Graham Stephan

Verified, single publisher Author and publisher at Graham’s Newsletter Checked Aug 6, 2026

A 3% withdrawal rate against the 4% rule, an 80/20 split between boring and risky, and an exit from the asset class he built his name on

The record behind the role

About Graham’s Newsletter Graham’s Newsletter, his own publication

Corroborated by Graham Stephan Wikipedia

Organization: Graham’s Newsletter
Evidence state: Verified, single publisherEvery located statement is published by grahamstephan.substack.com.
Source scope: Dated posts on the newsletter he owns and writes
Role source checked: Aug 6, 2026
What JMM tracks: The withdrawal rate he says he personally uses and what it costs in capital, the barbell he recommends between index funds and bets, his decision to sell the rental portfolio, and the two rules the internet keeps attributing to him that he did not write.
JMM record: graham-stephan
Wikidata: Q137690773
Known aliases: Graham Stephan

JMM keeps identity, role, statement, and forecast performance as separate records. A documented role does not imply a claim verdict or a reputation score.

Portrait: Xuthoria, CC BY-SA 4.0

Four dated claims, all in posts he published himself

Every statement carries its quote, its source, its date and its review state. A verdict only ever comes from a documented record, per the publication standard.

Verbatim quote Open

That’s why I personally follow the 3% rule, knowing that I can easily cut back when needed but I can also “plan for the worst,” without over-extending myself in the event I live to 120 and still want to play around with Reef Aquariums, which happens to be a very expensive hobby.

The whole reason this file exists. Almost every retirement calculator on the internet is built on 4%, and this is a named person with an owned publication saying he uses a different number and why. Note what the sentence is actually claiming: not that 4% is wrong, but that he would rather hold a buffer than have to cut spending later. That is a preference about regret, not a finding about markets, and it is a legitimate reason to pick a rate.

Verbatim quote Open

If you had a 75-25 portfolio made of stocks and bonds, you’d have a 99% chance of not running out of money during a typical 30-year retirement according to the 4% rule.

His statement of the rule he is departing from, and the reason the departure is arguable rather than obvious. The 4% rule was never a promise of safety at any horizon: it is a 30-year figure attached to a specific allocation. Stretch the horizon and the same arithmetic gives a lower number, which is exactly the case his 3% is answering. The same post credits William Bengen with creating the rule in 1994.

Verbatim quote Open

80% Safe: Put the vast majority of your money into boring, reliable index funds and treasuries. This is your seatbelt. It ensures that no matter what happens, you will be okay. 20% Risky: Use the remaining 20% for your thematic trades, individual picks, and a very small portion for very volatile assets like crypto.

The allocation rule, stated as a split rather than as advice about what to buy inside each half. In the same post he answers his own headline question with a qualification most creators skip: index investing works, and it works slowly, so the size of the contribution matters more than the cleverness of the portfolio. His words for it are that index investing is “a savings account on steroids.”

Verbatim quote Open

I am officially selling the rest of my real estate over the next few months and walking away.

The most consequential sentence he has published, because real estate is the business his audience was built on. He puts the net cash yield on the equity in his Los Angeles rentals at roughly 4 to 5 percent a year, which is the number that makes the decision arithmetic rather than mood. Read what he sets it against, because he does not claim the properties lose on yield: he says treasuries, money market funds, and high-yield savings accounts pay in that same 4 to 5 percent range. So the rentals are matching a risk-free return and charging him the roof, the tenants, and the permits on top, and it is the work rather than the yield that decides it. Read it next to the 3% rule and the two are the same instinct applied twice.

The playbook, sourced

Three rules JMM can state from his own words, with the arithmetic each one implies and the input it forgets to ask for.

Withdraw 3%, not 4%

One number changed, and the size of the target changes with it. A 4% rule needs 25 times annual spending; a 3% rule needs 33.3 times, which is a third more capital for the same lifestyle. On $60,000 a year of spending that is $1.5m against $2.0m. His stated reason is not that 4% fails but that he wants the option to keep spending rather than the obligation to cut, and he says he can cut if he has to.

Graham’s Newsletter: The Magic Number for Retirement Open the model

Eighty percent boring, twenty percent bets

A barbell with the risk budget written down in advance. The useful property is not the ratio, it is that the 20% is capped: a bad thematic trade cannot become the portfolio, because the rule fixes its size before the conviction arrives. As a model it needs one thing he does not supply, which is a rebalancing trigger. A 20% sleeve that quintuples is a 55% sleeve, and the rule is silent about that day.

