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Want to retire early? Make these 5 moves in 2024
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As 2023 comes to a close, many Americans are turning their attention to 2024 and contemplating resolutions for the new year. Many focus on financial resolutions. as people seek to earn more or create breathing room in their budget. For some, making a commitment to retire early is a worthwhile resolution. On the surface, striving to retire early may seem like a lofty or potentially unattainable goal. However, early retirement could be possible by taking specific actions.
While the money needed to retire will vary from one person to another, the below financial moves could help you inch closer to retirement, perhaps even earlier than the traditional retirement age.
Learn more about investing for an early retirement here.
Want to retire early? Make these 5 moves in 2024
Here are five smart moves to make in 2024 with an eye toward an early retirement.
Review your investments
It’s hard to launch the boat if you don’t know where you’re docked. Before proceeding, take some time to review your financial situation to see where you stand.
“Now is an ideal time to conduct a thorough end-of-year review,” says Tyler Meyer, a CFP and president of QED Wealth Solutions. “It’s an opportunity to identify successes, rectify oversights and lay the groundwork for a financially prosperous new year.”
Calculate how much you have in savings and investment accounts, including any retirement savings. You’ll need to be realistic about your current financial situation and how soon you want to retire. For example, if you are 40 years old with $40,000 in retirement savings, it could be challenging to retire by age 50 without a dramatic increase in income and savings.
Start reviewing your investments now.
Pay down debts
Living comfortably in retirement is possible with careful planning and intentional action. However, it could be harder to make ends meet if debt is dragging on your budget, especially if you’re no longer earning income from your job.
Additionally, paying high interest on credit cards and other debt takes away money you could be saving for retirement. Consider consolidating this debt with a lower-interest debt consolidation loan or moving your debt to a balance transfer credit card with a 0% introductory period. Some credit card companies offer promotional periods lasting up to 21 months, which could give you enough time to pay off or make a serious dent in your debt without incurring interest charges. Debt relief services can also help.
Stacey Black, the lead financial educator at BECU, advises using a debt repayment strategy to get debt under control. “List out all of your debts in one spot, including the total amount owed, the interest rate and the minimum payments. Then, look into and compare different debt payoff strategies and choose the method that will motivate you the most,” says Black.
Calculate how much income you’ll need in retirement
Not sure how much money you’ll need to retire? One general rule is that you’ll need to bring in roughly 80% of your pre-retirement income in retirement. You can adjust this percentage higher or lower to fit your circumstances, and it’s probably wise to consult a financial advisor to help you determine your number.
If you are aiming to retire early before you’re eligible for Social Security benefits, don’t include that income in your retirement calculations. For example, if you need $84,000 per year, or $7,000 each month, in retirement, and expect to receive $3,000 each month from your pension, you’re almost halfway there. You’ll need to save to produce the other $4,000 in monthly income, or $48,000 annually.
Next, figure out a safe withdrawal rate from your retirement savings that can last throughout your retirement. For this, retirement experts commonly advise using the “4% rule.” This rule states you can withdraw 4% from your retirement savings in your first year of retirement and increase the amount each year thereafter to match rising living costs. This rule is not perfect, but it’s a good starting point to help ensure your money lasts in retirement.
To apply the 4% rule, multiply the amount you need to come up with each year in retirement by 25. Using the previous example, if you need $48,000 annually, multiply it by 25, which, in this case, results in a savings goal of $1.2 million.
Max out your retirement contributions
Maximizing contributions is another tactic that can help you build your retirement savings faster and retire earlier than if you make minimal contributions. When you contribute up to the limit allowed to your 401(k), IRA or another retirement plan, you maximize the power of compound interest. This is where you earn interest on both your principal balance and the interest it earns. According to the IRS, the maximum amount you can contribute to your 401(k) or IRA in 2024 is $23,000 and $7,000, respectively.
Many companies offer a 401(k) match, up to a specific percentage of your salary, as part of their benefits plan. For instance, one common match is 50% of your contributions up to 6% of your salary. The employer match is effectively free money that could add thousands of dollars each year to your savings total and boost your retirement savings substantially over time.
Follow a strategic savings and investment plan
Once you’ve set your savings goal, you’ll need an effective savings and investment plan to help you achieve it. It’s a good idea to consult a financial advisor who can help you devise an investment strategy that aligns with your goals and considers your current financial situation and risk tolerance level. Your advisor can help you determine how much you should save each month and ways to maximize your returns.
Diversifying your investment across different asset classes can help you manage risk while potentially maximizing your returns. Consider adding a gold IRA to your portfolio, which could help stabilize your holdings, as gold often holds its value and even appreciates during times of economic uncertainty.
The bottom line
Retiring from the workplace is only half the battle. To ensure a comfortable and fulfilling retirement, start planning now for how you’ll spend your time once you’re no longer working.
