How One Woman Used ChatGPT To Build an Early Retirement Plan
Written by
Laura Bogart
Edited by
Molly Sullivan
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Regardless of when you plan to retire, for many, that time isn’t coming soon enough. When you dream of life off the clock — solving crimes in Cabot Cove while writing award-winning mysteries or maybe visiting friends and family more — you just can’t imagine spending decade after decade at work. With the right information, you might not have to.
YouTuber Robyn Smith, whose channel covers financial topics, decided to see if ChatGPT could give her insights into when she could retire early, and how she might accelerate that timeline. Using AI, she created an actionable plan for herself — something that, with a little finessing, you could do yourself.
Remember, ChatGPT isn’t perfect, and it certainly doesn’t replace the insights of a financial advisor who knows you and your situation. But Smith’s work is worth looking into as a starting point.
Create a Detailed Prompt
Smith started by giving ChatGPT a detailed account of her personal situation and goals. She told ChatGPT that she’d recently immigrated from Canada to the U.S., which meant she had to liquidate her assets. Then, she explained that she didn’t know anything about retirement in her new country or how to optimize her investments so she could retire.
Not only did she want to know how to retire — she wanted to know how to do it as early as possible. And she asked ChatGPT to come up with a plan to help her.
“I just prompted ChatGPT with a very basic, honest thing,” she said. “The thing I like to keep in mind about ChatGPT is that it is not a crystal ball, it’s not going to tell you how to do these things. It’s just going to guide you.”
Giving a FIRE Number
Armed with Smith’s goals — and, from a previous interaction, where she shared more details about her personal finances — a starting income, ChatGPT came up with her FIRE number. For the uninitiated, FIRE stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early — and your FIRE number is the total amount of money you’d need to maintain your lifestyle indefinitely without relying on a traditional job.
ChatGPT showed its work, sharing that she’d need to anticipate her annual spending in retirement, and then multiply it by 25 to get her retirement goal (based on the 4% rule, or a guideline that says you can withdrawal 4% of your investments annually in retirement).
That sounds complicated, but ChatGPT broke it down into an easy example: If she wanted to spend $6,000 a month on $72,000 a year, she’d need $1.8 million to retire. And that number, both she and ChatGPT agreed, is fairly conservative.
Creating the Blueprint of a Plan
From there, ChatGPT gave her options for the kinds of accounts she could use for retirement funds in the U.S., including Roth IRAs, traditional IRAs, brokerage accounts, and, of course, 401(k) plans — along with their withdrawal rules and brief notes.
Afterward, it built her a U.S.-friendly investment strategy, along with investment types and their suggested percentage and purpose in her portfolio. It suggested a timeline and gave ideas for automation and optimization.
Getting Personal
While ChatGPT has given Smith a general approach, it asked her for more detailed personal information to help tailor a more specific approach. She needed to input her current age, target retirement age, target monthly spending in retirement, how much she can invest per month now, whether she has access to a 401(k) or if she’s only doing self-directed investing, and how much she brought over from Canada.
Smith shared her information and let ChatGPT do its thing, ultimately sharing that, if she were to be conservative in her approach, investing $1,400 every month, she could hit that number by 47 — while a more aggressive approach could help her retire by 42 (though she would have to invest $2,400 every month). If she walked the middle path of investing $1,900 a month, she’d reach her number by 44.
ChatGPT also broke down how much she should be putting in each of her accounts — as it also factors in the reality that, as a recent emigre to the U.S., Smith is ineligible to participate in some accounts like an HSA.
Where the Human Side Comes In
Despite the speedy, easy way that ChatGPT gave her a plan, Smith pointed out that it simply didn’t account for things that a human advisor would — like how her retirement savings goals would have to fit with other life aspirations, like owning a home or having children.
Smith went back to ChatGPT to ask what will happen if she wants to buy a house and needs to use $50,000 toward a downpayment when she’s 30.
“This is me pressure-testing the plan that ChatGPT has provided for me,” she said. “So, I’m throwing a curveball at it and making it alter that plan, and making sure that it’s considering a real human, and what’s going on in my life.”
With this new plan in the mix, ChatGPT advised her to put $1,000 a month into a house fund while socking away $900 for retirement. The money she’s brought from Canada will help her stay relatively on track. Sounds good, right?
Well, mostly. Smith remarked that ChatGPT is still not accounting for the fact that she’s probably going to save more as she gets older and could be earning more as well — all factors she’ll have to continue to customize within her plan.
Lessons Learned
Smith continues to run distinct scenarios through ChatGPT, tweaking and adjusting her asks and prompts — likening it to a game of MASH.
While she urged understanding that ChatGPT can’t fully understand the nuances of human wants and ambitions, it still has created customized plans down to what she can try every week.
“I think, all in all, ChatGPT is a great tool. I don’t think it’s always accurate, but I think it gives us optionality and planning that we’ve never had before,” she said.
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