Graham’s Newsletter: Can you get rich by index investing?

Price the rental against the index before you keep it

His exit is a comparison anyone can run: net cash flow after every cost, divided by the equity actually tied up, set against what that equity earns in a treasury or an index fund. He puts his own answer at roughly 4 to 5 percent on the equity. The rule the post implies is that a landlord should compute this yearly and be willing to act on it, which is the part most owners never do.

Graham’s Newsletter: Why I’m selling all my real estate

Where the rules stop working

Every rule above is a shortcut that holds inside a range of circumstances. These are the edges. Entries carrying a link are somebody else's published objection; the rest are JMM's own reading of the arithmetic.

The 3% rule is stated without a portfolio or a horizon

The 4% figure he is departing from carries both: 30 years, and in his own telling a 75-25 stocks and bonds mix. His 3% carries neither. That matters because a withdrawal rate is not a property of money, it is the output of a horizon, an allocation, and a fee. Three percent from a 100% cash portfolio still runs out. Any calculator built on this rule has to make the reader supply what the rule leaves blank.
JMM analysis
The safest number in his own post is somebody else’s

The same article cites Ben Felix arguing that 2.7% is the safer figure for retirements longer than the standard 30 years. That number is Felix’s, not Stephan’s, and it is lower than the one Stephan adopts. Anyone reproducing the post should keep the attribution straight: Stephan chose 3% while quoting a case for 2.7%.
Graham’s Newsletter: The Magic Number for Retirement
The 20/3/8 car rule is not his

It is The Money Guy Show’s rule, and their own site says so in the first person: they created it, and they define it as 20% down, paid off in three years or less, with the payment at 8% or less of gross income. It is attached to Stephan’s name constantly. JMM located no post of his claiming it. Attribute it to the people who wrote it.
The Money Guy Show: 20/3/8 car buying rule, by Daniel May, CFP, updated July 29, 2026
The advice is calibrated to an unusual income

His index-investing post says in plain terms that index funds are not enough on their own and have to be supplemented with a high income and consistency. That is honest, and it is also the assumption running under everything else on this page. A 3% withdrawal rate is a choice available to someone whose earnings let him overshoot the target; for a median earner the same rule means working several more years. The rule does not fail, but its cost is not evenly distributed.
JMM analysis
Selling the rentals is a decision, not a rule

He gives one yield, on his own properties, in one city, at one point in the cycle. Nothing in the post generalises to a landlord with cheap fixed-rate debt, a different tax basis, or a market where rents are rising faster than prices. Treat it as a worked example of the comparison, not as an instruction to sell.
JMM analysis

The desk's read

Take the 3% rule seriously and price it before you adopt it. The honest version of this argument is not "3% is safer than 4%", which is trivially true, it is "3% costs 33% more capital and here is what that buys you". Twenty-five times spending against 33.3 times spending is the entire debate, and on a $60,000 lifestyle it is the difference between $1.5m and $2.0m, which for most people is several more working years. The right way to use his number is as the conservative end of a range you can see both ends of, not as a replacement default.

The part JMM would actually copy is the shape of the 80/20 rule rather than the ratio. Writing down the size of the speculative sleeve before you have a conviction is the single most useful thing an individual investor can do, because the failure mode is never the first bet, it is the fourth one after the first three worked. Add the rebalancing trigger he leaves out and it becomes a real policy.

On attribution, this desk is going to be blunt, because it is the reason half this page exists. Stephan is credited across the internet with two rules he did not write. The car rule belongs to The Money Guy Show, whose own page claims it in the first person. The 28% housing ratio is an underwriting convention nobody appears to own. A creator does not become the author of a rule by explaining it well on camera, and a site that treats popularity as provenance ends up publishing confident nonsense about real people.

The real estate exit is the most interesting thing he has published and the least transferable. It is worth reading precisely because it is a public reversal by someone whose brand was built on the opposite position, which is rare and costs something to do. It is not worth copying without running the same arithmetic on your own property, because his answer came out of numbers that are his.

Opinion, not a rating. JMM publishes no reputation score for any person, and nothing here is personalised advice.