The Blog
Real strategies, real numbers, and real opinions on retiring early — without the fluff
-
Roth Conversion Ladder Example With Real Numbers, and the 2026 Trap A Lot of People Miss
By Antonio Hill Here’s the ladder example with real numbers. A married couple retires at 40 spending $120,000 a year. They want to move traditional 401(k) money into a Roth so they can spend it decades before 59½. How much can they actually convert this year and keep their health insurance subsidy? Thirty thousand dollars.…
-
A Retired Couple Can Pull Six Figures a Year and Pay $0 Federal Tax. On Purpose.
By Antonio Hill The first time I ran this math, I assumed I’d typed something wrong. A married couple with no paychecks can realize $131,100 of income in 2026 and owe the IRS nothing. Nothing. It isn’t a loophole. It’s two numbers printed right in the tax code, waiting for anyone willing to be intentional…
-
The $84,600 Cliff. How Early Retirees Keep Five-Figure Health Subsidies in 2026
One dollar over the line costs a family of three $8,872 a year. Here’s the one number early retirees manage to keep five figure health subsidies in 2026.
-
The Money’s Locked Until 59½. Here’s How Early Retirees Get To It Anyway
By Antonio Hill A guy at work found out I plan to retire at 40 and hit me with the “Must be nice. Most of my money’s locked up until 59½.” No it isn’t. A portion of his money sits in one account with one rule on it. And he let that one rule decide…
-
Sequence of Returns Risk: The Thing That Actually Wrecks Early Retirements
By Antonio Hill Your FI number can be perfect. You can run the math ten different ways, hit the target to the dollar, and hand in your notice right on schedule. If the market drops 30% in the third month of your retirement, that perfect number won’t mean a whole lot. That’s sequence of returns…
-
How Much You Actually Need to Retire at 40 (It’s Less Than the 4% Rule Says)
By Antonio Hill Type “how much do you need to retire at 40” into Google and every result tells you the same thing. Save more. Withdraw less. Aim for 3.5% instead of 4%, because your money has to last 50 years instead of 30. The thing is…the man who created the 4% rule already disagrees…
-
The Stock Market Has No Risk. The Investor Does.
By Antonio Hill Let me be clear about something right up front. I am not saying the market never goes down. It does, often, and those drops can feel brutal when you’re watching your portfolio lose 20% in a matter of weeks. I am not predicting future gains or guaranteeing things will always work out.…
-
Stop Diversifying Away Your Returns
By Antonio Hill Somebody told you to diversify. A parent, a coworker, an advisor, something you read at 2am on Reddit. Spread it around, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. It sounded responsible, so you did it and never questioned it. The part that they didn’t mention is that if you are under…
-
Why the 4% Rule Is Too Conservative and Inflates Your Retirement Number
By Antonio Hill After taking your target annual spending, multiplying it by 25, and getting some number that felt like it was three decades away, somewhere in the back of your head, you started wondering if early retirement was actually possible for you or just something other people do. That number is wrong. This isn’t…
-
I Have Just Under $1 Million in Investable Assets at 33. This is How I Got Here.
By Antonio Hill My friends used to get so annoyed at me in college. We’d be thinking about going out, somebody would suggest doing just about anything, and before they could even finish the sentence, I was already saying it. “Uh, that costs money.” Gas? Costs money. Going to the movies? Costs money. Literally just…