Can I Retire At 52? | Early Retirement Hotline

Sometimes retirement planning is not about optimization. It is about rebuilding.

In this episode, Ari Taublieb, CFP®, responds to a voicemail from a 52 year old widow whose life changed overnight. The plan she once built with her spouse no longer applies, but the desire to retire early and live intentionally is still there.

On paper, she is in a strong position. Over $2.5 million saved across retirement accounts, no debt, a paid off home, and relatively low spending. The question is not whether she can retire. It is how to navigate the years before 59 and a half, when most of her money is not easily accessible.

Ari walks through the real constraint. It is not total wealth. It is flexibility. With limited funds in a brokerage account, generating income in the early years requires careful coordination. That could mean drawing from taxable assets, adjusting spending, or continuing part-time work not out of necessity, but as a bridge that preserves long-term growth.

But the deeper conversation goes beyond numbers.

After a loss like this, the goal is not to build the most efficient plan possible. It is to build a life that feels meaningful again. Travel. Volunteering. Creating structure and purpose. The financial plan exists to support that, not replace it.

There is also a quiet risk that shows up in moments like this. Playing it too safe. Delaying experiences out of fear of running out later, only to realize those early years were the ones that mattered most.

The takeaway is simple. A good plan adapts when life changes. A great plan makes space for what matters now, not just what might matter decades from now.

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Advisory services are offered through Root Financial Partners, LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser. This content is intended for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered personalized investment, tax, or legal advice. Viewing this content does not create an advisory relationship. We do not provide tax preparation or legal services. Always consult an investment, tax or legal professional regarding your specific situation.

The strategies, case studies, and examples discussed may not be suitable for everyone. They are hypothetical and for illustrative and educational purposes only. They do not reflect actual client results and are not guarantees of future performance. All investments involve risk, including the potential loss of principal.

Comments reflect the views of individual users and do not necessarily represent the views of Root Financial. They are not verified, may not be accurate, and should not be considered testimonials or endorsements

Participation in the Retirement Planning Academy or Early Retirement Academy does not create an advisory relationship with Root Financial. These programs are educational in nature and are not a substitute for personalized financial advice. Advisory services are offered only under a written agreement with Root Financial.

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Ari Taublieb, CFP ®, MBA  is the Chief Growth Officer of Root Financial Partners and a Fiduciary Financial Planner specializing in helping clients retire early with confidence.

Transcript

New Voicemail Response Series

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Over the last few months, you have heard me speak with real retirees as well as people who want to retire early, and I hope that that has been helpful perspective. I love everything early retirement related, but I hope it's hit different hearing it from real people. So what you're actually going to hear now is a new series for the next few months where I'm actually responding to real voicemails for people who are asking me a wide range of questions, such as, how do I know I have enough money? When should I actually look at a Roth conversion? Should I be worrying about healthcare? And a million other things like that. And so these are people who are calling me to leave a voicemail, hoping I respond in a future episode. If it's up to me, I'd respond to every single one of you. But fortunately, many of you have similar questions. So what I try to do is put them into one episode that I feel would be most helpful. So if 10 people ask, hey, what should I do about XYZ regarding healthcare? I try to do my best to address those, whether it's me addressing your specific point. But if you would like, you can of course call my number, 213-316-8397. I do read through every single one, as well as my team. And if you say in there, hey, the truth is I just don't even know. When does it make sense work with an advisor? I have no idea. Should I even be looking at retirement? Should I have retired 10 years ago? Am I in a good spot? What you will hear from us is at a minimum, hey, here's absolutely what I would recommend considering in your situation. So not a formal yes, go retire or no, why did you retire? We would never say it like that. But what we would do is say, hey, even though we're not going to maybe respond to your specific voicemail, here's a guide that I think is gonna be really helpful for you. Or here's a video that we've recorded in the past that went out a year ago that applies to your situation. Make sure to check that out. So I'm always gonna make sure that you feel the effort that you put in to make the voicemail to leave for me will be equally responded to with effort to make sure you're getting the help that you're looking for. So once again, if you would like, you can call and literally tell me anything. But the the phone number is 213-316-8397. The next few months you're going to hear voicemails and me specifically responding to those voicemails. I hope you enjoy this next series. I'm always trying to come up with new creative ways that are helpful for you. As always, if you're wondering, okay, am I in a good spot to retire? Email me and put in the subject line the word retire. Very simple, just the word retire. And that my email is ari at rootfinancial.com. That's R O O O Tfinancial.com, and I will respond with that free guide just for you. And thank you in advance for always listening to the podcast episodes and hope you enjoy these.

