Retirement

Making your money last from 60 to 100

Quidsmith Guides · Updated 2026-07-03 · 8 min read

Game context, not financial advice. This article explains how things work inside Quidsmith, a personal-finance simulation game. The numbers are illustrative and the model is simplified for play. It is not personal financial advice. For decisions about your own money, speak to a regulated adviser.

Building the pot is only half of Quidsmith. Your salary stops at age 60, the State Pension does not arrive until 68, and you may have 40 years of spending ahead. The second half of the game is about drawing that money down without running dry.

The problem with a 40-year retirement

Saving forgives mistakes: a bad year early on has decades to recover. Spending does not. Once you are drawing an income and no longer earning, a crash does double damage, because you are selling assets to live at the same time as they fall. This is called sequence-of-returns risk, and it is the single biggest threat to a long retirement.

Good years earlyBad years early

Two players start retirement with the same pot and the same average return. The only difference is timing: bad years early (the lower path) can empty the pot decades before 100.

How much can you safely take?

A common starting point is to withdraw a modest, sustainable percentage of the pot each year rather than a fixed cash sum. The lower the withdrawal rate, the longer the money lasts, and the more crash years it can absorb.

Roughly how long a pot lasts at different withdrawal rates, before growth. Drawing 8% empties it fast; keeping to 3-4% can fund the full stretch to 100.

Four levers that make the pot last

Hold a cash buffer. Keep two or three years of spending in cash or savings so a crash year can be met without selling your Global ETF at the bottom. Refill it from investments in the good years.
Stay flexible. Trimming spending a little in bad years, and topping up in good ones, dramatically improves survival compared with a rigid withdrawal.
Build an income floor. The State Pension and an annuity pay whatever the market does. The more of your essential costs they cover, the less a crash can hurt.
Keep some growth. A 40-year retirement is long enough that going all-cash guarantees inflation erodes you. Keep enough equities that the pot keeps growing through the early decades.

Draw in a tax-smart order

Not all pots are taxed the same on the way out, so the order you spend them matters. A rough sequence many players use:

Cash buffer first for the current year and any shock.
ISA withdrawals, which are entirely tax-free and do not count as income.
Pension drawdown, taking the 25% tax-free element and keeping taxable withdrawals within lower bands where you can.

In the game

The years around 60 are the danger zone: your income has just stopped and the pot is at its largest, so a crash then does the most harm. Enter retirement with a buffer already in place and a slice of gilts for ballast, and the four decades that follow become a question of patience rather than luck.