"I'm Not Trying to Retire at 35"
We hear this all the time. Someone discovers MoneyOnFIRE and immediately assumes it's only for people chasing early retirement. "I'm not trying to quit working at 30. I just want to retire comfortably at 65."
That's a completely reasonable reaction. But here's the thing: the financial independence approach to building wealth works whether you're targeting a classical retirement at 65 or aiming for financial freedom decades earlier.
The real question isn't when you want to retire. It's how you get there fastest — and the answer is the same regardless of your target date.
Two Phases of Any Retirement Plan
Every retirement plan — whether you're aiming for age 40 or age 67 — has exactly two phases:
Accumulation
Earning, saving, and investing. Building the portfolio that will eventually fund your retirement. This is where you pay down debt, capture employer matches, max out tax-advantaged accounts, and grow your investments.
Drawdown
Living off your portfolio after you stop working. This is where withdrawal rates, Social Security timing, and pension income come into play.
Here's what matters: the accumulation phase is identical regardless of your target retirement age. The optimal way to build a portfolio is the same whether you need it ready by 40 or by 65. The math doesn't change based on your deadline — only the urgency does.
The Universal Priority Order
MoneyOnFIRE uses a waterfall priority system to determine where every dollar should go. This order isn't specific to early retirees — it's the mathematically optimal sequence for building wealth, period. It works for everyone because the underlying logic is universal:
- Taxes — Everyone pays them; calculating your real take-home is always step one
- Essential expenses — Housing, food, utilities — everyone has them
- Minimum debt payments — Stay current on all obligations
- Small emergency fund — A safety net everyone needs
- 401(k) employer match — Free money, regardless of your retirement age
- High-interest debt — Costs everyone the same rate, regardless of goals
- Full emergency fund — 3-6 months of expenses
- Medium-interest debt — Student loans, car payments
- IRA contributions — Tax-advantaged growth benefits everyone
- 401(k) max — Beyond the match, up to the annual limit
- College savings (529) — If you have children
- Taxable brokerage — Continue building wealth beyond tax-advantaged limits
Whether you need this portfolio by age 40 or age 65, the fastest path to building it is the same.
What Changes With a Later Retirement Date?
If the priority order is the same for everyone, what's actually different between someone targeting 45 and someone targeting 65? Less than you might think:
More time for compounding
With a later target date, you have more years for your investments to grow. This means you may need smaller monthly contributions to reach the same number — but the optimal order of those contributions doesn't change.
Different FI number
Your target portfolio size depends on your expected retirement expenses, healthcare situation, and lifestyle goals. Someone planning a classical retirement might have different assumptions than someone pursuing FI — but the steps to get there are the same.
Lower urgency, same actions
Someone pursuing FI might need to save 50% of their income. Someone targeting a classical retirement might need 20%. But both should prioritize their employer match before their IRA, their IRA before taxable brokerage, and high-interest debt before any of it.
FI at 45 vs. Classical Retirement at 65 — Same Steps, Different Timeline
FI: Age 45
- Higher savings rate needed
- Same waterfall priority order
- Same tax-advantaged account strategy
- Same debt payoff sequence
Classical Retirement: Age 65
- Lower savings rate sufficient
- Same waterfall priority order
- Same tax-advantaged account strategy
- Same debt payoff sequence
Where FI and Classical Retirement Differ
We want to be honest about where our modeling diverges from a classical retirement plan. The differences live entirely in the drawdown phase — how we project your retirement income after you stop working:
- 4% safe withdrawal rate — designed for 30-year retirement horizons, the standard FI planning assumption
- No Social Security modeling — someone pursuing FI at 40 can't count on it yet, so we don't include it in projections
- No pension income — many FI planners don't have traditional pensions, so we don't model them
Here's what's interesting: for someone planning a classical retirement at 65, every one of these assumptions is actually conservative.
If you're planning for 65+, our projections are actually more conservative than they need to be
- The 4% rule was designed for 30-year retirements. If you retire at 65, your retirement is likely 20-25 years — meaning 4% is extra safe for you.
- Social Security will likely provide significant income starting at 62-67. We don't include it, so your actual retirement income will probably be higher than we project.
- If you have a pension, that's additional income on top of what we show. Our projections only model your investment portfolio.
In other words: if our projections say you're on track, you're likely in even better shape than we show.
What MoneyOnFIRE Does for You — Regardless of Timeline
Whether you're pursuing FI or planning a classical retirement, MoneyOnFIRE handles the full complexity of your financial life — not just one account or one goal at a time, but everything together, optimized as a system.
You tell us about your situation. We figure out the rest:
Taxes
Federal, state, Social Security, and Medicare — calculated from your actual income so your plan starts from real take-home pay.
Every account type
401(k), Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, 529 plans, taxable brokerage, emergency fund — all modeled with contribution limits and funded in the optimal order.
All your debts
Credit cards, student loans, car loans, personal loans — each prioritized by interest rate and slotted into the right place in the waterfall.
Equity compensation
RSU vesting schedules, grant values, and the tax impact when shares vest — integrated into the same priority system as everything else.
Housing & real estate
Rent or own, mortgage tracking, investment properties with rental income and appreciation — all factored into your projections.
College alongside retirement
529 savings for multiple children balanced against your retirement goals — no need to sacrifice one for the other.
The engine runs a month-by-month simulation across all of these simultaneously. As debts get paid off, freed-up cash flows to the next priority. As your salary grows or RSUs vest, allocations shift automatically. The result is a specific, personalized projection — not a rough estimate — built on the same optimal priority order whether your target is age 40 or 65.
The First Step Is the Same
Whether your goal is freedom at 40 or security at 65, it starts with knowing exactly where you stand — and where every dollar should go next.
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