Millionaire Retirees Spend $70,000 to $120,000 a Year. Here’s Why.

Most $1 million-plus households spend between $70,000 and $120,000 a year in retirement. JPMorgan’s spending research and Boldin’s own planning data both land in that range, and it appears almost everywhere you look.

Keep this in mind the next time you see an ad claiming some huge share of millionaires plan to retire on a flat $100,000 a year. It’s dressed up to look like an article, from a name you’d recognize. Look for the study behind it and you won’t find one. The ad skips the sample size, doesn’t name a methodology, and gives you nothing to click through and verify.

What Millionaires Spend in Retirement, According to JPMorgan

In JPMorgan’s 2026 Guide to Retirement, households with $1 million to $3 million in total retirement wealth, which counts the value of Social Security and pensions, spend a median of about $50,000 to $72,000 a year. Those with $3 million to $5 million spend about $101,000 to $137,000. The $70,000 to $120,000 range sits between those two groups.

JPMorgan’s figures come from anonymized Chase household data, and they land in similar territory year after year. The Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances adds important context: most millionaires aren’t the $10 million type. In Boldin’s analysis of the 2025 survey, about six in 10 $1M+ households sit between $1 million and $3 million in net worth, and fewer than one in 10 have $10 million or more. That’s a narrower range than the word “millionaire” suggests. For comparison, it takes about $3.9 million to rank among the wealthiest retirees, the top 10% of households headed by someone 60 or older.

So when you hear “millionaire retirement income,” picture a retired couple with a paid-off home and a seven-figure portfolio. That’s the group these numbers describe, a long way from yacht-chartering wealth. Most households sit well below that line. Here’s how much the typical household has saved.

Why Millionaire Retirees Cluster in This Narrow Band

Three things stack together to create this range: a fixed Social Security base, a portfolio that can only produce so much, and a replacement rate most households arrive at without trying.

Start with Social Security. The average retired worker collects a little over $2,000 a month. These households tend to run higher than that. The majority are married, which means two benefits stack instead of one, often backed by stronger earnings histories. A combined $40,000 to $70,000 a year from Social Security alone isn’t unusual.

Then the portfolio math takes over. A $1.5 million portfolio, drawn down at a conservative 4%, produces about $60,000 a year. Add that to Social Security and you’re already at $100,000 to $110,000, before you’ve made a single active decision about your lifestyle.

Think of Social Security as the floor of the house and the portfolio as everything built on top of it. The floor is fixed. What you build depends on what you’ve saved.

Grant and Priya are a hypothetical couple. They retire at 67 and 65 with $1.5 million invested and a combined Social Security benefit of $45,000. They aren’t chasing a specific target, and they still arrive at about $105,000 a year. The structure produces that figure on its own.

Boldin’s Planning Data Confirms the Millionaire Retirement Spending Pattern

Boldin Planner data falls in the same $70,000 to $120,000 band JPMorgan’s spending data points to, with something the public surveys don’t offer: a read on whether that income proves durable.

Boldin users with $1 million or more in investable assets reflect a similar pattern. Investable assets leave out Social Security and pensions, which JPMorgan’s measure counts, so a $1.5 million Boldin household has more in savings than a $1.5 million household in JPMorgan’s data. Among those who’ve built a recurring income stream, pension, passive, or annuity income, as opposed to a one-time transfer, into a baseline plan, median non-Social Security retirement income clusters like this:

Layer a typical Social Security base onto the $1M–$3M group, the largest single band among Boldin’s $1M+ users. That comes out to $76,000 to $106,000, inside the same range, calculated from a separate dataset.

Here’s the part no public survey can offer. Boldin’s Monte Carlo probability that a plan holds up, called Chance of Success, comes in at a 99% median across all three asset tiers. The average runs a bit lower, in the 91% to 94% range, pulled down by a thinner tail of less-confident plans. These households don’t only share a similar income range. Their own modeling confirms that income lasts.

What This Data Doesn’t Capture

Boldin’s dataset doesn’t track Social Security as its own income stream. It’s estimated using the public formulas everyone else relies on. About half of $1M+ users, 50% to 54% depending on tier, have built a recurring income stream into a baseline scenario, which skews toward more engaged planners.

Why the Median Is the Right Number to Trust

Trusting the median instead of the average is what makes this Boldin data reliable. Some accounts carry a one-time transfer, like a lump-sum pension payout or a planned account distribution, that doesn’t repeat every year the way pension or passive income does. Counting only genuinely recurring streams, and trusting the median over the mean, is what keeps this data honest.