Kelly’s Voicemail After Becoming Widowed

SPEAKER_01 2:27

I am recently widowed. My spouse passed away way too young. I'm 51 years old. I'm 52 and I'm returning 53 in April. Um I was thinking about getting your software as well. Maybe I could. Anyways, I really appreciate uh the feedback. I'm looking forward to discussing with you. Thank you. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_00 4:37

First of all, Kelly,

Why Retirement Plans Must Stay Dynamic

SPEAKER_00 4:38

what else can I say other than I'm so sorry? Because any of you who know someone who recently lost someone, or if you've personally lost someone, you know there's nothing someone can really say that makes you go, okay, it's all better now. And life changes. And that's why, as cliche as it sounds, I don't say we do financial plans. People go, yes, you do. It's pretty much sounds like that's all you talk about. We don't. We do planning because life changes, tax law changes, legislation, and so we have to remain dynamic or we're never going to fully be confident. If someone were to say, yes, can you retire, you know, take 5% withdrawal rate out, which is an assumption many people use nowadays, and ensure I'll never run out of money, that would be like me going to get surgery and asking the doctor to guarantee no matter what, I'm gonna be okay. You can put everything in place, you can do everything right, and things can still go away, which is why if you don't remain dynamic, you're never gonna fully be confident, in my opinion, to retire with success. A year ago or so, I actually recorded this video here where I brought on a grieving expert, and that is someone who is a widow, and it was a great conversation. So if you're a widow or you know someone who's a widow who you think might benefit from it, feel free to send them that video and we'll put that in the description as well.

The First Question Before The Numbers

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Now, before we actually get started, we're only hearing a small portion of this person's situation. So, what I'm gonna do today is I'm gonna walk you through how a CFP, a certified financial planner, would analyze a situation like this. But as always, this is not financial advice. I'm Ari, I'm a certified financial planner and host of the Early Retirement Podcast, and I'm the CGO here at Root Financial. If you want to retire early, aka not work forever unless you love what you do, make sure to hit subscribe. I want to first start by saying good job, because this is an example of someone who I hope does not push back retirement just because of healthcare. I don't know if she's working right now part-time because of that healthcare component. I would have a lot of questions I want to ask, but I'm gonna start. If I if this person was my potential client, I would want to ask before we get into anything financially, okay, do you feel you have a good sense of what you want to do when you retire? And it sounds like yes, volunteer, still travel, animal shelters, is that what you want to do for the entirety of your retirement? Or is part-time income always gonna be something you want to do because it would bring you purpose? And the reason I would ask that is one, we want to make sure we have a plan of what we want to do, but primarily is if this person were to say, I'm always gonna do something, it's only $20,000 a year. She said, Oh, I'm only bringing in 30,000 a year part-time, that makes me smile in a big way. And many of you are like, oh, because you're being nice? No, I even say here on YouTube, I joke I'm the meanest advisor, I'm not mean, I'm just transparent. I don't need to run out of money too early, and I don't even be mad at me if you're 80 with $10 million going, why the heck didn't I retire earlier? So I'm bringing this up now with urgency because if they said I still want to bring in $30,000 a year, or let's let's cut that in half. Let's say $15,000 a year. I want to work once or twice a week because I enjoy it. Yes, maybe there's a healthcare component, but let's take that out for a second. Let's say you truly would just enjoy doing so. Well, it makes a big difference. Not because it's $15,000 coming in, that's $50,000 less that needs to come from your portfolio, which lets that continue to compound way more. So I would ask this person first, do you want to do part-time?

