FIRE glossary
Spending Smile
The observed pattern where retirees' real (inflation-adjusted) spending falls through the active early years, dips through a quieter middle stretch, then rises again late in life as healthcare and care costs grow — a smile-shaped curve rather than flat spending.
The shape, and where it comes from
Retirement spending isn't naturally flat once you adjust for inflation. Research on how retirees actually spend — most influentially David Blanchett's 2013 study "Estimating the True Cost of Retirement" — found real spending tends to fall through an active early "go-go" phase and a quieter "slow-go" phase, bottoming out somewhere in the mid-80s noticeably below the starting level, before rising again in the "no-go" years as healthcare and care costs take over from travel and hobbies. Plotted against age it traces a rough smile: high, dipping, then high again. It's an observed pattern from survey data on past retirees, not a law anyone is bound to follow — a plan built on flat, constant real spending isn't wrong, it's just a different, more conservative assumption than the smile.
How Ember uses it
On the drawdown side, Ember offers "spending smile" as one of several dynamic-spending strategies you can select for the years after retirement, alongside a flat inflation-adjusted spend, Guyton-Klinger guardrails, VPW and others. Choosing it applies three age-banded real-growth phases to your baseline spend — roughly -1% a year to the mid-70s, -2% a year through the mid-80s, then +1% a year onward — compounding year over year, independent of market returns. Every year the engine's trace names the active phase and the cumulative percentage of baseline it implies, so the drawdown chart's shape is always explained rather than asserted.
What it changes, and what it doesn't
The smile only reshapes the descent line shown after retirement. It doesn't shrink your required pot: Ember deliberately keeps the FIRE number itself sized on a flat, constant-spend basis no matter which drawdown strategy you pick, so switching to the smile changes the picture of how spending might unfold once you've retired, not the target you're saving toward.
Across borders
The steepness of the late-life "no-go" rise depends heavily on where you're resident when it happens: someone self-funding care and medical gaps in a country with thin state provision typically sees a sharper late upturn than someone in a country with comprehensive state-funded elder care, where the smile can stay closer to flat. If you plan to relocate in retirement, the smile that matters is the one shaped by your eventual country of residence, not your starting one — and because the underlying research is US-survey-based, treat the exact percentages as a general shape to expect rather than a number that travels unchanged across borders.
Common questions
Does choosing the spending smile lower my FIRE number?
No. Ember keeps the required pot (your FIRE number) sized on a flat, constant-spend basis regardless of which drawdown strategy you pick. The smile only changes the shape of the drawdown chart shown after retirement — it isn't a way to shrink the target you're saving toward.
Is the spending smile guaranteed to happen to me?
No — it's a pattern found in research on how past retirees actually spent, not a rule you're bound to follow. Health, family circumstances, care needs and personal preference all vary it a lot from person to person, and some retirees spend roughly flat instead.
Why does spending rise again in the "no-go" years?
Mostly because discretionary spending — travel, hobbies, dining out — tends to fall off with age and mobility, while healthcare and long-term care costs, which are far less discretionary, tend to rise and eventually dominate the budget.
Related terms
See spending smile in your numbers
The free calculator gives a rough estimate; the full planner models your actual accounts, pensions, residency moves and taxes — with the maths behind every figure shown.