Uh, how? That's a 5% rate of interest.

The only way to get that is by taking significant principal risk ("junk" bonds or equity investments). 30 year US treasury bonds are only yielding 3.54%, and everything less than 3 years is <1% [1]. The highest yielding US$ CD I could find [2] was 4.3%, and the highest CDN$ GIC looks to be 4.3% [3].

Also, remember inflation - it really eats into it.. Let's say you're 30 and expect to live to 75. Even with a modest 2.5% inflation rate, your effective income will be <1/3 of what you started with by the end.

[1]http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/domestic-finance/debt-managem... [2]http://beta.bankrate.com/funnel/cd-investments/cd-investment... [3]http://money.canoe.ca/rates/gics_5.html

Junk bonds are yielding about 13 percent right now, but there's a huge default risk:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=jnk

Muni bonds are at about 7 with much less risk:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=CEV

You can negotiate your own rate when you have a large sum.

Right now it's more like 2.5%, or $50,000 a year before taxes.

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/rate/mmmf_home.asp

Also, in the long run money market accounts and CDs tend to not even make up for inflation.

That doesn't mean it's not possible to retire on $2M, especially if you are middle-aged and don't have dependents. If you are young, live in a relatively affluent area in North America and are yet to start a family, forget about it.

Running Monte Carlo simulations with typical stock/bond returns and volatility, the max safe withdrawal rate is usually put at 2%-4%. This really depends on how you factor in inflation.

(Of course, what is "typical"? In 2007, what we saw in 2008 certainly wouldn't have been seen as typical.)