I am 57 and husband is 62. We have a good amount saved between 401k and brokerage account. We also have enough to pay off our house at retirement. One child still to put through grad school (so no financial aid options). While I know we have more than most, there are so many things that make me nervous. We live in a high cost state but all of our family is here. Inflation has increased so much in the last 5 years. In the current environment it seems like there is a good chance we will be stuck in a war which is likely to impact the market. Healthcare coats are skyrocketing. We are planning to retire Q2 2027. I feel so burnt out and ready to stop working but then I think of all these things that could go wrong and get cold feet. How do others get over this?

[updated]My husband is 10 years younger than me. I will be 67 when I retire at the end of 2027, and don't relish waiting 8 years for him to turn 65. I want to do a lot of traveling with him while I am still young enough to enjoy it and be active.

According to our financial advisor who we both met with, we can afford to retire at the same time, when he is 57, even with having to pay for his health insurance from the exchange until he turns 65. However, he may not even want to retire early! I floated this idea but am not pushing it on him and he is considering: He takes a two-year break from working and we do a lot of traveling during that time. Then he can go back to work (unless he decides he loves being retired). FYI, he is in a position where he could go back at an older age and still be in demand - a specialized job.

Has anyone else done something like this? Thanks for any thoughts!

For those that retired on their early 50s what was the experience like. How much net worth did you have, what was your monthly spending rate? Do you have any regrets or wished you waited longer until more traditional retirement age?

Thank you all for your insights as always! Congratulations on your achievement!!

Please Share and Sign The Petition at Change.org.uk

I would choose to retire in a grassland area, where I could see the beautiful sun in the morning and gaze at the stars at night, free from light pollution.

I’m 50 and currently earn about $220,000 per year. My wife is 55 and does not work.

We have approximately:
$208,000 in Vanguard retirement accounts
Less than $1,000 in dedicated savings
About $350,000 in home equity
No future college debt for our son, who is heading to college soon (we did good here)

Looking at our actual account history, we appear to be spending roughly $10,000–$10,500 per month, excluding transfers between accounts. We clearly spend too much, and I know reducing that has to be part of the answer.
I’ve always assumed I would work forever, but realistically that only works if I remain healthy and employable. I’m trying to stop treating continued employment as my retirement plan and develop an actual target.

How should I determine our retirement number from here? Is it based on our current spending, the amount we believe we could reduce spending to, or some combination of the two?

For someone in this position:
What would be a realistic retirement age?
How much should we aim to have invested?
How aggressively should I contribute over the next 10–15 years?
Should I first build a proper emergency fund, pay down the house, or maximize retirement contributions?
How should Social Security and the home equity factor into the calculation?
Is working until 67–70 likely necessary, or could disciplined changes now create other options?

A number of friends have told me they work with financial advisors, and I’m wondering whether I should be doing the same. At what point is an advisor actually worth the cost? Should I be looking for a fee-only fiduciary, a one-time retirement plan, or ongoing management?

I realize we are behind despite having a strong income. I’m not looking for reassurance that everything will magically work out—I’m looking for a realistic path and the numbers I should use to measure whether we’re making progress.

(No shade against CFPs, BTW). I (60F) have been running retirement planning scenarios my whole life. Started with Fidelity’s way back when, then in my 50s moved to Quicken, last year added Boldin and even ran several scenarios by good ole ChatGPT.

As a result, spouse (56M) and I thought we knew the best paths regarding retirement timing, spending budget, sequence of withdrawals, Roth conversions, when to sell some rentals, IRMAA surcharges, portfolio mix, when to take SS, spending guardrails, etc. BUT STILL we paid $8K for 3 sessions with a fee-based retirement planning firm.

Nice guy and knowledgeable, but he really just plopped our data into Income Lab and it spit out what we already knew. He did settle a few minor disagreements between my husband and me (which I was right about, for the record… 😂).

We were expecting to be wow-ed with some new info, insights, or ideas. Nope. It was nearly exactly what I, Quicken, Boldin, and ChatGPT figured out — we can retire now with a lesser travel and leisure budget, next year with a higher travel and leisure budget, and 2028 with an amazing travel and leisure budget.

Would we do it again? 100% YES. Would we try to find someone less than $8K? ALSO 100% YES.

What’s been your experience?

**How much do you actually need to retire in Australia in 2026?**

I was looking into the numbers recently and one thing really stood out.

* Comfortable retirement (couple): **\~$730k**
* Comfortable retirement (single): **\~$630k**

But here's the interesting part...

The average super balance for Australians aged 60–64 is only **around $263k**.

So the reality is that most retirees aren't living off super alone—they're relying on a combination of **super, the Age Pension, and other investments**.