Part-Time Work As A Retirement Lever

SPEAKER_00 7:47

If they said no, if you told me I didn't have to, I would stop tomorrow. I would strongly consider doing some deep planning on this because if we use the assumption of the 4% withdrawal rate, which I personally don't believe in, that's Bill Bangin's approach. I believe in John Guyton's guardrails approach, which historically shows you can take out between 5.2 to 5.6% of your portfolio and not run out of money for 40 years, assuming you follow those guidelines. Well, that is a whole lot more applicable to an early retirement because this person's 52 years old, about to be 53. Well, if we were to live 30 years, okay, that sounds good, but what if we were to live more than 30 years, 40 years, 50 years? The last thing we want to do is, of course, run out of money. So I believe in using this guardrails approach as opposed to Bill Bangin's 4% rule, which he's even since updated. But we're just going to use the 4% for just simple math. K here has $1 million in a Roth, amazing. $1.5 million in a 401k, also amazing. $190,000 in a superhero account. I would really love to see more there. This is my example where I say someone is qualified rich, the majority of their money are in these qualified assets, which aren't bad, but they don't allow you to tap into them early without paying big penalties or looking into alternatives like the rule of 72T or Rule of 55 or all these different things. So the superhero account is my personal favorite account to help people retire early, but you don't need it to retire early. So this is an example of if we need to turn on income and this person said, I want $12,000 a month, okay, well, it's going to be difficult because they're 52. If we're going to be optimal about this, we're more than likely going to want to pull from the superhero account to keep our tax liability as low as possible, potentially qualify for some healthcare subsidies. But $12,000 a month would more than likely put us in a position where healthcare subsidies are off the table. And now it's we only have $190,000 in that account. So $12,000 a month, that would be $144,000 a year. Pretty quick, it's where are we going to pull from? We could sell the home, we could downsize, but pretend we don't want to do that. The Roth and the $401, okay, well, we have to wait until $59.5. So not having enough in that superhero account in a weird way makes people go, oh, what why didn't I actually just put less in my 401k? I know I was maxing it out. Should I have put less? Sometimes the answer is it can make sense to put less in a 401k and put more into that superhero account if you already have a substantial pre-tax or Roth balance, because once again, that money, you there are penalties. One thing people forget is if you pull your own contributions out of a Roth IRA, there's no consequences. You could pull your own money. Now, I'm not recommending anyone do that because that's your best account for tax-free growth forever. But if this person said 200,000 of my Roth are my own contributions, 800,000 is growth, you can take out your own $200,000 at any time. Now

Guardrails Versus The 4% Rule

SPEAKER_00 10:32

here's the good news. Does this person want to spend $12,000 a month? No. They explicitly said $3,500 a month. Now, I don't know if that's including travel, and I would be shocked if it is, because if so, I imagine there's not a ton of luxury travel. Now their home is paid off, but $3,500 a month, let's round that to $4,000 a month, let's say $48,000 a year or $50 to keep it really simple. If they had $50,000 a year after taxes adjusted for inflation, do they feel they could do everything they wanted to do and more? Because if we assume the 4% rule, once again, Bill Bangin's approach, 4% of a $2.7 million portfolio is $9,000 a month. Now, if we were to look at that and really take a step back, because if we don't, we're not doing proper planning here, well, that assumes that 4% rule is from $2.7 million of assets, that's all immediately available. Which, yes, we could pay penalties and extra taxes, but we don't want to do that from a $401 or Roth if we can avoid it. So using that superhero account, if we were to say $50,000 a year is what we want to pull from that, well, $50,000 of a let's call it $200,000 superhero account tells us that we have four years worth of income that we could pull. So from 52 until 56, sounds like she's about to be 53. So from 53 to 57, assuming that gets even moderate growth, maybe five or six percent, that might allow us to get to that 59 and a half point. But the value here of doing part-time income is one I would not overlook. So that's why I'd go back and really harp on. Is that something you want to do because it truly brings joy? Or is that something that you're willing to do because financially you feel you have to do it? And even if it is the latter, that's not a bad thing, but you're working knowing, wow, bringing working part-time, even if I bring in $10 or $15 or $20,000 a year, that makes a big difference because that helps my superhero account have more of a time span to be able to create income for. So I hope that makes sense for this person and for all of you watching. I'm not really worried about are we going to be okay in terms of lifetime income after $59.5? Because if they're Roth and $40K continue to grow, that $2.5 million more than likely is going to be $3 million plus, excuse me, conservative growth rates. So $3 million plus is going to easily generate, assuming you use the 4% rule. Once again, big assumption if you want to do so, enough income for this person to generate more than $3,500 a month. I would really ask them to dream big. So if they were my client, I would harp on, okay, so you said $3,500 a month. Let's assume we are paying for healthcare out of pocket, which I know feels weird, but pretend we did that. Let's assume that's $1,000 a month. So now we're at $4,500. Let's round up to $5,000. Now you're you said you wanted to travel. What does that look like? What if you go somewhere and want to stay longer? Let's add on another, let's call it $25,000 a year or $2,000 a month. Okay, so now right there we're at $7,000 a month. And what I don't want this person to do, which I see too often, is people go, yeah, I'm not going to enjoy retirement at the beginning of my retirement because it's too risky. Last thing I want to do is overspend and run out later, which is true. There is a real risk to that. But there's a bigger risk, which is well, what if we don't spend and we look back going, well, that was the only time I had my time, health, and energy to travel the way I wanted to. Oh, I don't want to make that mistake. And

