Now, let us start with the foundation: your number.

Your Retirement Number: It Is Not an Age, It Is a Target

Before you think about any booster, you need to know what you are boosting.

The classic starting point is the 4 percent rule. You have probably seen this at some point. The idea is simple. If you have a diversified portfolio, you can usually withdraw around 4 percent of your starting balance in year one of retirement, then adjust that dollar amount for inflation each year, and have a good shot of not running out of money over a long lifetime.

These days, with interest rates and bond returns bouncing around, a lot of research suggests more of a 3.5-ish percent range for safety, but the concept is the same. You are trying to answer one basic question:

How much can I spend each year without torching my future?

To make this easier to digest, you can flip the 4 percent rule on its head and turn it into something more friendly: the 25x rule.

The 25x rule in plain English

Instead of starting with your savings, you start with your spending. Ask yourself:

What do I want to spend per year in retirement, including taxes?

That part is important. Unless every penny of your money is in Roth accounts, you will owe some tax. So build that into the number.

Then you do this very fancy, very advanced math:

• Multiply that annual spending number by 25.

That is it.

If you want to spend $100,000 per year, including taxes, your rough target nest egg is $2.5 million. That is your pencil sketch. You can erase, adjust, and refine it later, but it gives you a peak to aim for.

To recap the quick formula:

• Estimate your annual retirement spending, including taxes.
• Multiply that number by 25.
• The result is your rough retirement target.

Nothing about this is perfect. There are a lot of assumptions behind it: how long you live, how markets behave, inflation, and your actual investment mix. Still, for a back-of-the-envelope check, it is very handy.

Here is one more layer that most people skip. When you look at your 25x number, ask yourself:

Would this still work if the market dropped 15, 25, or even 35 percent before or right after I retire?

If the answer is yes, you are in a much stronger position. If the answer is no, the boosters below matter even more for you.

Now let us talk about the fun stuff that can move the needle.

Booster #1: Paying Off Your Mortgage

If you want to watch someone light up in a retirement meeting, bring up the phrase, “Paid-off house.”

For many people, the day the mortgage disappears is one of the most emotionally satisfying and financially powerful moments in their entire plan.

Why paying off your mortgage feels so big

Housing is usually your largest monthly expense, and the mortgage check is the star of that show. The exact size varies a lot.

You might see:

• A few thousand per month for a modest home in a low-cost area.
• Well into five figures per month for higher-income households in expensive cities.

You can have two families with very similar incomes, one living in rural South Dakota and the other in New York City, Philadelphia, or Miami. The second family might have a mortgage bill that is many times higher, just because of the location.

So when that payment stops, it is like someone cut a massive hole in your budget, in the best possible way.

Timing retirement with your payoff

Here is how a lot of people approach it:

• Some want the mortgage gone before they retire. That is their finish line. They do not want to carry that debt into their “no paycheck” years at all.
• Others accept that they will still have a mortgage and feel fine about it, because they have enough assets and a reliable income to make the payment without losing sleep.

Either way, the day the loan hits zero is a huge retirement booster. It can free up thousands of dollars in cash flow per month. If you line that up with your retirement date, you might feel like your budget suddenly grew by a second salary.

It is not magic; it is just one enormous line item leaving your life.

Booster #2: Switching To Medicare At Age 65

Health insurance is the sneaky villain in a lot of early retirement dreams.

If you are used to employer coverage, you might think, “My insurance only costs a couple of hundred dollars per month, what is the big deal?” The reality is that your employer is likely picking up a large part of that bill behind the scenes.

When you look at the full cost on your own, especially if you retire before age 65, it can sting.

The pre-65 problem

If you retire in your late 50s or early 60s, you might face premiums in the $1,000 to $2,000 per month range for a decent plan. That is real money. For some families, it is more than their mortgage.

This is why the day you hit 65 and become eligible for Medicare is such a relief. Medicare is not free, and you will likely add a supplement plan and a drug plan, but compared with individual coverage before 65, it is often extremely affordable.

