Dan Caplinger

The social security websites calculator for social security has been extremely helpful.

In addition, there are some calculators on the Motley Fool website that I've used really just to kind of double check my numbers on my spreadsheets and also to try to get some additional insight on

Kind of what the established financial community would tell me is the right answer.

And then I can kind of customize and do my own tweaks to make it more my own because I know what my preferences are.

I know where I differ from kind of where the mainstream thinking is.

And so making allowances in my own personal financial plan that I can do, but I still like to know kind of where the baseline is.

What's preventing you from retiring?

It's a combination of factors, bro.

But I'll tell you, I mean, I've been thinking about retiring for a long time now.

When I was a younger person early in my career, I'd kind of set age 50 as my target for early retirement.

That was at a stage in my career that I wasn't as happy with my work as I have been at the Motley Fool.

And so being at the Fool kind of took away the urgency for, okay, I got to get out of this rat race as quickly as possible.

At the same time, it just so happened that my 50th birthday came right in the middle of COVID.

And so I had been thinking about it.

I had about $2.5 million in retirement at that point.

And my numbers, I'm not that profligate a person.

My budget, I think I could have made that work.

The early healthcare before Medicare is always the big factor there.

But at that point,

Like all the things I wanted to do, I wouldn't have been able to do.