4. Determine your retirement date

We now understand better what monies are coming into our income stream and what monies are going out of our income stream. Now for the hardest question to answer - When can we retire, in other words, what is your retirement date?

The very best way to assist yourself in determining the WHEN question is to better understand what your needs will be post retirement. Some expenses may disappear but others will likely replace them. Some say they will no longer be paying for the kids education but they want to travel more so the costs tend to balance out. A lot of people have said openly that their expenses don't change a great deal in post retirement, however each person is different. I believe I will need about 85 percent of my w*rking income in my retirement years.

But a great exercise is to come up with different spending scenarios and run the numbers through firecalc or other retirement calculators. Also, use different retirement date scenarios along with the expense scenarios. Looking at the results of each one of these scenarios will allow you to better determine when you can retire which will assist you as to when you should retire.

For me my date is February 2nd or March 2nd. For now I am calling it Feb, 2nd 2012.