Retire at 58 w/ $4M or retire at 60 w/ $5M?

If you retire now at 58 with $4M, you will likely hit $5M within 5 years. :) In other words, retire now and enjoy your retirement!
 
CorporateSoldier said:
Decision time for us. Wife and I just turned 58 and could retire this year with:
  • ~$4M nest egg ($2.1M Taxable, 1.4M 401K, 300k Roth, 200k cash)
  • No debt. Paid off $750k home in medium cost of living area.
  • Kids all grown up and out of house
  • At 62 we could get about $60k in SS. Not sure when we will file though.
  • Yearly retirement expenses expected to be ~$120k (60-70k to pay the bills including healthcare, 50-60 to travel)
I have some financial incentives to work until 60 so would project us to have about a $5M nest egg if we work two more years. Our health is good and my company still likes me so I can stay if I like but leaning towards checking out now versus two more years.

Really struggling with this. My gut says go now.

Thoughts?
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I'd go now. You're where I was at. While I liked work and my colleagues continuing to work was really just going to make our kid's inheritance better and I decided that more "me time" was more important that the kids getting more inheritance. Sorry kids!
 
Assuming you will die at age X, regardless of which choice you make, then every extra day working is one less day of retirement / freedom.

And, at our age we are past our physical / health peak. Not to be a downer, but we are basically in decline. So the next couple of years are likely the healthiest remaining years of your life.

How do you want to spend them?
 
Errollyn said:
Rule of thumb is that your investments will double every 10 years given "normal" market returns. So there's a chance your $4m will be closer to $8m when you're 60. It's not worth giving away another 10 years of your life for an extra million when you're already making more than that on investment returns.
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You misread.
He's 58 now, 60 in two years.
And much of the portfolio growth would be from additional contributions...
 
Twenty years from now you will be 78….hoping that you make it to 78 and beyond. Even as a healthy, active 78 year old you will likely not have the strength and stamina that you have now. Two years is trading 10 percent of your twenty good years for money you don’t need.
 
Go Now, you have enough and no one can tell how things will be in two years..
 
We got out of the rat race at 58 when our 401k investment returns was 5x more than contributions for several years.
 
One more vote for retiring now. We quit cold turkey in 2017, at 57/56, with about 5 mill (once the deferred comp came in over the next 6 months or so) and have been traveling about 6 months of each year. Our travel to date has been geared toward hiking/trekking and scuba diving, the slight majority of which is in places that are m/l off the grid. So far, so good, but we know that at some point we will need to shift towards developed country tourism when our physical abilities noticeably decline.

Unfortunately, our travel destination wish list keeps growing larger, as our lifespans grow smaller! We neither one have any regrets about retiring when we did--although we'd have a much bigger stack of money if we'd only worked a few more years and put off the egregious spending that we are engaging in now.
 
That extra $1M buys you.... what exactly? Nothing I can see from how you described your retirement plans. So why even consider working 2 more years for any amount? It's quite easy to calculate out the nest egg as you go through your retirement and doing so, it's quite easy to realize you have a whole lot more money than you'll blow through and instead would grow despite your $125K annual draws.
From my rough calculations, you could draw roughly twice that amount and not run out for 30 years. Add in SS in 4 years and the account draws increase by 50% of your financial plan when you do draw, or close to $300,000 per year at age 62.

