Checklist
Retirement planning by decade: questions to review
This checklist is for anyone who wants a calm way to review where they stand. It holds questions, not answers, and contains no limits, rates or target amounts. Tick a box when you have thought it through or looked it up. Skip any that do not apply, and read the decade you are in and the one after it.
Your ticks are saved only in this browser, on this device. Nothing is sent anywhere.
How to use it
Do not try to finish a whole decade in one sitting. Pick the unticked questions that feel most uncomfortable, look up the answer from your own paperwork or an official source, and tick it. Questions that you cannot answer become your list for a plan administrator, the Social Security Administration or a licensed professional.
The decades are a guide, not a rule. A late start, a career break or an early retirement changes the order. Our article on what you need to retire early covers a very different timeline, and the one on your 40s if retirement feels underfunded goes deeper on the middle decades.
Why there are no numbers
Contribution limits, tax rules, benefit amounts and ages for starting benefits all change or depend on your birth year and situation. Any figure written here could be out of date. The right place for those numbers is the source that publishes them, such as the IRS for accounts and taxes and the Social Security Administration for benefits.
Where this comes from
The questions are a synthesis of topics that the IRS, the Social Security Administration and investor education bodies commonly tell the public to review: employer plan features, beneficiary designations, earnings record checks, benefit estimates, required withdrawals and scam awareness. We did not copy a published checklist and we do not claim it is complete. This is general information, not financial, tax or legal advice.