There is a retirement question I did not even consider when I was working.
Not because I ignored money.
I had always paid attention to money. I saved. I planned. I met with advisors. I looked at projections. I did the responsible things.
But most retirement planning asks one question over and over again:
That is an important question.
But since I stopped working, I have come to believe there is another question that matters just as much.
That is where the GoGo Window comes in.
Many retirement planners describe retirement in three broad phases.
GoGo. Roughly 60 to 75. You are healthy, mobile, curious, and still able to say yes. Travel is possible. Grandkids can be chased. Long lunches can happen. Trails can be walked. Flights can be endured. The body still cooperates.
Slow-Go. Roughly 75 to 85. Life can still be full, but the pace changes. Long-haul travel may get harder. Recovery takes longer. Energy becomes more selective. The bucket list gets shorter, not because life is over, but because the appetite changes.
No-Go. Usually 85 and beyond. Health becomes a bigger part of the picture. Lifestyle spending often falls. Care costs may rise. The money may still be there, but the ability to turn it into experiences is not the same.
That is the part I keep coming back to.
Retirement is not a flat line.
But many plans treat it like one.
They spread the years out neatly. They assume steady withdrawals. They project income, taxes, inflation, investment returns, and estate value. They tell you whether you are fine.
Useful.
But incomplete.
Because a dollar at 68 is not the same as a dollar at 82.
Not financially.
Experientially.
A dollar at 68 might become a safari with your wife while you both still feel strong enough to enjoy it.
A dollar at 68 might become a week with the grandkids before they are too old to care.
A dollar at 68 might become the dinner, the flight, the rental house, the fishing trip, the concert, the long walk through a city you have never seen before.
That same dollar at 82 might still be there.
But you may not be.
At least not in the same way.
That is the brutal truth most retirement plans do not fully capture.
They are very good at protecting the future.
They are not always as good at helping you fully live the present.
I started building my own DIY decumulation model when I first heard about the GoGo Window.
That is a fancy way of saying I was trying to figure out how to spend the money we had spent decades accumulating.
So, like any seasoned line producer would, I built a spreadsheet.
Then it became a much bigger project.
I realized I needed professional support.
Just as our financial adviser helped us successfully build wealth, I now needed help understanding the most efficient way to draw it down.
Accumulation is one skill.
Decumulation is another.
The deeper I got, the more I realized the spreadsheet was not the hard part.
The hard part was asking the right question.
At first, the question was:
How much can we safely withdraw each year?
That sounds responsible.
But it is not the whole question.
The better question is:
That is a different conversation.
That forces the plan to serve the life, not the other way around.
With the help of a professional, I started modelling a GoGo spending target in real dollars.
It reflects the life we want to live in this window. Travel. Experiences. Time with family. A certain level of comfort. The ability to say yes while saying yes still means something.
Once I put that number into the model, everything changed.
The plan had to answer better questions.
• What should we draw from first?
• When should CPP start?
• How much tax are we really paying?
• What happens if markets disappoint?
• What happens if we live to 95?
• What happens to the estate?
And the most uncomfortable question:
I see this pattern often.
People work for 40 years.
They save.
They defer.
They are careful.
Then retirement arrives, and the old habits do not shut off.
They still hesitate.
They still wait.
They still protect the pile.
Some are afraid of running out. That fear is real.
Some simply do not know how to shift from accumulation to decumulation.
Some are waiting for the right time.
But the right time is a dangerous phrase in retirement.
It can sound wise while quietly stealing years.
There is no perfect answer here.
I am not suggesting anyone should spend recklessly or ignore risk. Healthcare costs are real. Longevity is real. Markets are unpredictable. Nobody gets to know exactly how the story ends.
But I do think more of us should ask the question directly:
Not vaguely.
Not someday.
Not as a footnote in a financial plan.
As a deliberate phase of life with its own budget, its own purpose, and its own urgency.
Because the goal is not to die with the most perfectly preserved spreadsheet.
I am still building my model. It is an ongoing process.
I regularly test the assumptions.
Trying to find the balance between protecting the future and fully living the present is a moving target, but one worth following.
But I already learned this:
Just asking the question changed how I see the next fifteen years.
This is where my real retirement plan began.