What if there's more than one way to retire?

Most people are taught a pretty limited retirement formula: save more money, keep working, and wait.

But what if there are other roads?

In this episode, I walk through the METHODS portion of the Retire NOW Method — seven categories of "Maybe Moves" that can potentially help close your Retirement Income Gap and make your paycheck optional:

Money Moves • Expense Moves • Time Moves • Housing Moves • Occupational Moves • Distance Moves • Synergy

None of these is automatically the right answer. Every road has a toll — a tradeoff between what you get and what you give up.

The goal is to see the roads available to you clearly enough to decide which tradeoffs, if any, are worth making.

Want to learn more? RetireNowMethod.com

Want to ask me a question? [email protected]

What if work is already optional?

— Charlie Jewett Creator, The Retire NOW Method

What if retirement isn't about reaching some magic number? What if it's really about replacing your paycheck?

For more than two decades, I've talked with thousands of families about retirement, and most start with the same question:

"How much money do I need to save before I can retire?"

The Retire NOW Method starts with a different question:

"How much income do I need to make work optional?"

In this episode, I explain the three mindset shifts behind the Retire NOW Method:

1. Retirement is an income problem, not an accumulation problem. You don't live on a portfolio balance. You live on income. The goal is to replace the paycheck and solve the income gap.

2. Time is more valuable now than it will ever be again. The next five years may include some of your healthiest years, young grandchildren, aging parents, travel, family, and experiences that can't simply be postponed and recovered later. Waiting has a cost too.

3. Retirement planning should evolve. Technology has changed dramatically since the 1990s—and retirement income strategies have evolved too. Yet many people are still approaching retirement using the same basic thinking they learned decades ago.

The Retire NOW Method is built around a simple possibility:

What if work is already optional?

Before automatically deciding you need to work another five or ten years, let's find out.

📘 Get the free book: How To Retire NOW

📅 Want to talk about your retirement?

Clarity is better than advice. When people see clearly, they tend to make really great decisions.

— Charlie Jewett Retire NOW Method

What if work is already optional?

Most retirement planning begins with the wrong question.

In this first conversation, Charlie introduces The Retire NOW Method and explores:

• Why retirement doesn't have to begin at a certain age or account balance. • Why retirement is really about reaching the point where work becomes optional. • Why income—not simply accumulation—is the key to understanding whether you can retire. • Why seeing your situation clearly can reveal options you may not have realized you had.

Download your free copy of How to Retire NOW

https://www.RetireNowMethod.com

See clearly. Know when you've arrived.

Because when people see clearly... they usually make really great decisions.

For years, Americans have been told they need $1 million to retire.

But where did that number come from—and what does it actually tell you?

In this conversation, Charlie explores:

• Why the Million-Dollar Myth can keep people working longer than necessary. • Why two people with the exact same amount of savings can have completely different retirement outcomes. • Why retirement isn't primarily an accumulation problem—it's an income problem. • The better question to ask instead of, "Do I have enough money?"

You may not need to reach a magic number.

You need to know whether you can create enough dependable income to make work optional.

Download your free copy of How To Retire NOW

https://www.RetireNowMethod.com

See clearly. Know when you've arrived.

Because when people see clearly... they usually make really great decisions.

Most people think the answer to "Can I retire?" is hiding somewhere in their account balance.

But knowing how much money you've accumulated doesn't necessarily tell you whether you can retire.

In this conversation, Charlie explores:

• Why retirement is an income problem, not simply an accumulation problem. • The difference between how much money is in the well and how much income is coming out of the well. • Why dependable income matters when you're trying to replace a paycheck. • How to begin determining whether you can make work optional now.

It's not the size of the well that you need to worry about. It's how much water is coming out of that well.

Download your free copy of How To Retire NOW

https://www.RetireNowMethod.com

See clearly. Know when you've arrived.

Because when people see clearly... they usually make really great decisions.

Retirement can feel frightening for one simple reason:

The paycheck stops... but the bills don't.

And suddenly the money you've spent decades accumulating has a new job: it has to become income.