I'd have to consider my job a divine calling before I'd stay for 2 more years. I retired at 56, diagnosed with cancer at 64, so there's a reason to retire as soon as possible.
COVID lockdown shut off travel for a good year or more, so there's another reason. Fact is, none of know a darn thing about our future. We are at the complete mercy of fate and control is an illusion. Where we plan on one aspect; funding, we lose on another; health, as an example. Live as much as you can, as soon as you can for as long as you can. If that's your work life, good for you, but if you have other ideas about how you want to live the rest of your days, then do it and don't delay.
 
skipro33 said:
That extra $1M buys you.... what exactly? Nothing I can see from how you described your retirement plans.
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This is how I see it and how I saw it for myself. In order to change my retirement lifestyle, I would have had to work 5 more years. As nice as that envisioned lifestyle would have been, I wasn’t willing to work 5 more years for it. So, what would that extra million do for you? How would it change your retirement lifestyle or other goals you may have. If it’s just because you don’t want to leave money on the table, remember that any form of early retirement leaves money on the table. I retired at 57. I could have worked the 7 more years until now and maybe even longer. So I left a lot of money on the table. In the end, I decided it just wasn’t worth it. So what would be different, other than your bank account, if you wait?
 
Retire now. Just do it. You can always get more money but you can't get more time.

One thing that I don't think has been mentioned (but I didn't read all of the replies) is that just because you retire doesn't mean your money stops growing. As long as you aren't overspending, you may find that your balance increases even after retirement. This will be even more true for you since your wife will still be working.

I officially retired last June but effectively retired well before that. Our portfolio grew by $450,000 last year even though we were now living off of it. So far in 2025, our portfolio is up by about $175,000 just in the first 6 weeks and crossed the $4 million mark for the first time. That's more than we will spend the entire year.

Retire now!
 
If the main short-term goal in prospective retirement, is travel... could the OP take leave-without-pay for a month, and go on an extended trip? If all goes well, do the same again, in another 6 months. That scratches the travel-itch, while keeping robust the prospects from $4M --> $5M.

Unlike seemingly everyone else here, I love money too much, to trade 2 years of retirement for an extra million dollars... especially since that's a 25% upgrade to the OP's total.
 
Ronstar said:
It seems to me that people still working are apt to consider working longer for a larger nest egg.

It's rare to find a retired person who wished that they would have worked longer for any reason.
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Unless they are out of money because they retired too early.
 
CorporateSoldier said:
Wife wants to retire now. I am the hesitating and that is only for financial reasons. I have a lot more incentives to stay working than she does.
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Financially, you're fine given your resources and planned spend. Since that's the only reason you're hesitating, my advice is to retire now.

I'll also echo a couple of above replies - if you did go from $4MM to $5MM, what does that buy you? Is it worth foregoing two years of retired life?
 
CorporateSoldier said:
Wife wants to retire now. I am the hesitating and that is only for financial reasons. I have a lot more incentives to stay working than she does.
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I've relayed here many times that I was FI at 51 but stayed until 58 because I was having fun. Literally the day it was no longer fun, I gave my notice.

The extra money was okay and I suppose there's no such thing as too much money. BUT as others have pointed out, you can't spend money when you are gone, so strongly consider retiring now. Since your DW is not only on board with ER, but pushing you to retire now, you can make that your "excuse" for leaving money on the table ("DW wanted me to retire. I wanted to stay for the money but I also wanted to make her happy!)

Time to decide if the extra money is something you'll actually need (or even want) when you look back in a few years. Blessings on your decision (and keep us informed.)
 
Lewis Clark said:
Any voluntary retirement at any age leaves money on the table.
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Yes, but it's a matter of degree.

Bob is a software-engineering hotshot in his mid-40s. Bob has a net worth of $5M, but is earning $500K/year. His human capital is immense, between his salary and his plausibly expected vitality in the labor market. Bill is also in software, but his skills are waning and his salary is only $100K a year. Being older (he's 55), Bill has $10M saved.

In this example, Bob is grossing 10% of his portfolio, every year from his W2. Bill is grossing only 1%. For Bill to conclude his career isn't much of a financial hit. OMY would be silly, at least for financial purposes (maybe he enjoys his job?). But for Bob, it's a thorny calculation. Sure, he might have "enough"... but he'd be leaving an awful lot of money, on an awfully large table.
 
I'd work the two years, as little as you can get away with and still stash the cash, just to give a little extra cushion. I am a worrier though. :)
 
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