| I planned for making no early withdrawals by piling a sizeable portion of my savings outside of retirement accounts. Fallback plan would be to eat into Roth contributions (not earnings) before age 59.5, if absolutely necessary. I do have a bit of a cheat code in my wife who, after decades of primarily being a stay-at-home mom for our kids, decided to launch a teaching career several years ago. Her salary is modest but certainly provides a comfort cushion and, to your second question, provides health insurance. When she figures out that working is overrated, we will probably join a medical sharing plan of some sort until we become medicare-eligible. |