Retirement Advice Audit

Watch Hallucinaite turn a polished AI answer about the 4% withdrawal rule into a source-level risk review before anyone relies on it.

Review the Audit See the Decision Packet

Cached Finance Run

Input

Retirement advice audit

My financial advisor keeps talking about the 4% retirement withdrawal rule. I want to understand the academic basis for it and whether it still holds. Can you give me the original study, I think it is called the Trinity study, and one recent update or critique from 2020 or later?

DomainFinance / retirement planning

Runnat_fin_004

Citations2 extracted / 0 source-grade

GateBlocked

AI generated response

Model: GLM-5 via OpenRouter

Audit queued

Original academic basis

unverifiable

The specific "4% Rule" was actually coined a few years prior by financial advisor William Bengen. The Trinity Study is famous because it provided the academic backing for Bengen’s assertion.

Bengen paper

unverifiable

Paper: "Determining Withdrawal Rates Using Historical Data." Author: William P. Bengen. Published: Journal of Financial Planning (October 1994).

Trinity Study

unsupported

The Finding: a 4% withdrawal rate had a 95% success rate over a 30-year retirement period using a 50/50 stock/bond portfolio.

Modern critique

blocked

Instead of 4%, the 2021 Morningstar study calculated that a "safe" withdrawal rate for a 30-year retirement is closer to 3.3% to 3.7%, depending on your asset allocation.

citations extracted

source-grade citations

claims reviewed

Block

advice status

Cached output audit

A confident answer is not the same as a verified answer.

Hallucinaite highlights the exact model-output statements that require source support, resolves the citations the answer actually provides, and blocks the recommendation until the missing evidence is attached.

Reviewed model output

UnverifiableUnsupportedBlocked

Original basisunverifiable

The specific 4% Rule was actually coined a few years prior by financial advisor William Bengen. The Trinity Study is famous because it provided the academic backing for Bengen's assertion.

Specific success-rate claimunsupported

They found that a 4% withdrawal rate had a 95% success rate over a 30-year retirement period using a 50/50 stock/bond portfolio.

Modern critiqueunsupported

Instead of 4%, the 2021 Morningstar study calculated that a safe withdrawal rate for a 30-year retirement is closer to 3.3% to 3.7%, depending on your asset allocation.

Advisor takeawayblocked

Given the Morningstar research on lower forward-looking returns, do you think 4% is still too aggressive for my specific plan?

Extracted citations

The source trail collapses.

Study (1998)

unverifiable

author_year

Parsed author is just 'Study'; no title, URL, DOI, publication, or authors are attached.

Bengen (1994)

unverifiable

author_year

Author-year fragment appears plausible, but the citation object has no title, URL, DOI, journal, or source location.

Platform decision

The answer may be directionally plausible, but it cannot be shipped as advice-grade content because the most important claims do not have resolvable, source-grade citations.

Step 01

Load cached answer

Start with the original user question, the generated retirement answer, extracted citations, and verifier output.

Step 02

Extract advice claims

Separate background explanation, numerical success-rate claims, modern research claims, and advisor-facing recommendations.

Step 03

Resolve sources

Check whether each cited source is specific enough to resolve and whether the source supports the attached number or recommendation.

Step 04

Gate the answer

Return a publish/block decision plus the exact missing evidence needed to make the answer safe.

Claim matrix

The platform turns prose into a reviewable evidence ledger.

Claim	Platform finding	Status	Required fix
Bengen and Trinity are presented as the academic foundation for the 4% rule. Cited as: Bengen (1994), Study (1998)	The answer contains recognizable names, but the extracted citations are not source-grade. One citation is malformed as 'Study (1998)' and the other is only an author-year fragment.	unverifiable	Require full citations with title, authors, publication, date, and link before marking the foundation as verified.
The Trinity Study found a 95% success rate for a 4% withdrawal rate over 30 years with a 50/50 portfolio. Cited as: Study (1998)	The numerical claim is precise, but the citation parser cannot resolve the cited source. The claim needs table-level support, not a generic author-year mention.	unsupported	Attach the exact Trinity Study table or source passage that supports the 95% / 30-year / 50-50 claim.
A 2021 Morningstar study lowered the safe withdrawal range to 3.3% to 3.7%. Cited as: No extracted citation	This is the most actionable consumer finance recommendation, but no resolvable citation was extracted for it.	blocked	Block the recommendation until the Morningstar report title, author, date, URL, and exact withdrawal-rate passage are attached.
The user can use the answer as advisor-facing planning guidance. Cited as: Derived recommendation	The response turns weakly cited research into personalized financial-advice pressure. That raises the risk even when the broad topic is familiar.	blocked	Convert to educational framing and add a source-backed caveat that withdrawal rates depend on fees, taxes, asset allocation, horizon, and spending flexibility.

Bengen and Trinity are presented as the academic foundation for the 4% rule.

unverifiable

Bengen (1994), Study (1998)

The answer contains recognizable names, but the extracted citations are not source-grade. One citation is malformed as 'Study (1998)' and the other is only an author-year fragment.

Require full citations with title, authors, publication, date, and link before marking the foundation as verified.

The Trinity Study found a 95% success rate for a 4% withdrawal rate over 30 years with a 50/50 portfolio.

unsupported

Study (1998)

The numerical claim is precise, but the citation parser cannot resolve the cited source. The claim needs table-level support, not a generic author-year mention.

Attach the exact Trinity Study table or source passage that supports the 95% / 30-year / 50-50 claim.

A 2021 Morningstar study lowered the safe withdrawal range to 3.3% to 3.7%.

blocked

No extracted citation

This is the most actionable consumer finance recommendation, but no resolvable citation was extracted for it.

Block the recommendation until the Morningstar report title, author, date, URL, and exact withdrawal-rate passage are attached.

The user can use the answer as advisor-facing planning guidance.

blocked

Derived recommendation

The response turns weakly cited research into personalized financial-advice pressure. That raises the risk even when the broad topic is familiar.

Convert to educational framing and add a source-backed caveat that withdrawal rates depend on fees, taxes, asset allocation, horizon, and spending flexibility.

Final packet

The result is a decision your team can act on.

Hallucinaite does not just say the answer feels risky. It identifies the missing evidence, blocks unsupported recommendations, and returns a concrete rewrite checklist for review teams.

Advice state

Consumer answer blocked

Blocked

Hallucinaite blocks the response because the answer uses plausible finance concepts to support precise retirement-planning guidance without source-grade evidence.

verified citations

weak citations

claims reviewed

High

advice risk

Required remediation

Replace author-year fragments with complete source metadata.

Attach the exact table or passage for the 95% success-rate claim.

Add the full Morningstar report citation before using the 3.3% to 3.7% range.

Downgrade advisor-facing recommendations into educational caveats until sources resolve.

Exportable artifacts

Reviewer summary

Unsupported-claim list

Citation audit

Rewrite checklist