Variable percentage withdrawal

 (VPW) is a withdrawal method that adapts to the retiree's retirement horizon, asset allocation, and portfolio returns during retirement. It combines the best ideas of the constant-dollar, constant-percentage, and 1/N Withdrawal methods to allow the retiree to spend most of his portfolio using return-adjusted withdrawals. By adapting withdrawals to market returns, VPW will never prematurely deplete the portfolio.

The VPW spreadsheet uses a variable (increasing) percentage to determine withdrawals from a portfolio during retirement. Each year, the withdrawal is determined by multiplying that year's percentage by the current portfolio balance at the time of withdrawal.

The  method and spreadsheet were collaboratively developed and improved by a group of Bogleheads.

The spreadsheet allows backtesting on two data sets: U.S. (1871-2013) and Canada (1970-2013).

Download location
{{Notice|Download the latest VPW spreadsheet:

Dropbox

 * Click on: VPW Spreadsheet (version: December 31, 2014).

GoogleDocs
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 * Click on: VPW Spreadsheet (version: December 31, 2014).
 * Hover your mouse near the top of the page and click on the Arrow-Download-4-icon.png icon to download the file.
 * Ignore the "Whoops! There was a problem loading more pages." message.

The spreadsheet is developed using the free LibreOffice Calc software.
 * Users have reported that some charts do not display as nicely with Microsoft Excel.
 * Google Docs is unable to correctly display the file.

Support
On-going discussion and support is in this forum thread: [ Variable Percentage Withdrawal]