A couple of catches to watch

There is an income-related twist that many high earners discover the hard way. If your income in retirement is still quite high, maybe because of required minimum distributions from pre-tax accounts or ongoing work, you can face a surcharge on your Medicare premiums.

So, while Medicare is generally a big win, your income level still matters.

The key move for you is to treat health insurance as its own line item in your pre-65 retirement budget. Even if you only need to bridge coverage for a few years, those years can be expensive. Once you hit Medicare age, that piece can become a powerful booster as your monthly outlay for coverage drops.

Booster #3: When Social Security Finally Kicks In

Next up is what I like to call the Bank of Social Security opening its doors for you.

This is not your only source of income, and in my view, it should not be the foundation of your plan, but when those checks start, it can still feel like a big raise.

When should you take it?

You can claim Social Security as early as age 62. That is the “I am tired, give me the money” option. The catch is that your benefit is permanently reduced if you start that early.

At the other end of the range, if you wait until age 70, you get your maximum monthly benefit. For many people in good health and with savings that can cover the gap, waiting is a big win.

In the past, there were clever strategies like “file and suspend” that let couples squeeze more out of the system. Those tricks are mostly gone now, so the primary lever you control is timing.

How much money are we talking about?

Here are some rough numbers to ground it:

• The average Social Security check is around $2,000 per month, a little under that.
• The maximum benefit in 2025, if you wait until age 70, is about $5,018 per month.

Now, picture a dual high-income household, like two physicians who both worked long careers at high pay. If both delay to 70 and both land near that maximum, you are looking at something close to $10,000 per month combined.

That is a serious addition to your retirement income, especially once your mortgage and kids are off the payroll.

How to treat Social Security in your planning

Here is a mindset shift that can really help you:

Act as if Social Security is gravy, not the main course.

For many of my younger clients, I do not like to build Social Security into the core of the retirement plan. The headlines about the system running out of money never go away. In practice, I expect changes, not a total shutdown, but I still prefer to see you rely on your own savings first.

If Social Security shows up as promised, it gives you extra spending power. Maybe it covers travel, hobbies, or helps you reduce withdrawals from your portfolio. If things change down the road, you are not stuck.

In most cases, if your health and finances allow it, waiting longer to start benefits, often all the way to 70, gives you a meaningful boost that lasts as long as you do.

Booster #4: A Big Windfall

Now, let us talk about the wildcard booster: the windfall.

This could be:

• An inheritance
• Selling a medical practice or business
• A buyout from a partnership

Any of these can drop a large chunk of new capital into your life, sometimes right around retirement.

Why you should not plan your life around it

It is tempting to say, “I will get an inheritance in my 60s, and that will fill in the gaps.” The math does not always support that idea.

Take a simple example. Say your parents had you at age 30. When you are 50, they are around 80. If you plan to retire around 60, there is a decent chance they are still with us, which is wonderful, but it also means you cannot time your retirement around that future money.

On top of that, you do not control:

• How much they will actually leave.
• How much they will spend on their own care.
• What their will says or how assets are divided.

You probably know at least one story where a sibling was the surprise favorite. You do not want your retirement to depend on avoiding that plot twist.

How to treat a windfall instead

The better approach is to build your core retirement plan without any windfall. That is your “no surprises” version.

Then you can run a separate “what if” version in your head. What if you sell your practice at 62 for a large lump sum? What if a relative leaves you a meaningful inheritance?

In that scenario, your already solid plan just gets even better. The windfall is an upgrade, not a safety net. Emotionally, that feels a lot better, and financially, it is far safer.

Booster #5: When The Kids Leave The Nest

Let us be honest. At some point in your 40s or 50s, you probably say to yourself, “Once the kids are out of the house, our spending is going to fall off a cliff.”

Sometimes that is true. A lot of the time, it is not as big a drop as you expect.

