What has been the perfect withdrawal amount (PWA) from retirement savings accounts in long-term historical data? The PWA is that which, if taken out in the first year of retirement and used again every year adjusted by inflation, leaves exactly the desired final balance on the account. The withdrawal problem faced by retirees can thus be understood as the estimation of what the PWA will turn out to be for each retiree’s circumstances. We present the formula for obtaining this measure and evaluate the values it has taken in the past—as well as the values of a recently-developed sequencing risk measure—under varying combinations of the relevant parameters. We find that safety-minded investors should enter retirement with a higher stock allocation than what is currently used in most target-date funds. Also, the reductions to the withdrawal amount required to accommodate longer lifespans or significant bequest intentions are surprisingly small.