I have a deadline set for the start of my retirement and I have a list of prerequisites to determine whether I’m in a safe-enough-for-me position to retire sooner. Each quarter I evaluate my progress against those prerequisites, and my quarterly check-in for this is aligned with my birthday instead of the standard calendar quarter. That’s because a couple of my prerequisites are based on my 60^th birthday so the calculation is simpler.

Result for this check-in: Again, it's not time to retire now, but I’m continuing to make good progress.

In order to pull the plug immediately, I’d have to have these things accomplished:

Retirement account on target for 7 figures on 60^th birthday

College savings on target for full funding

Mortgage paid off

Savings of basic expenses until 60^th birthday set aside

No consumer debt

Currently my progress is:

100+%

54%

48%

8%

25%

Assumptions for these calculations: average annual return on investments will be 5%, no further contributions to investments, full funding = 40 semesters (8 x 5 boys), $36,000k annually for basic expenses, starting consumer debt was $10k. (At one time I had negative progress on this! For the record though, it’s at 0% interest.)

The next time I check-in on this progress will be in May at my half-birthday.