The average person gets about 4,000 weeks in a lifetime. If you’re in your late 50s or early 60s, you’ve probably used up nearly 3,000 of them. That leaves maybe 500 to 700 active weeks left — the years when your health, your energy, and your ability to actually enjoy your money arestill at their absolute peak.
I'm not saying this to scare you. I’m saying it because, after helping hundreds of hardworking savers build retirement plans, I keep seeing the same tragic pattern: people spending their highest-value weeks maxing out a 401(k) without realizing the math has already done its job.
What if continuing to save — even though it feels “responsible” — is actually the worst financial decision you can make? What if you’re trading a trip through Europe, or more time with the grandkids, for a bigger number in an app you’ll never spend?
By the end of this post, you’ll know the exact moment it may be considered safe to take your foot off the gas, and you’ll have the simple calculation we use at Allwealth Planning to help clients decide when it may make sense to save less.
You’re Not Climbing Anymore — You’re Cruising
The reason it’s so hard to stop saving is that you’ve been trained to view retirement as a destination. I want you to look at it differently.
Think of your career like a plane taking off. For 30 years, you’ve had the engines at 100% just to get off the ground and climb. But eventually, you reach cruising altitude. At 35,000 feet, a pilot doesn’t keep the engines at full throttle — the plane stays in the air on momentum and physics. In your financial life, we measure that cruising altitude with something called the Funded Ratio.
The Two-Step Funded Ratio Calculation
The Funded Ratio is a way to see whether your assets will actually sustain your living expenses.
It takes two steps.
Step 1: Work out your funding target. Start with your expected annual retirement spending. Subtract any guaranteed income — what I call your Hidden Bond. That’s Social Security, a pension, or any other fixed income you’ll receive no matter what. Take whatever’s left and
multiply it by 20 (a 5% safe withdrawal rate). That’s the exact amount your portfolio needs to support your lifestyle for the rest of your life.
Step 2: Calculate your Funded Ratio. Divide what you currently have saved by your funding
target. The result is your Funded Ratio. Research from firms like Morningstar shows that once your Funded Ratio hits 110–120% —
meaning you have about 20% more than the math says you need — saving more has a negligible effect on your safety. You aren’t buying more security. You’re just delaying the life you’ve already earned.
What This Looks Like in Real Life: Mike’s Story
Let me show you how this played out with a client we helped recently. We’ll call him Mike. Mike was 59. He had a paid-off house and a portfolio of about $1.2 million. On paper, he was doing great. But mentally, he was still in survival mode — redlining his engines, maxing out his 401(k), terrified that $1.2 million wasn’t enough.
Then we ran his Funded Ratio.
Mike needed about $110,000 a year to fund the lifestyle he wanted — travel, hobbies, the whole picture. Between him and his wife, Social Security was projected to deliver about $60,000 a year of guaranteed, inflation-protected income. That’s his Hidden Bond.
So his portfolio didn’t actually need to generate $110,000. It only needed to cover the $50,000 gap.
At a 5% withdrawal rate, Mike’s funding target, his cruising altitude, was exactly $1 million. Mike already had $1.2 million. His Funded Ratio wasn’t 100%. It was 120%. Mike had passed the safe moment 18 months earlier and didn’t even know it. Here’s the part that hit him hardest: the $20,000 he was “responsibly” maxing out every year was only moving the needle on his future retirement paycheck by about $60 a month. To save that $60, he was pushing back the three-week trip to Italy he and his wife had been dreaming
about for a decade.
He already had the money. He just didn’t have the permission.
The Pharmacy Dollar Trap
When I show people Mike’s numbers, I hear the same objection: “But Eric, life gets more
expensive. What about inflation? What about healthcare?” It feels responsible to think that way. The data tells a different story. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average household in their “Go-Go years” — roughly ages 60 to 74 — spends about $60,000 a year. By age 75 and older, that drops to around $53,000. That’s a 12% decrease.
Yes, healthcare spending does rise — about 29% as we age. But while the pharmacy bill climbs, spending on travel, food, and transportation falls 20–30%. You don’t run out of money at 85; you fundamentally shift what you spend it on.
This is what I call the Pharmacy Dollar Trap: trading a high-value Experience Dollar today for a low-value Pharmacy Dollar thirty years from now. Every year you wait past your funding target is a trade of time you can never get back.
The Three Pivots: From Accumulator to CEO of Distribution
So what do you do once the math says you’re ready? Stopping is the hardest part. You’ve spent 30 years being rewarded for saving, every contribution felt like progress. That feeling in your gut right now is just a habit that hasn’t caught up with the math yet.
This isn’t quitting. It’s a strategic pivot. At Allwealth Planning, we focus on three moves.
1. The Offensive Move — Roth Conversions. Once your paycheck stops, you enter a “tax
valley” where your income is low. It’s a one-time window to move money from taxable to tax-
free accounts at a steep discount. Keep working past your funding target and you don’t just lose
time — you pay a “success tax” by missing this window.
2. The Defensive Move — Build Your Sanity Fund. If you’re forced to sell stocks during a
market dip to pay bills, you can exhaust a portfolio a decade early. The Sanity Fund disarms that
trap. You stop maxing out the 401(k) and start redirecting those contributions into one to two
years of cash. It’s both a safety net and a psychological bridge — proof to the saver in you that
you’re safe.
3. The Purpose Move — Start Living. This is where everything comes together. The ski trip in
the Alps. The lake house with the family. The fishing trips you never had time for. This isn’t
reckless. It’s the strategy working.
You Have Professional Guidance
I know how hard it is to take your hand off the throttle. You’ve spent 30 years being a
professional saver because that’s what kept you safe. But at a certain point, the habit that built
your wealth becomes the thing that robs you of your life.
Looking at a Funded Ratio on a screen is one thing. Applying the three pivots — Roth
conversions, the Sanity Fund, and intentional spending — to your real life takes planning, and
more importantly, confidence.
That’s exactly what we do at Allwealth Planning. We help hardworking savers find the clarity to
stop the guessing and start the living. If you’d like us to run your numbers and tell you whether
you’ve reached your exact moment, you can book a clarity call with our team.
At the end of the day, you can always make more money. You will never be this young or this
healthy again. If the math says it’s safe, the only thing you’re really waiting for is permission.
Here it is.
You might have already won the game. Now it’s time to go live the life you’ve been saving for.
About the Author:
Eric Bottolfsen is a co-founder and financial planner at Allwealth Planning, an independent firm focused on helping hardworking savers approaching retirement finally give themselves permission to retire. You've spent 30 years doing everything right. We're here to look you in the eye and help clients decide when It may make sense to save less — so you can retire on your own terms, know your people are taken care of, and go enjoy the life you've built.
These results are for illustrative purposes only and should not be deemed a representation of future results. Circumstances, solutions, and/or results are based on specific facts tied to unique client situations. Favorable results cannot be guaranteed even in a similar scenario. Each specific set of circumstances will differ depending on client needs and profile. Actual results may be more or may be less than those shown. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
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