when people think about their withdrawal rate, their early retirement, how does inflation play a role in all of this? Obviously, what you want to do is you want to adjust everything by inflation, right, because nothing makes sense if you look at just nominal numbers. The gold standard that you want to follow in every single safe withdrawal analysis is that, first of all, the withdrawals should be adjusted for inflation.

And then also when you look at, well, what is my final value at time X, that should also be adjusted for inflation. It doesn't make a huge difference if your goal is to deplete your capital. Zero dollars 30 years from now. It doesn't matter if it's a nominal or real dollars.

But if you have a goal of giving a bequest of a million dollars in 30 years, it makes a huge difference whether that is after inflation or before inflation. Everything I do is always inflation adjusted. Inflation adjustments have to be always in there, otherwise you're comparing apples and oranges.