Learn About Retirement
A plain-English guide to how retirement actually works — saving, investing, Social Security, healthcare, taxes, and turning a lifetime of savings into income that lasts. No jargon without a definition, no predictions, and every claim about the past backed by real market history.
The Basics
Retirement Planning 101
The big picture: the three phases of retirement money, why time matters more than timing, and the questions every plan has to answer.
Read ArticleHow Much Do You Need to Retire?
The 25x shorthand, income-replacement ratios, and how to sanity-check a savings target against historical data.
Read Article401(k)s, IRAs, and Other Retirement Accounts
How tax-advantaged accounts work: traditional vs Roth, employer matches, vesting, rollovers, and early-withdrawal rules.
Read ArticleSocial Security Basics
How benefits are earned and calculated, what claiming at 62 vs 70 changes, and how spousal and survivor benefits work.
Read ArticleInvesting for Retirement
Stocks, Bonds, and Asset Allocation
What each asset class does in a portfolio, why diversification works, and how allocation choices shaped historical retirement outcomes.
Read ArticleSequence-of-Returns Risk
Why two retirees with identical average returns can end up rich or broke, and why your first decade matters most.
Read ArticleInflation: The Quiet Risk
How rising prices compound against a fixed income, what the 1970s did to retirees, and how to think in real (inflation-adjusted) terms.
Read ArticleSpending It Down
Where the 4% Rule Came From
Bengen's 1994 study, the Trinity study, and what the research actually does and does not claim.
Read ArticleWithdrawal Strategies Beyond the 4% Rule
Fixed real, fixed percentage, guardrails, RMD-based, and bucket approaches - and the trade-offs of each.
Read ArticleAnnuities and Pensions
Turning savings into guaranteed income: how annuities work, pension lump-sum choices, and longevity insurance.
Read ArticlePractical Matters
Healthcare and Medicare
Medicare's parts and enrollment windows, the pre-65 coverage gap, HSAs, and planning for long-term care.
Read ArticleTaxes in Retirement
The three tax buckets, required minimum distributions, Roth conversions, and how Social Security gets taxed.
Read ArticleCommon Retirement Mistakes
The errors that show up again and again: planning on averages, ignoring inflation, panic selling, and underestimating how long retirement lasts.
Read ArticleRetirement Glossary
Plain-English definitions of the terms used across this site and in retirement planning generally.
Read ArticleReading is half of it
Every concept in these articles can be tested against 93 years of real market data (1928-2021) with this site's interactive tools:
These articles are educational only and are not financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. Rules and limits change; verify details with official sources or a qualified professional.