In this conversation, Charlie explores:

• Why having a large retirement account doesn't automatically mean you'll have dependable retirement income. • Why your retirement savings are like a pool—and withdrawals are the pump pulling water out. • Why investment returns are like rain: important, but outside your control. • Why a retirement plan shouldn't depend on getting exactly the right amount of rain at exactly the right time. • How thinking differently about income can help answer the fear behind the question: "What if I run out of money?"

You can control the pump. You can't control the rain.

Download your free copy of How To Retire NOW

https://www.RetireNowMethod.com

See clearly. Know when you've arrived.

Because when people see clearly... they usually make really great decisions.

What if two people saved the same amount of money...

owned the same investments...

earned the same average return...

and still experienced completely different retirements?

In this conversation, Charlie explores:

• Why average returns don't tell the whole retirement story. • How the order of your investment returns can dramatically change what happens when you're withdrawing income. • Why losses early in retirement can be especially damaging when you're simultaneously taking money out. • Why a retirement plan shouldn't require the market to cooperate at exactly the right time.

Averages don't have an order. Retirement does.

And when it comes to your retirement:

It's not only how much rain you get. It's when you get the rain.

The goal is to build a retirement that doesn't require perfect weather.

Download your free copy of How To Retire NOW

https://www.RetireNowMethod.com

See clearly. Know when you've arrived.

Because when people see clearly... they usually make really great decisions.

Your money has one job while you're working:

Help you build wealth for the future.

But when you retire, suddenly you're asking that same money to do almost everything.

Replace your paycheck. Handle emergencies. Keep growing. Recover from market losses. Keep up with inflation. Last for the rest of your life. And maybe leave something behind.

That's one hell of an employee.

In this conversation, Charlie explores:

• Why your money's job needs to change when you retire. • Why asking the same dollars to provide income, liquidity, growth, and security can create unnecessary problems. • Why every dollar needs a job. • The three different jobs retirement money may need to perform: INCome, INCase, and INCrease. • Why there is no "best" financial product until you know what job you're hiring it to do.

Retirement isn't about finding one investment that does everything.

It's about building a team where every dollar knows its job.

Download your free copy of How To Retire NOW

https://www.RetireNowMethod.com

See clearly. Know when you've arrived.

Because when people see clearly... they usually make really great decisions.

Most people spend decades trying to postpone taxes.

But there's a question almost nobody stops to ask:

What exactly are you postponing them to?

In this conversation, Charlie asks two simple questions that could completely change the way you think about taxes in retirement:

• Will you probably need more income twenty years into retirement than you need on the day you retire? • Do you believe tax rates are more likely to be higher or lower in the future? • If you expect more income and higher tax rates, does automatically postponing taxes still make sense? • What does it mean to deliberately renegotiate your agreement with the IRS? • How can turning retirement variables into knowns create greater clarity about your future?

The goal isn't to predict exactly what Congress will do.

It's to stop treating taxes as something that simply happens to you—and start making deliberate decisions about when and how you pay them.

Download your free copy of How To Retire NOW

https://www.RetireNowMethod.com

See clearly. Know when you've arrived.

Because when people see clearly... they usually make really great decisions.

Why can retirement feel so complicated?

Because you're trying to answer one enormous question—

"Can I retire now?"

—using an equation filled with variables.

How much will inflation be? How long will you live? What will your investments earn? What will taxes be? What will medical expenses be? What will the market do?

In this conversation, Charlie explores:

• Why retirement planning can feel like trying to solve an algebra problem with too many unknowns. • Why you don't need to know everything before you can make a decision. • How some retirement variables can be turned into knowns. • Why some of the things we call variables are actually decisions we haven't made yet. • How greater clarity can reveal whether you're closer to retirement than you think.

Some variables can't be known.

But many can.

Turn the variables you CAN into knowns—and build around the ones you CAN'T.

Because clarity isn't knowing everything.

It's knowing enough to make a decision.

Download your free copy of How To Retire NOW

https://www.RetireNowMethod.com

See clearly. Know when you've arrived.

Because when people see clearly... they usually make really great decisions.