Why Retirement Spending Doesn’t Scale With Net Worth

Double someone’s net worth and their spending doesn’t double. It barely moves.

Housing, food, and healthcare cost about the same no matter how large the portfolio behind them is. Time and energy run out before money does. Retirees tend to settle into a rhythm within the first few years and stay there, whether their number is $1.2 million or $4 million. Wealthy retirees change how they spend it well before they change how much. Quality and health take priority over sheer volume.

Why Spending Tends to Shrink as Retirement Goes On

Early retirement spending tends to mark the high point on the chart. Most people don’t carry that spending level for the next 20 years.

Morningstar’s David Blanchett documented this in his research on the “retirement spending smile.” Real, inflation-adjusted spending declines through the 60s and 70s, with a possible late uptick tied to healthcare costs. Researchers are still debating that late uptick. A 2026 review in the Financial Planning Review found mixed results. Some studies find spending flattening instead of curving back up, once major late-life medical events get excluded.

Either way, the households that start retirement spending $110,000 or $120,000 a year rarely stay there for two decades straight. They travel less and simplify their lives. Their $100,000 moment is a snapshot of year two or three. It rarely carries through the rest of their lives.

How Taxes and Medicare Hold Retirement Spending in Place

A meaningful share of the $70,000 to $120,000 range comes from managing taxable income as much as from spending less.

How IRMAA Raises Your Medicare Premiums

Once you’re near Medicare age, crossing an IRMAA threshold by even a dollar changes your premiums, and the higher rate lasts a full year. Andy Barton, a CFP® professional and Boldin Advisor, addressed this in a recent Q&A on Roth conversions and IRMAA, pointing out that crossing the first IRMAA tier adds roughly $80 a month on top of the standard Part B premium. That surcharge applies to each enrollee, so a married couple both on Medicare pays about $160 a month more, plus a smaller Part D surcharge for each spouse. The surcharge is also set using income from two years earlier, so a conversion made today can echo into a Medicare bill you won’t see for two years.

How the ACA Subsidy Cliff Hits Before Medicare Age

The enhanced ACA subsidies expired at the end of 2025, and the subsidy cliff came back with them. Premium tax credits now stop entirely once household income crosses 400% of the federal poverty level, well before Medicare eligibility enters the picture. For a two-person household, that line sits at $84,600 for 2026 coverage. Go one dollar over and you lose the full credit, which can mean repaying thousands of dollars at tax time. Andy also walked through how this cutoff plays out for retirees managing taxable income before 65.

One Roth conversion can trip both wires at once. Retirees pulling income from a Roth account add another wrinkle. That spending doesn’t show up as taxable income, so it can hide from any study based on tax data alone.

Few households set out to arrive at exactly $100,000. Smaller decisions add up instead: where to draw income from, when to realize gains. Together they keep a household inside a more efficient structure, almost by accident.

When This Retirement Spending Range Doesn’t Apply to You

The $70,000 to $120,000 range is common, but it isn’t universal. A handful of situations break it on purpose or by circumstance.

Early retirees who haven’t started Social Security yet have to let the portfolio carry the full load. That pushes their total higher in those bridge years. Households in high cost of living areas start from a higher baseline before lifestyle even enters the picture. Some retirees target $150,000, $250,000, or more on purpose, because that’s the life they’ve built and funded for.

The 2026 EBRI Retirement Confidence Survey found a rising share of retirees, about two in five, reporting costs higher than expected. Healthcare drove most of that gap. Not everyone glides into a lower number as the years go by.

Each of these is a variable to plan around. The pattern still stands.

How to Find Your Own Retirement Spending Number

A national average, even a well-sourced one, can’t tell you what your own retirement will cost. This is a different question than the magic number you’re saving toward. Spending and savings targets move independently. Knowing what you’ll spend each year is what turns a savings target into a real plan.

Build your income streams into the Boldin Planner and see where you end up. It uses your real Social Security estimate and portfolio size instead of a national median. The Planner also generates a Chance of Success score built around your specific numbers.

If taxes or Medicare premiums are part of the picture, the Roth Conversion Explorer can help. Test conversions against your own income and IRMAA thresholds, and see the impact before committing to anything.

Social Security, a reasonable withdrawal rate, and a few tax decisions add up to something close to $100,000 on their own. Your own total might fall somewhere else, and the only way to know is to run it.

FAQ on What Millionaires Spend in Retirement