Spending Bigger Without Regret

SPEAKER_00 13:36

the final thing I just want to touch on was Social Security. And she said this, and I've made many videos so you can watch these here of should I take social security early? What about if I have a pension? What about if I want to delay? What makes most sense for me? That is something that's very custom to you and your plan. But I will say there's not a wrong. So I don't want you to fall on the subject of, hey, I know a lot of people say delay because it makes most sense. The primary reason people delay is so if God forbid something happens to them, their partner gets the larger benefit for the rest of their life. In this case, I would have a deep conversation with a financial advisor or themselves if they feel confident to do so about what makes most sense considering there's a widow. It's do we collect one benefit and defer their own benefit? Do we decide, hey, our benefit's larger? I'm just going to turn mine on as soon as 62. Um, what do we want to look at from a total survivor perspective, considering that starts at 60? There's a lot of options and strategies here, and tax strategy plays a major role. So

Social Security Widow Strategy Options

SPEAKER_00 14:29

I would recommend if any of you are watching this going, wow, this sounds not maybe not my exact situation. I'm not a widow, or this sounds similar to my numbers, or this whole process of thinking through this is overwhelming. Oh my gosh, what do I do? This is what we love to do. We like to help people retire early by looking at every aspect of this and not doing what I call vacuum planning. What are you, your tax strategy and your healthcare, and your insurance and your estate, your cash flow? Everything should be looked at holistically, and this is what we love to do. So you can scan this if you want to book a call with us. You can go to the description. You can go to rootfinancial.com and in the upper right, you see a little button that says see if you're a fit. Answer that, and you'll see just a few questions so that we can determine if we are best positioned to possibly help you and live your dream retirement. Finally, call the number on this screen, wherever my editor put it, and that number is 213-316-8397 to submit your chance of having me review your situation on a voicemail like this. Thank you all, as always, for listening to the Early Retirement Podcast. I love getting to host these shows and make different content for you guys every single week. I've not missed a single week in years, and that is because I love getting to do this. Now, please be smart about this before you actually execute any strategy that you see me talk

How To Get Help And Submit Voicemails

SPEAKER_00 15:42

about or hear me talk about, should I say. Please talk to your financial advisor, your tax preparer, your estate attorney. Please be smart about this. None of this should be construed as financial advice. This is for fun, educational, informational purposes only. Once again, just quick disclaimer here, guys, please be smart about this. Appreciate you listening as always. And you can, of course, submit a question on my website, early retirementpodcast.com. If you, of course, want me to address a specific case study or topic. I will not promise I can get to it, but I respond to every single person. And if I find it will be helpful for a lot of people, I will absolutely make an episode on it. At the very least, give you some insight. That's it. Thanks, guys.