The Early Retirement Plan Builder

A financial planner charges $2,500–$5,000 to build you a retirement plan. This walks you through building your own in about 40 minutes.

Most retirement advice assumes you won't touch the money before 59½. Follow it exactly — max the 401(k), max the HSA, max the IRA, taxable last — and you can arrive at 45 having hit your number precisely, and still be unable to reach a large part of it.

The dollars are real. They're yours. They're just sitting in accounts with an age rule attached.

This guide catches that before it's expensive to fix.

What you'll have when you're done

Ten sections. Each ends in a box you fill in. The boxes assemble into a one-page plan:

• Your target portfolio and the withdrawal rate behind it
• Your real FI age, and the three levers that move it
• How much of your money has to be reachable before 59½ — and whether your current contributions are building that
• Your account order, with monthly dollar amounts
• Your bridge: what pays for each year between your date and 59½
• Your conversion schedule — how much per year, starting and ending when
• Your health insurance estimate for the years before Medicare
• Your withdrawal rule: year-one amount, and the two portfolio levels that say adjust
• A dated setup checklist, most of it doable this weekend

This is for you if you want to stop working before 50, you're investing regularly, you have no high-interest debt, you have US retirement accounts, and your date is more than two years out.

This is not for you if you're still carrying credit card debt, you're a business owner with a complex entity structure, you have significant rental income, you're retiring within two years, or you're outside the US.

What it isn't

No investment advice. No funds, no tickers, no allocations — what you hold is a separate decision, well covered elsewhere. This covers where early retirement plans actually break: account structure and withdrawal sequencing.

It also doesn't tell you what to do. It shows you the mechanics, the trade-offs, and the consequences of each path. You make the calls.

Also included

A short email per section over three weeks to keep you moving, and twelve months of updates — contribution limits and subsidy rules change every year, and a new edition goes out each January.

Educational material only. Not financial, tax, or legal advice. For advice specific to your situation, speak with a qualified professional.