less than $41,000.
Inflation was another factor. The 1930s featured the opposite: heavy deflation. Instead of rising annually, portfolio withdrawals actually fell for four years because consumer prices had tumbled. Deflation meant that a stock that retained its nominal value was actually rising in value.