Where the big savings show up

There are phases where this is a huge relief. If you are paying $30,000 to $40,000 per year for college, and you have multiple kids going at once, when that chapter closes, it feels like you hit the jackpot.

Same story if you paid for years of private school. When those checks stop, it is a major boost.

By the time that happens, you might already be closing in on retirement age, so the timing can be nice.

Where the money quietly goes next

Here is the twist based on what I see over and over.

Once your kids are older, you tend to spend more on experiences with them. Those trips get a little fancier. You might help with a wedding. Then grandkids arrive, and if you thought you spent money on your kids, just wait until you see what you do for the grandkids.

On top of that, adult children sometimes need help as they become young professionals. You might chip in for a down payment, grad school, or just help them over a rough patch.

So yes, there is a real boost when certain kid-related costs end, but it is often smaller and shorter-lived than people imagine. That is why I would place this as the fifth booster, not the star of the show.

Bonus Booster: Protect Yourself From Sequencing Risk

Here comes the nerdy but very important part: sequence of returns risk.

This is a fancy way of saying, “The order of your investment returns matters a lot, especially right around retirement.”

Why timing matters so much

You can think of retirement as a long movie. If you get your worst market years right at the beginning, when you are first drawing from your accounts, it hurts much more than if those same bad years show up in the middle or the end.

Researchers often look at the three years before and the three years after your retirement date as a danger zone. Some stretch that to five years on each side. In that window, big losses can do real damage because you are taking withdrawals at the same time your portfolio is down.

Here are two simple stories:

• You retire in a roaring bull market and feel like a genius. Then a deep, long bear market kicks in, and you are still pulling money out each year. That drop cuts deeper.
• You retire in a nasty bear market and feel awful. But if you have protected your short-term income, the next bull run may heal a lot of that damage.

The market will have good and bad stretches. You cannot control that. You can control how much of your “soon-to-be-spent” money is exposed to those swings.

The bucket approach

A simple way to deal with this is to divide your money into mental buckets, each with a different job.

1. Bucket 1: Near-term income: This is the money you expect to use in the early years of retirement. You want this to have very low volatility. Think cash, high-quality bonds, and municipal bonds. This is not the place to chase hot stocks.
2. Bucket 2: Mid-term growth: This can take on a bit more risk, since you will not touch it for a while, but it still should not be a roller coaster.
3. Bucket 3: Long-term growth: This is where accounts like Roth IRAs often sit. If you are not planning to touch this money for 15 or 20 years, it can handle more ups and downs. Short-term swings here should not stress you out, because the time horizon is so long.

The real danger is when Bucket 1, the money you need tomorrow, is sitting in aggressive investments and then falls 40 or 50 percent right as you retire. That is when the sequence of returns risk bites hard.

Stress test your number

When you think about your 25x target and your buckets, ask yourself:

• What happens if there is a 15 percent drop?
• What about 25 percent?
• What about 35 percent?

You will see those kinds of periods over a decades-long retirement. The market has been kind in recent years at times, which makes it easy to forget that the opposite can and will show up again.

By keeping that first bucket boring and steady, you give your plan breathing room when those tougher stretches hit.

Wrapping It Up: Stack Your Retirement Boosters

Retirement really is about hitting your number, not hitting a birthday. Your savings, your spending, and the order of your returns all blend together into that long movie.

Along the way, a few big moments can act like turbo buttons for your plan:

• The day your mortgage is gone.
• The day you switch from pricey private insurance to Medicare.
• The month your Social Security checks start rolling in.
• The year a windfall shows up.
• The season when your kids finally leave the nest.

On top of those, how you handle the sequence of returns risk, especially in the years wrapped around your retirement date, can quietly make or break the long-term success of your plan.

You do not control everything, but you control a lot. When you think about your own future, keep these boosters in mind and consider which ones are likely to show up for you, and when. The more of them you can line up with your retirement timeline, the more confident you can feel about that magic number actually working for the long haul.