The 4% Rule Is a Guess: Withdrawal Rates, the 401(k), and Becoming Your Own Fiduciary
Wade Borth - Sage Wealth Strategy
Release Date: 08/18/2026
The 4% Rule Is a Guess: Withdrawal Rates, the 401(k), and Becoming Your Own Fiduciary
Wade Borth - Sage Wealth Strategy
Executive Summary An article pitting Bill Bengen's revised 4.7% withdrawal rate against Suze Orman's 3% rule sent Wade Borth down a different road this episode. Rather than picking a side, he asks why anyone would build a retirement plan on a rule that only claims a 90% chance of success. His answer starts with rejecting scarcity thinking and becoming your own fiduciary. Key Takeaways Bill Bengen's updated 4.7% rule and Suze Orman's 3% rule are both opinions, not guarantees, and neither promises a 100% positive outcome. Withdrawal rate rules ask how little you can spend without running out...
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Replace the Banker With Yourself: Rethinking Kiyosaki's Cashflow Quadrant
Wade Borth - Sage Wealth Strategy
Executive Summary Wade Borth revisits Robert Kiyosaki's Cashflow Quadrants and picks up a thread the book never finishes: every quadrant, employee, self-employed, business owner, or investor, still depends on a bank. Wade argues the real shift isn't earning more new money, it's taking permanent control of the old money already flowing through your life. He lays out how a properly structured whole life policy lets you step into the banking function yourself. Key Takeaways Every side of Kiyosaki's Cashflow Quadrant, employee, self-employed, business owner, or investor, still runs...
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Why You Need a Destination Before You Can Build Generational Wealth
Wade Borth - Sage Wealth Strategy
Summary Recorded from the lake, Wade Borth uses a fishing analogy to talk about goal-setting and purpose: you won't catch fish by dropping the boat in the water and drifting, you have to start the motor and steer toward a specific spot. The same is true for financial and professional success. Wade explains why so many agents and clients have never been asked to define success, encourages listeners to set specific, time-bound goals, and reminds them the path will shift along the way. He frames his own role as a "problem identifier" who empowers people once they know what they're aiming for, and...
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Is Your Money Sheltered or Exposed to the Weather?
Wade Borth - Sage Wealth Strategy
Summary Wade Borth is recording from the lake this week, and it gets him thinking about purpose, patience, and where people store their money. He shares a story about fishing with his son Josh and compares the pressure to fish once you’ve made the trip to the pressure people feel to invest cash the moment it’s sitting in a bank account. Wade introduces the “boat lift” analogy: money in a properly funded whole life policy is sheltered, growing, and protected, so you’re never forced to deploy it before the timing is right. He walks through the guaranteed death benefit, tax advantages,...
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The Fifth Quadrant: How Providing Liquidity Puts You in Control of the Money Game
Wade Borth - Sage Wealth Strategy
SUMMARY Robert Kiyosaki's Cashflow Quadrant maps out four types of people in the money game: employees, self-employed workers, business owners, and investors. It's a powerful framework, but Wade Borth argues it's missing one critical player: the banker. In this episode, Wade breaks down who actually controls the money game. No matter which quadrant someone occupies, they all need access to liquidity. The person providing that liquidity, whether it's Wells Fargo or a private individual with a pool of capital, holds the real power. Wade explains how anyone can begin building their own banking...
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Inaction Has a Price: The Sequence and Habits Separating Wealth Builders from Everyone Else
Wade Borth - Sage Wealth Strategy
Summary Wade Borth takes listeners inside a recent Tough Money live event, using real data to show what financial life actually looks like for a top 10% household earning $150,000 per year. The numbers may surprise you, starting with the size of the average family's liquidity bucket. The episode builds to a direct challenge: if you are already aware of the problem, if you have been educated on solutions, what is holding you back from taking action? Wade argues that inaction is not neutral. It carries a real cost, one that your family, your business, and your legacy will ultimately pay. Key...
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The Hidden Medicare Cost That Could Drain $350,000 From Your Retirement (IRMAA Explained)
Wade Borth - Sage Wealth Strategy
Summary Most people know Medicare costs money in retirement, but few understand how much their income level affects what they actually pay. In this episode, Wade Borth unpacks IRMAA, the income-related surcharge that can quietly add $162 to $650 or more per month to your Medicare premiums, depending on what you earn. Wade walks through who gets hit, what counts as income in the calculation (including surprises like municipal bond interest and Social Security), and how a single dollar over the threshold can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars over time. He also explains how properly...
