Retirement is not an exit; it is a chapter with the margins widened. You are still the author, but the deadlines change, the coffee is better, and the mornings open like generous hands. Planning for it is like outlining a novel you will write over thirty or forty years. You sketch characters—your future self, your partner, the grandchildren you might meet. You choose settings: a town you love, a garden stubborn with herbs, a small apartment near a library. You consider plot twists: inflation, illness, market storms. Then you begin.

The three currents that carry retirement are contributions, returns, and time. Start where you are. If your employer matches contributions, take the match as if it were part of your salary, because it is. If there is no match, contribute anyway, as if your future self were your favorite younger relative and you were setting aside the best chair. Use accounts that the tax code built like special lanes: 401(k)s and IRAs, Roth versions for taxes later or now, depending on your life’s math.

Asset allocation sounds like a government file cabinet, but it is really how you decide what kind of weather your money will live in. Stocks are sunlight; they grow gardens over years but can scorch in a drought. Bonds are shade; they are calmer, less generous. Cash is the water jug on the porch. When you are young, you can stand more sun. As you age, you may prefer the balance of trees. Rebalance annually like pruning—a quiet act that keeps the shape you intended.

Inflation is a slow thief that steals bread by removing crumbs. Plan as if prices will drift upward like balloons. Social Security (or your country’s equivalent) will tie some of your income to inflation, but not all. Consider annuities carefully, the plain ones that turn savings into a monthly check that arrives like a letter from an old friend. Be wary of products that promise too much; every promise has a price, and some prices are hidden in fine print that winks at you like a fox.

Healthcare in retirement is a novel within the novel. Premiums, deductibles, coverage gaps—learn the language before you need it. If your country offers a national program at a certain age, plan for the bridge years before it begins. Health savings accounts (HSAs), where available, are time machines: invest in them when you are young and healthy, and let the money grow for medical costs later when your knees become meteorologists.

The question of “How much is enough?” is both math and mood. Rules of thumb—4% withdrawal rates, 25x annual expenses—are starting points, not commandments. Build a plan that can bend: flexible spending in bad markets, a reserve of cash so you do not have to sell the garden in a storm. Consider partial retirement, the gracious glide path where you work fewer hours and the calendar loosens gradually. The ego often needs this as much as the wallet.

Longevity is the plot twist we secretly hope for and rarely plan well. You may live longer than your parents, longer than the actuarial tables predict. Design your income like a mixed orchestra: some notes guaranteed, some variable, so that if one section falters the song continues. Delay claiming social benefits if it strengthens the bass line of your later years; the music will be deeper for it.

Retirement also has nonfinancial pages. What will your days be filled with when the alarm clock resigns? Community is a form of wealth. So is curiosity. Volunteer, mentor, learn an instrument badly and then better. Move your body in ways that make you want to move it again tomorrow. Money gives you time; rituals give time meaning.

Every few years, rewrite the outline. Markets will revise your chapters without asking. Inflation will edit your margins. Family will add new characters. A good plan is a living document taped to the inside of a kitchen cabinet, stained with coffee, revised with a pencil.

Above all, do not delay the first sentence because you cannot see the last page. Start with one contribution, one percentage point more next year, one conversation with a partner about what the word “enough” feels like. You will not write the perfect retirement. You will write a human one. And when you read it back, you will find that the best parts are not the numbers in the appendix but the mornings you bought with them, the afternoons in a chair by a window, the evenings when your calendar whispered, “You have done enough today. Rest.”