Discover the tips and strategies that will help you achieve your retirement goals.

I'm your host, James Canole, and this is the podcast dedicated to helping you retire well.

It all starts right here on Ready for Retirement. for retirement.

Hi, everyone.

Welcome back to another episode of Ready for Retirement.

I'm your host, James Knoll.

Today on the episode, we are actually going to take a listener question.

So we had a listener question submitted and we're going to break it down, answer the question directly, but more importantly, give a framework for all of you to think about this because I think

it's a question that everyone's going to have at some point or another. And really just, as I mentioned,

give a direct answer, but more importantly, give a way that you can think about this so that you

can apply this to your specific situation. So let's jump in. Here is the

question. I have listened to several episodes where you talk about how much you will need for

secure retirement. The question I have is how do I incorporate social security into the picture

if I'm retiring early? Most calculators do not take that into a consideration. The general rule of thumb

is 25 times your expenditures,

but again, that doesn't take into your expected Social Security payments or taxes into

consideration. If I want to retire in two years at age 60 and have approximately a portfolio

of $2.5 million with the desired after-tax income stream of $100,000, do the numbers work? I would love a framework of

how to look at this. Thank you very much. Well, thank you for that question. It's an excellent

question. And at the core of it, what it's saying is everyone's heard, or maybe most people have

heard of there's a general rule of thumb of how much you can take out of your portfolio. Whether it's 4% or 5%, you want to make sure you're

not taking out too much too early because if you do, you might run into an issue where you don't

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