ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Trinity study

Okay, imagine you have a toy box with your favorite toys. You want to know how long your toys will last if you play with them every day. That is what the Trinity Study is about, but instead of toys and you being 5, it is about grown-ups and their money.

The Trinity Study is a big science project where some really smart grown-ups looked at how long someone's money would last if they followed different ways of spending and saving it. They wanted to know how much money a person can take out of their savings each year for living expenses (like food, house, fun) without running out of money before they die.

They looked at people who retired and had a lot of money saved and looked at how much money they took out each year. They looked at different time frames, like 30 years, 40 years, and 50 years. They used math and numbers to figure out how much money people could spend each year without running out of money. This way, they could figure out a safe amount of money a person could spend each year without worrying about running out of money when they got older.

In the end, the Trinity Study found out that if someone spends around 4% of their savings each year, they will be okay for at least 30 years. So if someone has $1,000,000 in savings, they could safely spend $40,000 per year. It's like a toy box, you want to play with some toys every day, but you don't want to play with them all at once, or you'll run out of toys to play with.
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