Could You Retire Sooner If You Had To?
- Jonathan Harner, CFP®
- Sep 25
- 5 min read
A Wichita Family’s 3-Scenario Stress Test
If you had to walk away from your job tomorrow, could you? Whether due to an RIF, severance that seems too good to pass up, or just being tired and burned out. Are your finances ready if you had to leave?
For many Spirit AeroSystems employees, that question has likely moved from someday to uncomfortably close. Boeing’s acquisition of Spirit has created plenty of optimism along with lots of uncertainty. Especially for families with high-incomes and millions in their retirement portfolio, the question isn’t whether you’ve got a plan for when you want to retire. It’s whether you’re ready if you don’t get to pick the date.
Let's look at an example client to see how you can stress test this possibility.
Meet the Petersons*
Let's imagine Laura and Michael Peterson live here in Wichita with their two children. One is a high school sophomore and the other a freshman. Financially, they’ve made a lot of smart money moves.
Laura, 57, is a Senior VP at Spirit, earning $250,000 plus roughly $50,000 in bonuses and RSUs each year. Michael, 55, is an orthopedic physician assistant, bringing in $170,000. Their total household income is around $420,000.
Their net worth is a healthy $4.2 million:
$1,850,000 in liquid investments
$1,600,000 in retirement accounts
$900,000 in home equity
They’re maxing out their 401(k)s, fully funding HSAs, adding $60,000 per year to a brokerage account, and putting $10,000 per year into 529 plans. The mortgage will be paid off before retirement. On paper, they’re in great shape to retire in about 5–7 years.
So why would they be in my office?
They want to know what happens if Laura is laid off and doesn’t get to decide when she retires.
Here’s how we would stress test for a client…
The A/B/C Stress Test
Most retirement plans are built around a single date: the age you’d like to retire. However, for any number of reasons, life doesn’t stick to our schedule.
So, in the Peterson's case we modelled three scenarios:
A — Retire on schedule in 5-7 years
B — Retire 2–3 years early
C — Step away now and bridge with part-time/consulting
Running multiple scenarios works well. If we only ran one plan, the cracks are easily hidden and it typically just confirms what was already suspected. Running three scenarios show you exactly where you’re strong and where you’re plan is weak.
Scenario A: Retire On Schedule
In this scenario, Laura works until 62, Michael until 60. The kids are through college, the mortgage is gone, and they’ve transitioned to a 50/50 equity-bond allocation.
What we found:
Their current savings rate is more than enough to hit their $200K/year retirement spending goal.
Both 529s are on track to fully cover in-state tuition.
Even factoring in inflation and conservative market returns, they could increase travel and still leave a meaningful legacy.
Bottom line: If life sticks to their schedule, they’re set.
Scenario B: Retire 2–3 Years Early
In this scenario, we saw small changes start to ripple out. If you take away a few working years, you lose more than salary. You lose those final, heavy-hitting retirement contributions and the 30 plus years of compounding on those contributions.
What we found:
Retirement spending would need to drop about 10–15% (or about $20,000 to $30,000 per year) to stay sustainable without depleting their portfolio too quickly.
Social Security claiming strategies would shift as they would need to consider starting benefits earlier to prevent drawing down their portfolio too much. However, this would mean they would have less guaranteed income the rest of their lives. So, their retirement income would be subject to more changes based on the stock market.
Healthcare bridge costs for both of them until Medicare at 65 would run $22,000 to $26,000 per year.
Bottom line: This was doable, but they’d have to decide what to cut: travel, second home timeline, or both.
Scenario C: Walk Away Now
This was the “what if” scenario that had been keeping Laura up at night.
If Laura left her job tomorrow, their $420K income disappears. College bills are coming fast, and the mortgage still has 9 years to run. Health insurance without an employer subsidy is a big shock.
What we found:
It works, but changes are required. The first three years would require drawing from cash, short-term bonds, and their taxable account in a very deliberate sequence to avoid big tax hits.
RSU vesting, if triggered on departure, could create a large taxable event, something we would need to plan for in advance.
The Colorado vacation home would move from “near-term” to “maybe later.”
Michael would likely need to work past age 60 so they could keep his health insurance and to pay some bills.
Bottom line: Laura could retire and maintain their independence, but their lifestyle would need to change for a while (maybe forever).
How We Got Them From Worry to Clarity
To move from worrying about "what ifs" to clarity about what they would do, we ran the numbers for all three scenarios. Then, built a plan that could bend but not break so they didn’t need to panic. The broad outline of the plan looked like this…
Retirement Income Buckets
12 months of cash for immediate needs
36 months of short-term bonds for stability
Long-term growth portfolio for everything beyond
College Funding Assurance
Locked in funding plans for both kids regardless of retirement date
Tax Playbook
Rebalanced their portfolio to make it more tax efficient
Roth conversion ranges in early retirement years
Withholding adjustments for RSU or severance events
Insurance Check-Up
Confirmed term life insurance coverage still protects their plan in all scenarios
Reviewed umbrella and liability coverage
Sorted out what their COBRA options would be for health insurance.
Lifestyle Priorities List
Travel and family time stayed at the top
Vacation home became a “bonus” goal, not a core plan pillar
The Takeaway for Wichita Aviation Families
You don’t have to be “behind” to feel the impact of uncertainty. Even with millions saved, you can feel off-balance if you’ve never stress tested your plan for an earlier-than-planned exit.
You can’t control the headlines. You can control your retirement readiness. And once you have been through an A/B/C stress test, you’ll sleep a lot better. No matter what the next press release says.
Ready to Stress Test Your Plan?
If you want to know how your plan holds up under three timelines and what to do if your retirement date changes, we’d love to talk with you.
*Disclaimer: This case study is a composite based on real-life client situations. Names and certain details have been changed to protect client privacy. The scenarios presented are intended for illustrative purposes only and do not represent specific clients or guarantees of outcomes.