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The Business Owner's Pension Blueprint
Wade Borth - Sage Wealth Strategy
Summary This is part 3 of our series. What if your quarterly tax bill could become a retirement engine? In this episode, Wade sits down with Rohit Punyani, founder of The Owner's Asset, to unpack the pension strategy most business owners and their advisors overlook. The conversation covers the sequence of financial planning, the psychology of guaranteed income, and how to combine IBC with a defined benefit pension to fund whole life insurance and annuities at wholesale pricing through tax deductions. Ro and Wade also break down who qualifies, what the first conversation looks like, and how a...
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Your Business Owes You a Pension
Wade Borth - Sage Wealth Strategy
Summary In part 1 Wade Borth and Rohit Punyani, founder of The Owner's Asset, explore how small business owners can use a cash balance plan to capture six-figure tax deductions while building a seven-figure guaranteed retirement. Rohit walks through the two schools of retirement thought, the mechanics of a pension compared to a 401(k), and the compelling opportunity to purchase whole life insurance inside a pension using pre-tax dollars. If you have been writing painful tax checks without a clear strategy, this conversation shows you where that money could go instead. We continue this episode...
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Six Figures Off, Seven Figures Built
Wade Borth - Sage Wealth Strategy
Summary Most business owners know that taxes are their biggest expense. Fewer know there is a legal, IRS-approved way to redirect that money into a guaranteed retirement asset. In this episode, Wade sits down with Rohit Punyani of The Owner's Asset to walk through cash balance plans, the modern business owner's version of a pension. Rohit explains how owners with active income can take deductions of up to $300,000 per year, how whole life insurance can be purchased inside the plan with pre-tax dollars, and how the plan can eventually feed an infinite banking strategy. If you are tired of...
info_outlineExecutive Summary
An article pitting Bill Bengen's revised 4.7% withdrawal rate against Suze Orman's 3% rule sent Wade Borth down a different road this episode. Rather than picking a side, he asks why anyone would build a retirement plan on a rule that only claims a 90% chance of success. His answer starts with rejecting scarcity thinking and becoming your own fiduciary.
Key Takeaways
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Bill Bengen's updated 4.7% rule and Suze Orman's 3% rule are both opinions, not guarantees, and neither promises a 100% positive outcome.
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Withdrawal rate rules ask how little you can spend without running out of money. That's a scarcity mindset, and it produces a cycle of sacrifice and fear.
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Pension plans once gave retirees certainty. The 401(k) that replaced them shifted that risk from the employer to the employee.
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Locking money away for 30 years is like freezing the best steak you own and never eating it.
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Becoming your own fiduciary starts with financial education, not with outsourcing the decision to someone else's opinion.
Links and Resources
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http://sagewealthstrategy.com/
Keywords
4% rule, safe withdrawal rate, retirement withdrawal rate, 401(k) alternatives, pension plans, infinite banking concept, be your own banker, become your own fiduciary, guaranteed asset, whole life insurance, cash value, liquidity bucket, family banking, generational wealth, Bill Bengen, Suze Orman, retirement income planning, financial education, Sage Wealth Strategy, Wade Borth
Episode Highlights
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[00:01:00 - 00:02:00] Wade explains why money should be treated as our second most valuable asset after time.
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[00:02:00 - 00:03:00] Bill Bengen, creator of the 4% rule, now says retirees can safely pull 4.7%.
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[00:03:00 - 00:04:00] Suze Orman counters with a 3% rule, and Wade explains his skepticism of financial entertainers.
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[00:04:00 - 00:05:00] Wade argues both withdrawal rate camps set retirees up to either underspend or run out.
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[00:05:00 - 00:06:00] The scarcity mindset behind every withdrawal rate rule, and why it produces sacrifice and fear.
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[00:06:00 - 00:07:00] Pension plans once gave retirees guaranteed income. Most have disappeared.
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[00:07:00 - 00:08:00] How the 401(k) quietly shifted investment risk from employers to employees.
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[00:08:00 - 00:09:00] Why Wade treats every financial opinion, including his own, as an opinion and not a fact.
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[00:09:00 - 00:10:00] The frozen steak analogy: why locking money away for 30 years doesn't make sense.
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[00:11:00 - 00:12:00] Wade closes on what it means to become your own fiduciary.