Ultimately, following a strategic plan and making smart money moves can help you reach your goal of an early retirement. Of course, the journey will require hard work and discipline. But if you can save and invest consistently in alignment with your goals and risk tolerance, it’s possible to retire early.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has not endorsed Donald Trump, the financial giant said Friday after the former president claimed in a social media post that the executive, America’s most prominent banking industry leader, was supporting him.
“Jamie Dimon has not endorsed anyone. He has not endorsed a candidate,” Joe Evangelisti, a spokesperson for the New York-based bank told CBS News in a statement.
The denial came after the Republican presidential nominee posted a screenshot on his Truth Social account falsely stating, “New: Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has endorsed Trump for president.”
Trump told NBC News he didn’t know about the post, which was still visible on his account as of 5:10 p.m. Eastern Time.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Seemingly coming from a verified account on X earlier in the day, the post swiftly drew attention from various pro-Trump accounts before Trump weighed in.
Before Trump won the Republican nomination for president, Dimon had expressed support for former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley during the party’s primaries.
Friday’s Truth Social post is not the first in which Trump incorrectly suggested winning support by a high-profile person. The former president in August posted AI-generated images claiming that Taylor Swift was backing him. The superstar endorsed his opponent, Kamala Harris a few weeks later.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has launched a new way for Americans to look up how high or low levels of viruses like COVID-19 and flu are in their local area for 2024.
This year’s new “community snapshot” is the CDC’s latest attempt to repackage its data in one place for Americans deciding when to take extra precautions recommended in its guidelines, like masking or testing, going into the fall and winter.
It centers around a sweeping new weekly metric called “acute respiratory illness.” The metric’s debut fulfills a goal laid out by agency officials months ago, aiming to measure the risk of COVID-19 alongside other germs that spread through the air on a single scale from “minimal” to “very high.”
“The biggest thing we’re trying to do here is not just to have a dashboard. It’s not just putting a bunch of information in front of people and kind of expecting them to navigate all of that,” the CDC’s Captain Matthew Ritchey told CBS News.
Ritchey, who co-leads the team that coordinates data fed into the snapshots, said the CDC gathers experts from across the agency every Thursday to walk through the week’s data coming from hospitals and emergency rooms, wastewater sampling and testing laboratories.
“All those groups come together, talking through their different data systems and their expertise to say, ‘this is what’s catching my eye.’ And then that’s what we want to tee up for the public,” he said.
Ritchey cited early signs of respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, starting to increase this season as expected in Florida, which is called out at the top of this week’s report.
Behind the CDC’s new “respiratory illness” metric
Based on emergency room data, the “acute respiratory illness” metric, grades overall infections in each state or county from “minimal” to “very high.”
That is defined broadly to capture infections from COVID-19 and influenza, as well as a range of other diseases that spread through the air like whooping cough or pneumonia.
A previous definition the agency had relied on called “influenza-like illness” had been too narrow, Ritchey said, with requirements like fever which excluded many patients.
A separate set of standalone levels is still being calculated each week for COVID-19, influenza and RSV.
The formula behind those levels is based on historical peaks and valleys in emergency room trends, which were analyzed from each state.
“We’ve looked over the last couple of years and understand the low points of the year, based on our lab testing, and at that point we say, that’s the baseline or ‘minimal’ category,” said Ritchey.
How to see what COVID variants are dominant
Not all of the CDC’s data made the cutoff to be included on the first layer of the agency’s new snapshot.
For example, while the front page for the general public does mention current SARS-CoV-2 variants like XEC, details about its prevalence remain on a separate webpage deeper into the CDC’s website.
“That whole jumble of lots of acronyms or letters and things like that just don’t overly resonate with them,” he said.
For flu, the CDC is still publishing more detailed weekly updates designed for experts, through the agency’s “FluView” reports.
Those include a weekly breakdown of the “type” – influenza A or B – and “subtype” – like H3N2 or H1N1 – that is being reported to the agency from testing laboratories.
Health authorities closely watch trends in flu subtyping as well, since they can help explain changes in the severity of the virus as well as vaccine effectiveness.
Future changes to come
The snapshot remains a work in progress as the CDC gathers feedback from the public as well as local health departments.
“We have a continuum of users, from the public health practitioner to my parents, providing feedback on how they’re using it. More often, the feedback we get is, ‘hey, I use this to help inform how I work, or talk with my elderly parents,'” he said.
One big change coming later this season is the resumption of nationwide hospitalization data, after a pandemic-era requirement for hospitals to report the figures to the federal government lapsed.
A new rule by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to start collecting the data again for COVID-19, influenza and RSV is due to take effect in November.
“As that data starts to come in again and gets to a robust enough level, the plan is that it would be incorporated on the site as well,” he said.
Another long term goal is to add information specific to other respiratory illness culprits beyond COVID-19, influenza and RSV.
“We want to be able to talk about maybe some of the other things that are not the big three as well, like mycoplasma and some of those other things too, that we know peak during certain parts of the season,” he said.
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