Federal Budget 2025

“Financial independence, retire early” (FIRE) and “you only live once” (YOLO) are essentially opposite approaches, but they share a common goal—to seek happiness and achieve financial freedom. They’re just focused on different stages of life.

The day when you no longer need to work to cover your current and future cost of living, including realizing your retirement dreams—that’s your financial independence day.

To identify it, some people try using one of the many online retirement calculators that ask you to input information so you can find out if you can retire at a specific age.

Retirement is often viewed as a new chapter in your life, but it’s typically not just one chapter. These years are often divided into three very different phases. A great many retirees—though not all—go through the active, slowdown and inactive phases, sometimes called the go-go, slow-go and no-go phases.

AI is already making inroads into wealth planning and can be a valuable tool for advisors. For example, AI can be used to present potential outcomes of different strategies to achieve a specific financial goal. But can AI take over the advisor’s role? Here are a few reasons why AI can be a helpful aid but not a replacement for wealth planning from an advisor.