The five years before retirement are unusual. You still have earned income, you still have time to adjust, and most of the choices in front of you are reversible. After you stop working, that changes: fewer levers, less time, and decisions that tend to lock in.
That makes it a useful window to take stock. Not to make dramatic moves, but to answer a handful of questions while the answers can still change.
Where will the income come from, and in what order? Most people retire with money in several places at once: a workplace plan, an IRA, taxable savings, perhaps a pension. Those accounts are taxed differently, and the sequence you draw from them affects how much of each dollar you keep.
What is the gap between what you spend now and what you expect to spend? Very few households know this number precisely. Getting closer to it changes almost every other assumption.
What happens to health coverage between your last day of work and Medicare eligibility? This is the item most often missed, and it can be one of the larger line items in an early retirement year.
How would the plan hold up if markets fell early? A decline in the first years of retirement lands differently than the same decline later, because withdrawals lock in the loss. Knowing how much flexibility you have before that happens is worth more than predicting whether it will.
None of this requires a decision today. It requires knowing which decisions are coming, and roughly when.
