Why $862,000 Doesn’t Guarantee an Early Retirement
A reader named Mia recently laid out a scenario that sounds, on paper, like a financial success story: 50 years old, a $119,000 salary, and roughly $862,000 saved across a mix of tax-deferred, tax-exempt, and brokerage accounts. She also has surgery coming up and is caring for her elderly mother. Her question — how to arrange her contributions to maximize flexibility for early retirement — reveals something important about how we evaluate financial readiness. The instinct is to look at the total and ask, “Is that enough?” But that question skips a more useful one: enough, accessible when, and taxed how?