If you have your money in stocks inflation isn’t a horrible thing necessarily. If you have low interest debt it’s actually a good thing, one of the best hedges against inflation there is.
While I also am pretty financially conservative the 3.3 vs 4% thing is overblown a bit, specifically for physicians. The main reason being the “bad outcome” for physicians retiring with 5M, expecting to retire with 200k (inflation adjusted) and finding they need to dial back to 120k after 10 years isn’t the same thing as someone retiring on 40k that now has to try to make things work on 24k. Every dollar produces less utility, and dialing back your budget is way easier if you are going from 200k to 150k than 40 to 30. You might not vacation to the Italy in 2008/2009, but you’ll be ok.
These calculators also don’t include social security (for most physicians will be ~40k a year in current dollars if claimed at 70) and they don’t include your home (again for most physicians >1M) which could be tapped in a worst case scenario.
If you use the “risky” 4% rate and retire early at 55 with 5M you will have a 20% chance of running out of your main investment account by 85, if you also never claimed social security and burned your house down. You will also have a 60% chance of dying before 85. And not to be even more morbid but that goes for your spouse too.
Being financially conservative is great, I advocate for that a lot, but remember that you don’t get to bring the money with you and the far bigger risk is dying way before you exhaust your funds. All too often the concern over running out of money doesn’t result in tolerating a lower budget, but instead working until 65+…while neglecting that there’s a ~20% chance you or your spouse dies from 55-65. Our time is limited, and in some cases way more limited than we thought.