Maybe.

And that's a very different answer from “You have to wait.”

Your current retirement date isn't necessarily a fact.

It's the result of the plan you're currently using.

The income you need.

The income you already have.

The expenses you've chosen to carry.

When you claim Social Security.

How your savings are being asked to support you.

How you handle taxes.

Where you live.

The role work plays in your life.

And dozens of other variables.

Change a variable and you change the math.

Change several variables together and something even more interesting can happen:

You may change the date.

THERE ARE MORE ROUTES THAN YOU'VE BEEN SHOWN.

The Retire NOW Method calls them Maybe Moves.

Money Moves.

Expense Moves.

Time Moves.

Housing Moves.

Occupational Moves.

Distance Moves.

And those are only categories.

Inside them are hundreds of possibilities—and thousands of potential combinations.

We're not looking for every one.

We're looking for yours.

YOUR RETIREMENT PLAN IS YOUR ROUTE.

You know the destination:

Work becomes optional.

Now you get to choose how you want to get there.

Maybe there's a shortcut.

Maybe there's a toll road.

Maybe one route gets you there sooner but requires giving something up.

Maybe another preserves something that's important to you but takes longer.

That's okay.

You choose the tolls you're willing to pay.

Because the goal isn't to find the theoretically perfect retirement.

It's to find the route you actually want to travel.

METHODS BECOME MOVES.

A Method is something you could do.

A Move is something you've examined, understood and chosen to do.

For every potential Move, we can ask:

What does it change?

What's the outcome?

Which variables become known?

What's the exchange?

What are the steps?

Then we put the Moves together.

And recalculate.

MOVES MOVE THE DATE.

Maybe your current plan says 67.

And maybe 67 turns out to be exactly right.

But maybe it's 65.

Maybe it's 63.

Maybe it's 61.

And maybe the surprise isn't that you can completely stop working tomorrow.

Maybe it's discovering that you already have enough to make work optional.

That's why the final question isn't:

“When am I supposed to retire?”

It's:

“How soon could work become optional for me?”

And maybe—just maybe—the answer is:

NOW.