Retirement

Why I track this

Having a target - even a moving one - is better than not having one. The goal is to stop working when I want to, not when I have to. Watching the number move is its own kind of motivation.

The math

The target is a fixed annual income - a specific number of dollars, in today's money - that I've judged is enough to live on and could be drawn indefinitely without running the savings down. It isn't tied to my current paycheck. A paycheck has to cover things retirement won't: payroll taxes, the saving itself, and debt that gets paid off before I stop working. Stripping those out gives a truer picture of what retirement actually costs.

That income is assembled from three sources: savings and investments withdrawn at a rate the research considers sustainable over a long retirement (around 4% a year), secondary income I expect to continue in some form, and Social Security claimed at 62. Health insurance for the years between retiring and Medicare is budgeted separately, as is any large one-time spending. The base scenario assumes I keep saving at my current rate and markets return roughly what history suggests. The projected age is the point where those pieces can cover the target spending for good.

Projected retirement age over time

Tracking since May 2026 — this chart fills in daily.

Note: the step changes in the line are refinements to how this is calculated, not changes in plan. The largest, in late August 2026, replaced the old goal of matching my take-home pay with the fixed sustainable-spending number described above. The math moved, not the goal.