[Frank]

If you are retiring early, the first thing to figure out is how to get early access to your retirement accounts.

Once you know you have access to a number of sources, you don’t need to figure out in advance where its coming from, because you’ll want to adjust that every year for tax, ACA qualification and other reasons.

All you really need to know is what resources will be available and when.

In fact, planning in too much detail is counterproductive.

[Rick]

I use the why then what then how for most of my fire planning.

If you are already near RE, or thinking like you are there, you have the whys most likely done.

But don’t skip to the how just yet.

As Frank mentions above, you then need to list out your whats first.

What accounts do you have available.

What account have what amount of funding.

What account have tax smart withdrawal options.

What accounts help you fill up low tax brackets.

All of this will start your what order of operations.

And then you move on finally to the How

[Ryan]

I have 2 buckets: one with pre-59.5 money (cash and brokerages) and one with post 59.5 money (IRAs and Roths).

The first bucket needs to last me 18 more years until I can draw from the second bucket, so I calculate what my safe withdrawal rate is for an 18 year horizon.

For me that happens to be 4.68% of what’s in bucket 1. That is my budget until 59.5.

Then I’ll find my new safe withdrawal rate at 59.5 by summing the values of what’s left over in bucket one with what’s in bucket two and using a drawdown percentage of around 3.6%.

Just how I do it

[Author]

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