Retiring in the Next 5 Years? Get These 5 Things Right

The final five years before retirement can make or break your plan. After retiring at 55, I’m sharing five essential retirement planning steps to help you prepare for early retirement.

Many people spend decades saving for retirement but wait too long to pressure-test how they will actually leave work, cover their expenses, access their investments, manage health insurance, and handle a bad market. In this episode, I walk through five areas to get right before you retire:

1. Choose two possible retirement dates and define three levels of spending 2. Create a withdrawal strategy before the paycheck stops 3. Plan your healthcare bridge and manage MAGI before Medicare 4. Prepare for sequence-of-returns risk and a bad early market 5. Rehearse both the financial and lifestyle sides of retirement I also explain why two households with the same net worth can have very different abilities to retire, why one “normal” year is not enough to create a reliable retirement budget, and why a retirement calculator cannot tell you what Tuesday at 10:30 in the morning will feel like. If you are within five years of retirement—especially if you are considering retiring early—use this episode as a practical checklist to identify what is still vague in your plan and where your attention belongs next.

✅ Free resources available on my Patreon:

All of my Roadmap tools, checklists, worksheets, downloads, and resources are now free to members who join for free. That includes things like my ACA MAGI Estimator, retirement readiness scorecard, cash runway worksheet, 10 Ways to lower your ACA premiums ebook, Treasury bill ladder guide, CD ladder guide, quarterly retirement review worksheet, and more. To get the free downloads, go to my Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/cw/earlyretirementroadmap

Click **Join for Free**, then go to the **Tools** collection. You can download any of the free tools and resources there.

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💼 My Favorite Retirement Planning Tool! If you’re serious about planning for retirement, you’ve got to check out Boldin. It’s a powerful tool that helps you map out your financial future—whether you’re a DIY planner or just want to stress-test your retirement strategy. 👉 Try Boldin here: https://go.boldin.com/earlyretirementroadmap

Disclosure: This is an affiliate link, which means I earn a small commission if you decide to go on the paid plan after a free 2-week trial, or you can remain on the free plan, but I highly recommend the paid plan to use all its robust features! I personally use it for my retirement planning and love it! This link doesn’t cost you anything extra and helps to support the content I create. Thank you!

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DISCLAIMER: This episode is for educational purposes only and reflects my personal experience and research. It is not financial, tax, legal, or investment advice. Always consult with qualified professionals before making major retirement or financial decisions. I am not responsible for any loss or damages resulting from reliance on this information.