The complete guide to planning your early retirement

What this guide covers

Planning early retirement means lining up a handful of moving parts: your target number, your savings, Social Security, housing, and healthcare. Below is the order to tackle them — each with the free calculator that does the math.

Start with your FIRE number

Your FIRE number is roughly 25× your annual spending — save that, and a ~4% withdrawal covers your costs. New to this? Start with What is FIRE; any unfamiliar term lives in the glossary.

The journey, in three stages

1. Accumulation — save and invest until your portfolio reaches your FIRE number.
2. The pre-65 ACA gap — retire before 65 and you self-fund health insurance through the ACA marketplace until Medicare starts.
3. Medicare at 65 — coverage shifts to Medicare, with new premiums and IRMAA surcharges to plan for.

The pieces to plan

Choose how you’ll fund it

What people get wrong

• The pre-65 healthcare gap — underbudgeting the years of self-paid insurance before Medicare.
• Sequence-of-returns risk — an early market drop can sink a portfolio the average return would have sustained.
• Taxes and IRMAA — withdrawals lift your tax bill and can trigger Medicare premium surcharges.

FAQ

How much do I need to retire early?

Roughly 25 times your annual spending — so $40,000 a year means about $1,000,000. Run your own numbers in the investment calculator.

What about health insurance before 65?

You buy ACA marketplace coverage until Medicare begins at 65. The healthcare calculator projects the cost of those gap years.

What's a safe withdrawal rate?

The 4% rule is the common starting point: withdraw 4% of your portfolio the first year, then adjust for inflation. The Portfolio Drawdown model tests it on your numbers.

When should I claim Social Security?

Your benefit grows for each year you delay from 62 to 70. The Social Security calculator compares the timing side by side.

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