What if I retired at 45, 50, or 55?
Ending earned income decades before pension age turns one question into three: how much the household spends, how much of that spending the money you can actually reach will cover in the years before any later income arrives, and how long the plan still has to run after that. The stop year is only the first input.
What shapes an early stop
- The year earned income ends, and how many years the plan still has to cover afterwards.
- Household spending once work stops, which is rarely identical to spending today.
- Accessible savings versus long-horizon investments, and which of them funds the bridge years.
- Debts, loans and other commitments whose payments continue well past the chosen stop date.
- Later recurring income and the return and inflation assumptions carried to the plan’s final year.
Compare stop years against each other
Build one baseline, then duplicate it for each stop year you want to consider — 45, 50, 55. Keep spending, assets, return assumptions and the final plan year identical in every copy, so the only difference between them is the month earned income ends. A variant that also differs somewhere else is not a comparison.
Read the bridge years first. The stretch between the stop date and any later recurring income is where a plan usually breaks, because long-horizon investments can be large while the money you can actually reach is not. Net worth at the end says very little about the first ten years.
Questions worth testing
- How much accessible money is left at the end of the first five years without earned income?
- Does moving the stop year five years later change the outcome more than spending less would?
- What happens if spending after stopping turns out to be a tenth higher than assumed?
- Which years of the plan depend most on later recurring income arriving exactly as entered?
How to read the result
The plan illustrates the dates, amounts and assumptions you entered. A plan that stays solvent on screen is not proof that stopping early is affordable: it does not predict investment returns, inflation or how long you will live, it assumes no entitlement to any pension at any age, and it contains no safe withdrawal rate. It is not financial, investment, tax or pension advice.
How it works in the app
A permanent income change drops your gross income to zero from the year you choose. The Dashboard then shows whether the plan stays solvent to the end — or the year your money would run out — alongside the net-worth drawdown.
- Tap “Change your income”.
- Set the new gross yearly income to 0, choose “Permanent”, and pick the year you'd stop.
- Check the Dashboard for solvency to the plan's final year, or the year your money runs out.
Model this yourself