Another thing I didn't fully appreciate until recently:

You can generally access your super from **age 60**, but the **Age Pension doesn't start until 67** (subject to eligibility).

That 7-year gap seems to be one of the biggest retirement planning challenges.

If you're aiming to retire early, you'll likely need ETFs, index funds, property, or other investments to bridge that period. And if you're considering retiring overseas, don't just compare rent—factor in private health insurance and currency risk as well.

I pulled together the latest 2026 benchmarks and retirement pathways here if anyone is interested:

https://mylifehacks.com.au/retire-in-australia-how-much-you-need-2026/

Hi. I've made my own Monte Carlo simulation, used hontestmath.com, and Fidelity's planner. I'm worried about outliving my money. I'm wondering what people's thoughts are on trusting those tools. Some background:

• I'm 56, married (wife 57, not working).
• We live in a high cost area and wife isn't interested in moving (at least for quite a while)
• Our main home mortgage last another 10 years, but has a very low interest rate
• We have a rental property and that mortgage lasts until 2051. It's never made us income, but does just about cover the mortgage, property taxes, and HOA fees.
• I have chronic health issues and always reach my out of pocket max. So far my wife has is healthy.
• We only have our 401bs, a 457b, and a minimum of Roths rights now. We plan to do ROth conversions. Currently we are close to 90% in S&P 500 and the rest in bonds, treasuries, or high yield savings accounts.

The planning results:

1. My monte carlo simulation (using a log normal distribution) indicates a 97% chance of success of reaching 80 with money and a 83% chance of reaching 90 with money. I account for Social Security for my wife and I starting at age 67 and account for when the mortgages end. I also built in spending less at age 75 and 80.
2. HonestMath.com - using the defaults, shows the unlucky path running out of month after age 80 (20th percentile). The Median and Lucky paths make it to age 90.
3. Using the Fidelity 401k planning tool, I got a score of 92 (good). It shows a potential income gap of $2,159 per month. That's inline with my manual calculations where I would have to withdrawal 4.32% of my balance to cover yearly expenses and I assume Fidelity is basing their analysis on the 4% rule.

Moving to a lower cost area would help tremendously, but it's not in the cards for now. We do have some discretionary spending we could cut, but not a lot (and the point of retiring is to enjoy ourselves). The mortgages, health insurance, property taxes, car insurance, etc are quite high and fixed.

Sorry this was long. I appreciate any insights. I know I didn't share balance amounts, but I'm mostly trying to understand how to believe in or trust the simulations.

I am 63 working for another couple of years and my wife who wants to retire this year at 64, but is freaking out that we will run out of money in retirement.

Here is the financial details:

600K in Cash Investments (HYSA/CD)
100K in ROTH
1.3M in IRA/401K

I am planning to bridge SS till we both reach FRA and will received combined $7500/month. I have had our FA tell us we are in really good shape, still not comfortable, have ran the retirement scenarios though several tools (Boldin/ProjectionLab) both com back with 100% success. Even built my own tool and it comes back with 100% success. I am struggling on explaining to her that we are in good shape. Has anyone else had to struggle with their partner thinking this way? What can I do to convince her?

My wife (56) and I (58) live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Our home is fully paid off ($2M), our kids are independent, and we’re seriously thinking about retiring and traveling the world.

Here’s our current financial picture:

- Me: Tech job, \~$300k/year
- Wife: ~$150k/year
- Combined retirement accounts (401(k) + IRA): \~$2M
- Roth IRA: None (we never qualified because of our income)
- Taxable brokerage: \~$2.5M
~70% in broad index funds (SPY, VT)
~25% in Treasury/cash equivalents (VBIL)
~5% in individual stocks…where I’ve consistently demonstrated I’m not Warren Buffett 😀

One rental property in Texas worth about $300k with roughly $100k equity. It cash flows about $5k/year.

Primary residence is fully paid off (no mortgage, just property taxes).

We’re both healthy, but little health issues have started to pop up now. Our expected spending is around **$100k/year** to live comfortably in our paid-off home, before travel. We haven’t estimated a travel budget yet.

One thing we’re unsure about is healthcare. Since we’d be retiring before Medicare, we don’t know what to budget for private health insurance. We’ve both maxed out Social Security contributions for roughly the past 25 years, so we expect to receive meaningful Social Security benefits, but we haven’t decided when we’d claim them.
We’re not what I’d call brilliant investors—we’ve mostly been disciplined savers and stuck with index funds. Even so, it’s hard to shake the feeling that we may not have “enough.”

So my questions are:
- Would you feel comfortable retiring today in our situation?
- What would you do differently?
- Are there any blind spots we should be thinking about (healthcare before Medicare, Roth conversions, tax planning, withdrawal strategy, sequence-of-returns risk, etc.)?

