The last working decade runs three money problems that the accumulation years never asked you to solve. The first is that the target is undefined: whether $3,200,000 is enough depends entirely on spending — a household that needs $200,000 a year before taxes needs roughly $5,000,000 at a 4 percent initial withdrawal rate, while one that needs $120,000 needs roughly $3,000,000, and most physicians approach the exit without having written either number down. The second is sequence risk: a 30 percent market decline in the first year of retirement removes $1,200,000 from a $4,000,000 portfolio at exactly the moment withdrawals begin, and the order in which returns arrive can matter as much as their average. The third is coordination drag: three tax-sensitive decisions land in the same decade — required minimum distributions beginning at 73, or 75 for anyone born in 1960 or later; a Social Security claiming choice spanning ages 62 to 70; and Medicare premium surcharges where a single dollar of income over the $218,000 married-filing-jointly threshold moves both spouses above the $202.90 baseline Part B premium for a full year.
None of this requires new cleverness. It requires a sequence — decisions taken in the order they depend on each other, several of them years before the last shift. That is this path. For the interactive version with progress tracking, start the retirement path; the order below is the same either way.
Define the number before optimizing anything
Every downstream decision — allocation, drawdown order, claiming age — takes your spending number as input, so Your Freedom Number comes first. The module builds the number from actual spending, not income: what the household costs per year today, adjusted for what retirement removes (disability premiums, retirement contributions, payroll tax) and adds (health coverage before Medicare, travel, time).
Example calculation
Assumptions, stated explicitly: desired pre-tax spending of $200,000 per year; initial withdrawal rates of 4 percent and 5 percent shown for contrast; no pension; Social Security ignored for conservatism. At 4 percent: $200,000 ÷ 0.04 = $5,000,000. At 5 percent: $200,000 ÷ 0.05 = $4,000,000. The $1,000,000 gap between those two answers is why the withdrawal-rate evidence gets its own deep cut below — the rate assumption is worth more than most portfolio decisions.
The one action: compute annual spending times 25 and times 30, and write both numbers where you will see them again.
Started late? The math still closes, but it closes on a schedule
A physician at 52 with $600,000 saved is behind the internet's benchmarks and still fine — but only with a written schedule. Retirement for Late Starters runs the honest arithmetic: required monthly savings at each horizon, what a 60 percent savings rate on an attending income actually buys, and the catch-up space that opens late — an $8,000 catch-up contribution on top of the standard deferral, rising to $11,250 for ages 60 through 63, with catch-up dollars required to be Roth for anyone above $150,000 in prior-year wages.
The one action: compute the required monthly savings for your actual horizon, and compare it to what is currently automated. The gap is the plan.
Allocation is the risk dial you actually control
Asset Allocation Basics sits here because the last decade is when the stakes of the stock-bond split peak: too aggressive and sequence risk can force selling equities into a decline; too conservative and a 30-year retirement outlives the portfolio. The module covers the mechanics — what bonds are actually for, why the split matters more than fund selection, and how a glide path into retirement works.
The one action: write down your current overall stock-bond split across every account, and one sentence explaining why it is what it is. If you cannot produce the sentence, the split is an accident, not an allocation.
Withdrawals have an order, and the order is worth real money
Accumulation had a fill order; drawdown has a drain order. Drawdown Sequencing walks the default — taxable first, tax-deferred second, Roth last — and, more importantly, the exceptions that make blind rule-following expensive: low-income years between the last paycheck and RMDs are often better spent realizing tax-deferred dollars cheaply than preserving them, and Roth-last is wrong when heirs and estate mechanics point otherwise.
The gap between a deliberate drawdown order and an accidental one, run over a 30-year retirement, is routinely six figures of tax — larger than a lifetime of fund-fee differences.
The one action: draft your drain order on one page, account by account, with the reason next to each line.
The Roth question flips at retirement
During the earning years the traditional-versus-Roth question favored deferral at a 35 percent . Roth vs Traditional shows why the answer inverts at the exit: the years between the last paycheck and the first RMD are often the lowest-bracket years of your adult life, and converting tax-deferred dollars to Roth during that window — deliberately, bracket by bracket — can permanently reduce what RMDs later force out at higher rates.
Key insight
The conversion window is a physician-specific opportunity because physician careers end abruptly: income drops from a 35 percent bracket to nearly zero in a single year, rather than tapering. A five-to-ten-year window of intentionally realized income, filled to the top of a chosen bracket each year, is the single largest tax decision most physicians have left at this stage.
The one action: identify your window — last planned paycheck to RMD age — and note how many years it holds.
Two claiming decisions with six-figure spreads
Social Security and Medicare Timing covers the two government clocks. Claiming Social Security at 62 versus 70 changes the monthly benefit substantially, and for a high-earning physician household the lifetime spread between a poor claiming choice and a good one commonly reaches six figures — the claiming-math deep cut below runs the actual numbers. Medicare adds two traps: enrollment windows with permanent late penalties, and IRMAA — the income-related surcharge on the 2026 baseline Part B premium of $202.90 per month, which begins at $218,000 of modified AGI for a married couple.
