Put Graham Stephan's rules through your numbers
Two rules JMM has located in a dated source, rebuilt as a working calculator, and taken a position on.
- Sources located
- Graham’s Newsletter (grahamstephan.substack.com)
- Source years
- 2023
- JMM verdicts
- depends on you, holds up
20% rent rule calculator
What rent fits inside 20% of your gross income?
depends on you A savings target wearing a housing rule’s clothes, and it will grade most renters a failure. Graham’s Newsletter (grahamstephan.substack.com), 2023Open model
3% withdrawal rate calculator
Does a 3% withdrawal rate change what you need to retire?
holds up Right number, wrong reason to admire it: the flexibility is doing the work, not the 3%. Graham’s Newsletter (grahamstephan.substack.com), 2023Open modelNot every rule here survives its own arithmetic
JMM does not grade these rules as a set. One of them, 20% rent rule calculator, is where the position turns critical: A savings target wearing a housing rule’s clothes, and it will grade most renters a failure.
Each page separates three things people usually run together: what the source states, what JMM's model adds to make it computable, and where the rule itself breaks. The last one is not the calculator's limitations list. It is the failure of the idea, which is the part the person who published the rule has no reason to write down.