The notice comes in the winter and most people file it after one look. It sets out how much of your own retirement account has to come out this year. That number is not yours to pick.

It is called a required minimum distribution. That is the slice of a pretax retirement account the IRS makes you withdraw each year, starting at 73. Miss it and the penalty runs 25 percent of what you should have taken.

Born in 1953, this is your year. Born in 1960 or later, your start age is 75, and that door opens in 2033.

I am 64, so mine starts at 75. Eleven years out, and already printed.

The table itself is the part worth an afternoon. At 73 the divisor is 26.5, which makes the required slice about 3.8 percent of the balance.

The divisor shrinks by roughly one point a year. At 80 it is 20.2. At 90 it is 12.2, and the slice has grown to 8.2 percent.

3.8%

Share of the account the IRS table requires you to withdraw at 73

 

8.2%

The required share at 90

The balance can sit perfectly flat and the withdrawal still climbs, because the table shrinks every birthday. That is the one schedule in your financial life that never negotiates.

Set that against the size of the pool. American retirement accounts held $47.6 trillion at the end of March, by the Investment Company Institute’s count. IRAs are $18.2 trillion of that. Another $9.9 trillion sits in 401(k) plans.

A year ago this week, an executive order told the agencies to open those plans to alternative assets. That means private equity, private credit, real estate, digital assets. Things that do not trade on an exchange.

In March the Labor Department proposed the rule that follows from it. An employer gets legal cover for putting such a fund on the menu, provided six things are examined first. Performance, fees, liquidity, valuation, benchmarks, complexity.

Comments closed on the first of June. The rule is still a proposal.

Where the cohort’s money sits this quarter, and what the withdrawal has to fund.

So the money now walking into private markets is this cohort’s money, and it arrives with a calendar attached. Your account keeps a clock the asset has never had to keep. A fund holding something priced once a quarter still owes you cash in December.

The mismatch is in the dates. That is the part to watch, and it is the part the brochures will skip.

The soft spot is the one the department named itself. Liquidity and valuation sit among its six factors, and those are the two an ordinary saver has no way to check.

Fees compound against a drawdown with no give in it. The Supreme Court also took up a case in January about private equity inside a target date fund. So the ground under all of this can still move.

That is a question to put to your own plan while the rule is still open.

The arithmetic

IRS Publication 590-B, Appendix B, the Uniform Lifetime Table, in effect since 2022 under Treasury Regulation 1.401(a)(9)-9. The divisor is 26.5 at 73, 20.2 at 80 and 12.2 at 90, which work out to roughly 3.8, 5.0 and 8.2 percent of the prior year end balance. IRS guidance on required minimum distributions covers the start ages of 73 and 75 under SECURE 2.0 and the 25 percent penalty for a missed withdrawal. Investment Company Institute, The US Retirement Market, First Quarter 2026: total retirement assets of $47.6 trillion at March 31, IRAs at $18.2 trillion, 401(k) plans at $9.9 trillion. Executive Order 14330, Democratizing Access to Alternative Assets for 401(k) Investors, signed August 7, 2025. Department of Labor, Employee Benefits Security Administration, proposed rule Fiduciary Duties in Selecting Designated Investment Alternatives, published March 30, 2026, with comments closed June 1, 2026. The Supreme Court granted review in Anderson v. Intel on January 26, 2026.

 

Watch whether that legal cover survives into a final rule. Then go look at what your own target date fund actually holds. The table never moves. It takes its slice every December, and the date does not care what you own. Mine starts in 2037. I have the year written down already.

Andrew

Boomers Trade is written by someone getting older right alongside you, and watching who profits from it.