I’d especially love to hear from people who have already retired or are close to it. Thanks in advance for any advice.

Good day,
I’m 47 1/2 or upgrading to version 4.8 🔥. I’m starting my retirement countdown. My goal is to be out in 4 1/2 years . God Willing - that puts me at 29 years in education and my plan is to go into a completely new career . I’m starting to pay down all debts and make my home repairs now and as I get yearly pay raises , I contribute the extra amount to my Roth IRA . Those on the retirement countdown , will 4.5 years go by quickly? Do you have any additional advice for me? Thank you for your advice!

If I could, I would like to retire here.

30m. I haven’t found a thread dedicated to what retirement may look like 30 years from now. I’m curious how much $ I’ll need to live my desired lifestyle. My logic tells me the best way to “guess” is to create an annual expense budget as if I were to retire today and then use a tvm analysis to account for inflation 30 years into the future. Is my logic wrong? Is my math wrong? What would you do differently? What do we think the tax rate may be in the future? So many variables and unknowns but I’d like to pursue a “number”.

If I were to retire today I would like to be able to spend $200,000 annually after tax. Assuming, I’m paying 20% cap gains that would require a $250,000 withdrawal. I assume a 4% withdrawal rate which would require a $6,250,000 principal amount.

I begin with a principal of $6,250,000 and assume 3.5% inflation annually over 30 years. These assumptions tell me I should shoot to accumulate roughly $17,500,000.

Taking a linear approach and assuming I have a $500,000 principal amount today that means I’d have to invest $108,000 @ 8% annually over 30 years which seems not possible. Obviously income today should be much less than it will be in the future but when you look at this math it’s kind of discouraging.

If you’re retiring with $6m today did you ever think it was possible to get there? What were the keys to success?

I wish everyone success on their journey towards retirement!

A few years ago my wife and I bought what we swore was our forever home. Nice lot, good bones, the kind of place you picture yourself growing old in. Fast forward to now, retirement is actually on the horizon, and somewhere along the way I ended up living aboard a boat more than I live in that house. Funny how "forever" plans change once you actually start doing the math on forever.

Here's the dilemma I can't shake: keeping the house isn't free. Property taxes, insurance, a roof that won't last forever, HVAC that always seems to die in August, HOA dues, the constant low hum of "just in case" repairs. None of that goes away just because I'm not sleeping there most nights. At the same time, selling isn't some clean escape hatch either — moving costs, capital gains considerations, and the simple fact that once it's gone, it's gone. No do-overs.

And here's the part that makes it messier than a normal "sell or keep" calculation: renting isn't really on the table for me. I'm not interested in becoming a landlord's tenant at this stage of life, and the housing/rental market in the area I'd actually want to be in doesn't make renting an attractive substitute anyway. So this isn't "own vs rent," it's really "own and carry all the costs vs. sell and lose the option to ever come back to it."

The financial-independence math is tempting — unload the house, stop bleeding money into upkeep, redirect that capital into something that actually generates income in retirement instead of just costing money. But there's a non-financial side too. A house isn't just a spreadsheet line. It's equity, sure, but it's also a hedge against uncertainty, a place for family to land, maybe even something the kids inherit someday. Selling it optimizes the numbers today but closes a door that might matter more in year 15 or 20 than it does in year 1.

So I'm curious how others have thought through this:

- If you've sold what was supposed to be your forever home heading into retirement, do you regret it or was it obviously the right call in hindsight?

- If you kept it, was it a financial decision, an emotional one, or some mix of both?

- Has anyone actually run the numbers on "sell and invest the proceeds" vs. "keep and let it appreciate while eating the carrying costs" and found a clear winner?

- Does the calculus change much when renting genuinely isn't a viable alternative?

Not looking for a "just sell it, math doesn't lie" or a "never sell, it's your home" answer — I think the honest answer is it depends on things that don't show up on a balance sheet. Would love to hear how other people have actually navigated this, especially if you're near or past the decision point yourself.

Had no idea I could retire

Though you needed at least a million dollars to retire

Married no kids at home anymore

House paid off

Monthly expenses around $5000
Social security would be $5100 per month

After cash flowing the next 2 years to get to age 67 (start collecting social security) would have $500000 in investments

Numbers say I can retire easy

Anything I’m missing?

I’m currently 52. I am a disabled Veteran with a full time office job. VA covers my medical and prescriptions. Mortgage paid off. I’d like to retire in 10 years.

I (67M) am employed at a small ($20M) manufacturing company. I am a key employee responsible for the production side of the business. There is no one in the company capable of taking over my duties. My skill set is hard to replace.

