7 Things You Can Do When You’re Done Saving for Retirement

In 2014, I learned about financial independence, and I realized that I no longer had to save for retirement. I had done a good job of doing so for nearly a decade with an anesthesiologist’s salary, and thanks to an early bear market followed by a lengthy bull market, I could afford to retire and maintain our lifestyle indefinitely.

I continue to save for retirement, though. I’m not going to decline the government’s offer of certain tax deductions or spend every dollar I earn just because I can, but there is a certain beauty in knowing that I could.

When Can You Stop Saving for Retirement?

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A rule of thumb we often use in the financial independence (FI) community is that you should have a minimum of 25 years of expenses saved up before you can call yourself FI and afford to retire early (RE). If you never earn another dime, you can retire and draw 4% of your nest egg that first year in retirement and spend a similar inflation-adjusted amount each year thereafter, and you’ll have a low likelihood of running out of money.

A more conservative approach, which can be wise if you’re retiring young, have little ability to decrease expenses, or expect that your tastes may become more expensive one day, is to save 30 to 33 times your anticipated expenses for a 3.33% to 3% withdrawal rate.

Options. So Many Options.

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I like to think of “retire” as a verb — it’s something you do rather than something you are — and ideally, that action puts you in a better place with much more control over how you spend your time.

#1: Retire

If you’re good at what you do, there’s a decent chance you might enjoy what you do, and you just might want to keep doing it. When you’re able to stop saving for retirement, you can choose to keep doing what you do, but do it less.

#2: Do Less

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