10+ years out
You have time — which is the most valuable asset in retirement planning. Here's what's worth doing now, while the window is widest.
Ten or more years out is a privileged position in retirement planning, even when it doesn’t feel that way. Compounding still has time to do serious work. Decisions that are expensive to undo later — where to retire, how much to save, whether to pay down the mortgage — still have room to change. The planning window for things like long-term care insurance, which closes gradually with age, is still reasonably open.
The work at this stage isn’t about urgency. It’s about not wasting the lead time you have.
Where to start
1. Understand where you’re headed before you optimize how to get there
Before getting deep into savings rates and account allocations, it helps to have a rough picture of what retirement will actually cost for you — which depends on where you’ll live, what you’ll do, and what healthcare will look like. A general number to work backward from is more useful than optimizing in a vacuum.
Withdrawal strategy basics: which account to draw from first explains how different retirement accounts are taxed and how sequencing withdrawals affects how long money lasts. Understanding the destination helps decisions made today — which accounts to prioritize, whether Roth conversions make sense — land in the right place.
2. Get ahead of required minimum distributions
RMDs begin at 73 and are often larger than people expect. The decade-plus before they start is the most flexible window for managing the tax-deferred balance that will eventually produce them — including deciding whether Roth conversions make sense in lower-income years.
Required minimum distributions, explained covers how RMDs are calculated, the penalties for missing them, and why the Roth conversion window between your early 60s and 73 is worth understanding well before you’re in it.
3. Think about long-term care before the window narrows
Long-term care insurance is significantly cheaper and more available in your 50s than in your late 60s — and health conditions that develop later can make it uninsurable entirely. About 70% of people over 65 will need some form of long-term care; roughly 80% have no plan to fund it.
Long-term care: the retirement cost nobody plans for covers what care costs, what Medicare doesn’t cover, and how people approach funding it — including the tradeoffs between insurance, hybrid policies, and self-funding.
4. Start building social infrastructure now
The social isolation that surprises many new retirees doesn’t arrive out of nowhere — it’s the predictable result of work having provided most of a person’s daily social contact for decades. Building connections and community outside of work takes time, and it’s much easier to do gradually than to construct from scratch after retirement.
Building your social life after work: it doesn’t happen by accident covers why this challenge is so common and what actually helps.
5. Start thinking about who you’ll be
This might be the most underrated planning question: not what you’ll have, but what your days will look like and what will give them meaning. People who arrive at retirement with some idea of how they want to spend their time — even a rough sketch — tend to adjust significantly better than those who planned only for the financial side.
Who you’ll be, once work isn’t the answer explores how identity shifts in retirement and how people rebuild a sense of self when work no longer provides one.
What’s next
When you’re 5–10 years out, the decisions get more concrete: Social Security timing, Medicare enrollment, whether to relocate, and how to finalize the income plan. → 5–10 years out
Not sure this is the right stage for you? Take the 2-minute quiz to find your starting point.