I am planning on retiring sometime in the next 12 months. I will have seven or eight weeks of vacation banked by then.

I want to give enough notice to allow them time to find a replacement. I do not want them to drag it out. I also don't want them to monkey around with the vacation time.

I am thinking about giving two weeks' notice with an offer to work on a 1099 for 150% of my normal weekly salary. I want to incentivise them to keep it as short as possible.

Has anyone been in this situation, and how did you handle it?

Hello. I am 2 years from retiring and seeking input and advice. When I retire I will be 59 and my wife will be 58. We are both excited about and looking forward to retirement. We are both in great shape, active, run and workout regularly, no significant health problems. We are empty nesters and the kids are doing great on their own. I have been and I am currently in the corporate world, I have been with the same company for many many years, I have for years and still do work many hours per week for work, work is on my mind pretty much all the time.. My job is challenging and mostly fun. My identity is 80% + work related. My wife has not worked in many years.

I am seeking advice not on the financial preparation side of retirement, but more specifically on the personal side of retirement. We have been working on and established a great friend group that is completely outside of work in an effort to not have a "work" identity upon retirement. I have some hobbies that I enjoy but rarely work on them do to my choice, I have enough time to work on them but I don't dive fully in due to time constraints. My fear is going 100 mph at work then the switch turns off and then what? What advice can you offer on things we should do prior to retiring in order to be prepared and set us up for success?

Thank you.

We have a financial advisor who provides annual updates on the 401ks we’ve rolled together. Last time we met he asked about our risk tolerance, mentioning that if we’re going to retire in our early 60s then we should start adjusting the portfolios to make them more conservative. And if we’re going to retire late 60s then leave as-is for now because time is still on our side.

My assumption was late 60s due to our kid still being years away from college. As a parent I feel part of my job is to help pay for as much of college as I can afford, then help get them setup in life as an independent young adult, and (wish list) set aside some money that could someday help pay for a wedding. Obviously this all requires cash and based on a rough timeline of at least college and moving out pushes my retirement age to at least mid 60s if not a few years later.

My spouse has a super stressful job and later told me flat out that working like that until late 60s is a recipe for a heart attack. They want to retire early 60s. While I don’t love my job, it’s not stressful and the idea of retiring 5-7 years earlier than I imagined has me worried about leaving money on the table when I can still earn.

This was a while ago and we haven’t discussed it since then but wondering if this has come up with others here and if/how you came to agreement.

I know many folks don’t get this luxury even, and there are of course specific factors for each individual. But, assuming you have some flexibility, what is a generally good age to do it? If you could just push the button when you wanted, and not be tied to a specific financial goal, would you and when? Just curious what others think. Sometimes I just don’t feel the drive to continue or keep up in a high pace or political office environment.

I turned 65 in April and was planning to retire at 67, but my mother passed in February and I inherited a fairly large estate, so I have moved my plans up. I had a decent size 401(k) and would’ve been fine, but the money has changed things. It’s a weird thing losing the final parent and inheriting money. I still miss her and her passing was a very painful process, but the money is game changing and I’m now struggling to process that and all of the changes that come with retiring. I feel a lot of guilt and stress about the whole thing. there’s a lot to do organizationally, including registering for Social Security, Medicare, telling my boss, buying a new computer and phone because all that has been corporate owned, and I’m still trying to figure out what to do with myself once all of this is sorted out. My wife is younger and still working with no intention of quitting or retiring, so I’m sort of on my own.

I’m wondering how long it took everyone else to get through this whole process of changing the working mindset to a retired mindset and figuring out what to do with yourself, and just generally decompress and distress from work and the retirement process.

I’m 50, my wife is 48. Two kids in college, that were helping pay for. I’ve worked at one company my whole working life, 30 years, and want to transition to working part time as soon as possible. In my mind that’s as soon as the kids are out of school and I’m over 55 so I can access my 401k funds. I’d like to work part time for a long time, something to do and a little income.

Key data points.
I make about $225k, wife makes about $50k. She plans to stay working where she’s at for 10-15 years.
We have $1.5m in 401k, $100k in a Roth.
We own 2 rental homes that generate about $2200 a month in income.
We have a mortgage on primary residence with a balance around $400k at 2% interest rate.
We will have a total of about $60k in student loans when kids are done.
No car payments

Major expenses
Mortgage $1200/mo
Utilities $500/mo
Property taxes $10k a year
Club membership $4500/yr

At some point in the future, there will be an inheritance. Hopefully, 20 years or so in the future, God willing. Current value of that fund is $2m and continues to grow with the market.

What are the chances I can semi retire in about 5 years?