Are you a financial planner?

I mean that in the sense of “by profession” not whether you more generically plan your finances, in an ant v. grasshopper sort of way.

If you are (or if you’re a retired financial planner — Danno?), I have some questions for you.

I’ve read plenty about how people should plan their finances when they retire, to maximize their living standard while simultaneously ensuring with an appropriate degree of probability that they don’t outlive their finances.  But, in your experience, what do your clients actually do, and, in real life, how do you advise them?  Do they actually attempt, as best as possible, to implement the 4% rule?  Do they make a conservative guess at life expectancy and at expected inflation and annual returns, and you work out the math on annual spending?  Do they still try the “live off the interest” approach, regardless of today’s extremely low rate environment?

And do you advise clients with moderate savings, or only those with a significant chunk of change to start with?  Do you have any sense of, in practice, the financial “spend-down” decisions of a person with $100,000 in savings, vs. $500,000 or a million or two?

I’ll be seeing if I can hunt down data on this, but I’d appreciate a view from “in the trenches”!