"In eleven of the 20 countries, the safe withdrawal rate was below 3 per cent. German, Australian, Japanese, Austrian and Italian investors were among many global investors who would have gone bust following the 4 per cent guideline."
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Note that with the exception of Australia, every country listed was utterly destroyed in 1945 and all but Australia and Japan were in 1918.  In those cases, the investors were totally wiped out at least once and usually twice.  Google "retirement calculator from hell".