I Asked ChatGPT How To Retire 10 Years Early — The Plan Shocked Me

2 weeks ago 10

G. Brian Davis

Mon, November 10, 2025 astatine 8:55 AM CST 3 min read

I asked ChatGPT a deceptively elemental prompt: “Give maine a measurement by measurement program for retiring 10 years early.”

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The AI did conscionable that. And it got plentifulness of things close — portion missing the astir important point, which a quality advisor would person understood instantly. Here’s the program ChatGPT gave me.

ChatGPT spat retired a 10-point program for retiring 10 years early. The condensed mentation reads similar this:

  1. Define status property & whether you privation to enactment astatine each aft retiring.

  2. Calculate FIRE number: Annual Expenses x 25 = Retirement Goal (FIRE number).

  3. Cut unnecessary expenses: Cut areas similar lodging (downsize, house-hack, relocate to a lower-cost area), transportation, subscriptions, nutrient and entertainment.

  4. Boost income streams: Ask for raises, power jobs, prime up broadside hustles, put successful cash-flowing existent estate.

  5. Save [over] 50% of income: Aim for [more than] 50% savings complaint if retiring successful 10 years, max retired 401(k) [plan], IRA, HSA (if applicable), prevention bonuses, raises and windfalls.

  6. Invest successful stocks, existent property oregon businesses: Index funds (e.g., VTI, VOO) for semipermanent maturation successful some tax-advantaged accounts and a taxable brokerage relationship for entree earlier property 59½.

  7. Plan for aboriginal relationship access: Roth Conversion ladder (from Traditional IRA/401k [plan] to Roth IRA), taxable brokerage account, currency cushion of 1 to 2 years of expenses successful currency oregon bonds.

  8. Strategize healthcare: ACA Marketplace, wellness sharing ministries, COBRA (short-term solution aft quitting), part-time occupation that includes healthcare benefits.

  9. Monitor and adjust: Track nett worthy monthly oregon quarterly, rebalance your portfolio annually, set spending, saving, and investing arsenic needed.

  10. Retire with assurance and buffer: Reach your fig positive 10 [to] 20% arsenic a buffer, effort a “test retirement” twelvemonth (take a sabbatical oregon mini-retirement), hole psychologically — status is simply a large individuality shift.

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The AI did a perfectly capable occupation summarizing hundreds of FIRE (financial independence, discontinue early) books and articles.

The wide strokes are each there: Spend less, prevention and put more, leverage tax-advantaged accounts and existent property investments. It adjacent paid articulator work to the intelligence perils of leaving the workforce.

Yet it wholly missed the bigger picture.

Imagine you bump into a fiscal planner astatine a enactment and inquire “How bash I discontinue 10 years early?” They’d instantly reply by asking “How aged are you now, and successful however galore years bash you privation to retire?”


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