Important
IRMAA looks back two years: your Medicare premium at 65 is set by your tax return at 63. A large Roth conversion, a practice-sale installment, or a final partial-year salary landing in the wrong tax year can raise both spouses' premiums for a full year — after you have already retired. Conversion planning and IRMAA planning are the same spreadsheet; run them together.
The one action: pull your earnings record and your projected benefit at 62, at full retirement age, and at 70, and put the three numbers in the same document as your drawdown draft.
The taxable account becomes the workhorse
In accumulation the taxable account was the overflow; in drawdown it goes first, which makes its internal mechanics suddenly matter. Taxable Account Strategy covers asset location (what belongs inside the sheltered accounts versus outside), the long-term capital-gains brackets that drawdown can exploit, specific-lot selling, and — once age 70½ arrives — qualified charitable distributions, which allow up to $111,000 per year (2026) to move from an IRA to charity without appearing in AGI at all, satisfying RMDs while staying under IRMAA thresholds.
The one action: run an asset-location audit — one list of every holding by account type — and flag anything tax-inefficient sitting in the taxable account.
Estate basics: the documents, not the drama
Estate Basics closes the module sequence with the unglamorous layer: a will, durable financial and healthcare powers of attorney, and — the part most physicians get wrong — beneficiary designations, which override the will for every retirement account and insurance policy that carries one. A still naming a prior spouse pays the prior spouse, whatever the will says.
The one action: audit every beneficiary designation this week. It costs nothing and fixes the most common estate failure outright.
Two anchors to keep open the whole way through
Two modules are not steps but references. Evaluating Advisors matters more at this stage than any other, because the fee math peaks with the balance: a 1 percent assets-under-management fee on a $4,000,000 portfolio is $40,000 every year — against flat-fee arrangements pricing the same drawdown advice in four figures — and the exit decade is also when advice can genuinely earn its cost if the conversion window and claiming decisions are complex. The Physician Wealth Timeline is the other anchor: the whole arc in one view, useful for checking that the exit-stage decisions agree with where you actually are on it.
When the modules raise questions, go deeper
Four articles extend the path where exit-stage physicians most often need the full evidence:
- What the withdrawal-rate evidence actually says — where 4 percent came from, what has held up, and what has not.
- The Roth conversion window, year by year — bracket-filling mechanics with worked multi-year examples.
- The Social Security claiming math — break-even ages and the survivor-benefit logic that dominates for married couples.
- The part-time glide path — what 0.5 FTE for five years does to the number, the window, and the exit date.
The capstone: two documents with the math attached
Quick takeaway
The exit path is complete when two documents exist. First, a written drawdown order — which account pays for year one, what fills the low-bracket years, where Roth conversions fit, and how the order stays under the IRMAA threshold. Second, a claiming-age decision with the arithmetic attached — the benefit at 62, at full retirement age, and at 70, and the reason for the age you chose. A physician who retires holding those two documents has answered the questions that determine most of the next thirty years; a physician without them is improvising the most expensive decade of their financial life.
Common questions
Is the 4 percent rule still valid?
It is a planning benchmark, not a guarantee — it came from historical United States data and assumes a fixed real withdrawal for 30 years, which almost nobody actually does. Treat 4 percent as the conservative end of a range, note that flexibility in spending is worth more than precision in the rate, and read the withdrawal-rate deep cut before anchoring on any single number.
Should I convert to Roth after I stop working?
Often, partially — the years between the last paycheck and RMDs are frequently the cheapest tax years available for moving tax-deferred dollars. But conversions raise , and MAGI drives IRMAA two years later, so the right amount is a bracket-by-bracket calculation, not a slogan. The conversion-window guide walks it year by year.
When do RMDs actually start for me?
Age 73 under current law — 75 if you were born in 1960 or later, under SECURE 2.0. Most physicians retiring in the coming decade are in the age-75 cohort, which widens the conversion window and makes the low-bracket years more valuable, not less.
Do I need an advisor for the drawdown even if I never used one?
This is the stage where the honest answer most often becomes maybe. The decisions are one-time, high-stakes, and interlocking — conversion sizing, claiming, IRMAA — and a flat-fee project engagement to pressure-test your two capstone documents can be worth four figures. What the fee math rarely supports is converting a self-managed $4,000,000 portfolio to a permanent 1 percent arrangement at exactly the moment the balance peaks.
What to do next
- Write down annual spending, then compute it times 25 and times 30.
- List every account with its balance and tax type — taxable, tax-deferred, Roth — on one page.
- Draft the drawdown order with a one-line reason per account.
- Pull your Social Security record and record the benefit at 62, full retirement age, and 70.
- Identify your conversion window — last paycheck to your RMD age — and count the years.
- Audit every beneficiary designation before doing anything else on this list a second time.
The exit decade rewards the same habit the earlier stages did: decisions written down, in order, with arithmetic attached. The path works with or without us — the modules hold the sequence and show the math. This is education, not individualized financial advice.