Mike Pappas, a certified financial planner at Bolden, walks through five factors that can move up your retirement date: a written plan, realistic assumptions about inflation and returns, modeling how spending changes over time, setting a success target, and testing small trade-offs like Social Security timing or part-time work. A couple in their early 60s boosted their odds from 62% to 88% by adjusting their plan.
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Here's a question. Are you still working hard to save for retirement? What if you didn't have to anymore? One of the most common questions we hear from Bolden users is can I retire early? And after creating their plan, many are pleasantly surprised to learn they can retire sooner than they ever thought possible. And that's what we're going to talk about today. Five key factors that can help you see if retirement might be closer than you realize hi everyone, Mike Pappas here. I am a certified financial planner professional and the head of support at Bolden. These five factors aren't gimmicks. They're practical adjustments that can make a real difference. And with the Bolden Planner, you can explore them yourself and see the impact on your retirement timeline. So what are the five factors? 1. Having a written plan Without a clear plan, fear and uncertainty often keep people in the workforce longer than necessary. Once everything is organized in one place, you can see where you actually stand and make decisions with confidence. 2. Inflation and return assumptions Many people plan for very low investment returns or very high inflation to be safe. But if your assumptions are ultra conservative, retirement may look further away than it really is. Using long term historical averages or close to long term averages for both returns and inflation can give you a more balanced picture and can reveal options you might not have realized. 3. Spending phases Retirement Spending changes over time. In the early retirement years, sometimes referred to as the go go years, people are active and often spend more on travel or hobbies. In mid retirement or the slow go years, routines settle and spending levels off and in late retirement or the no go years, expenses typically decline further. Aside from health care, if your plan assumes flat spending forever, it may underestimate your flexibility. 4. Chance of success Target Aiming for a 99% chance of success may feel safe but can also keep you working years longer. You may find an 80% score, for example, or even lower still provides confidence while opening the door to an earlier retirement. 5. Retirement trade offs Choices about when to claim Social Security or whether to work part time or housing. Choices like downsizing your retirement, for example, can change the entire outlook. Even small adjustments in these areas can move retirement within reach sooner. Now let's see how this can play out in the Bolden Planner. Let's walk through an example now with a couple we will call Mark and Marlene. Mark is 62, Marlene is 60 and they live in Pennsylvania. They are both still working as we can see here. With their income from Dick's Sporting Goods and IBM and when they first built their plan in Bolden they assumed that Mark would retire at 65 and that Marlene would retire at 63. And then when they set these retirement ages, their retirement chance of success came out at 62%, as we see here on their dashboard, far below the 99% target they had set for themselves originally. And we'll talk more on that target here in a bit. To that, 62% looked like a D grade. And because they'd always been top students, anything less than an A felt unacceptable. But in reality, targeting 99% meant they were asking their plan to remove all flexibility, essentially planning as though nothing in their future could ever change. Some of their assumptions played a role in their chance of success score. They were planning to spend about $9,000 per month increasing out inflation throughout their lifetime, which they believed covered their fixed and discretionary spending. They also had some one time car purchases built into their plan as well. They assumed general inflation would average 4.5% per year, meaning their recurring expenses would rise pretty quickly. They assumed most of their investment accounts would return about 5% per year before inflation, even though they were invested in mostly equities, or in this case a 0.5% real rate of return after inflation on most of their investments. With those inputs and their interpretation of chance of success as a D grade, their plan suggested retirement at 65 for Mark and 63 for Marlene might not even be possible. But after talking with some friends who were also Bolden users, friends who said they had built multiple scenarios with different assumptions, Mark and Marlene decided to create a second scenario with more practical assumptions, along with some additional changes to their planned variables. To see what might be possible, Mark and Marlene created an alternate scenario to their baseline plan and called it retire Earlier. Instead of assuming very low returns and high inflation, they align their numbers more closely with long term historical averages for the majority of their investment accounts. With roughly 60% stocks and 40% bonds, they used Bolden's recommended rate for a moderate portfolio, just over 8% annual returns for general inflation. Although the default historic average in Bolden was currently 2.54%, they wanted to build in some conservativeness. Though they know they can't predict the future, they ultimately felt most comfortable with a custom rate of 3.5% for Social Security. They left it at the historical average currently in Bolden, of 2.54%. Next, they made their spending plan more realistic by adding phases or tiers in the go go years right after retirement. They planned to spend more traveling, enjoying hobbies and finishing house projects in the slow go years or mid retirement they're assuming their spending levels out as routines settle in and travel slows. In the no go years or late retirement, their discretionary spending drops further aside from health care, which is already accounted for separately in the health care sections down below. With those adjustments in place, Mark and Marlene ask the big question Question what if we retired today? They updated their plan to show no more work income starting immediately. The result? Their retirement chance of Success jumped to 85% from 62% in their baseline plan. For them, that was a turning point. An 85% score simply means there's about a 15% chance they may need to adjust their spending at some point in the future. And after reading Bolden's help center explanation, they realized they were very comfortable with that trade off. Now, not everyone who adjusts their plan to retire early will see such a strong chance of success as Mark and Marlene. But that's okay because this is where small trade offs can make a big difference. Let's say Mark and Marlene wanted to make their plan and even stronger than it already is. So they created another alternate scenario called part time work and Maximize Social Security. Mark added one year of part time consulting in 2026, which gave them extra confidence without delaying retirement. They also tested Social Security timing. Instead of both claiming at their full retirement age, they modeled waiting as late as possible until age 70, which increased their guaranteed income later in life. Those small adjustments nudged their score from 85% to 88%. More importantly, it showed once again that retirement wasn't just possible, it was realistic. By exploring these factors, the picture changed completely for Mark and Marlene. What once looked like years of extra work turned into the confidence to retire today at 62 and 60. The point isn't that everyone should retire early. It's that your assumptions matter and you should continue to explore and revisit these factors year over year. Ask yourself, do you have a financial plan? Or when was the last time you revisited your plan? Are your assumptions too conservative? Have you accounted for different spending phases? Do you know what success rate feels right for you? And have you thought about small trade offs like part time work or your Social Security claiming strategy? These questions can open doors you might not have realized for there retirement may be closer than you think. But don't just take it from me. One Bolden user told us, my wife recently decided to join me in retirement a bit earlier than she had initially planned. Having all our finances in Bolden and the knowledge that our plan was entered correctly helped give her the confidence to take the early out package. Another said Bolden has given me confidence to retire earlier than I had previously thought possible. Stress testing multiple scenarios builds confidence that unexpected events can be managed without derailing the future. That's what the Bolden Planner is all about. Exploring different paths, making confident decisions, and retiring on your terms. If you found this helpful, subscribe to our YouTube channel for more retirement planning insights. And if you haven't tried it yet, check out the Bolden Planner for free and see where you stand today. Happy planning everyone, and thanks for watching.
