The retirement industry keeps moving your finish line. Here's the scoreboard I use instead.
I was driving my daughter Adler to pre-K.
She was three. All bundled up in her jacket in the back seat.
I almost never got to do that drive. Most mornings I was already at work by the time she left for school. So for her, this was a big deal. Special time with Dad. When you've got four siblings, one-on-one time with Dad doesn't come around very often.
And she started asking questions.
"Dad, are you going to pick me up from school today?"
No, sweetheart. Mom's going to pick you up.
"Why aren't you going to pick me up?"
Well, I have to go to work.
"Why do you have to go to work, Dad?"
I have to go to work to make money. I have to make money to pay for our car, and our house, and the food we eat.
She thought about that for a second. Then she said:
"But we already have a house. We already have a car. We already have groceries."
I didn't have an answer for her.
That was the moment it clicked. My daughter wanted nothing more than time with her dad, and I had to tell her I had to go to work.
Because I was the only asset that was working.
None of my money was out there making more money. It was all me.
And I wasn't some guy scraping by, either. In my late 20s I was making over $300,000 a year. And the quality of life with my family was the lowest it had ever been. We'd go on vacation and I'd have my phone in my hand, taking calls in the middle of everything.
That's when I figured out something the retirement industry will never put on a brochure:
High income does not equal freedom.
The question everyone asks (and why the answer keeps moving)
"How much do I need to retire?"
"How much can I safely pull out every year without running out?"
You've probably heard the famous answer. The 4% rule.
It was written in 1994. Since then, here's what's happened to it:
- Some experts now say it's almost 5%.
- Wade Pfau, one of the most documented retirement-income researchers alive, told us on our podcast it's probably closer to 3%.
- Another analyst published 2.7%.
- And the man who came up with the rule in the first place now says you can take 4.7%.
Let's put real dollars on that.
On a $5 million account, the expert range runs from $135,000 a year to $235,000 a year.
Same account. Same question. The experts disagree by $100,000 a year.
Are you okay with a range that big on the one plan you only get to run once?
Here's what bothers me most. When the target moves, nothing happens to the people who moved it. They can't control the market. They can't be held accountable for your results. And they get paid either way.
The moving target isn't a bug.
It's the business model.
Three variables. Zero control.
Look at what the traditional plan actually asks you to do. Accumulate toward a number, then start withdrawing.
But think about what's riding on it:
- You don't control how fast the money grows.
- You don't control what taxes will be when you finally take it out.
- You don't control what the market does the year you start withdrawing.
Retire into a 20% dip and you can't take out what the plan said you could.
Three variables. Zero control. And they call that a plan.
The scoreboard you actually hold
So here's the scoreboard we use instead. It has two parts, and you control both of them.
We focus on one moment: the day your passive income is bigger than your monthly expenses.
Here's how you keep score.
Step 1: Add up your passive income. Everything that pays you without you actively working for it. A rental property. A private loan. A business run by another operator. Royalties.
Step 2: Divide it by what you spend in a month.
That percentage is your Financial Freedom Score.
It's the only scoreboard where you control both sides. You decide what you spend. And you decide what kind of investor you become.
What the score looks like in real life
Let's keep it simple.
Say your monthly expenses are $10,000. And you have $2,500 a month coming in from passive income.
You're not "0% retired."
You're 25% of the way to freedom.
Now compare that to the old scoreboard. Accumulate $5 million, then take out maybe 3%. That's $150,000 a year, and by the way, you have to stop working before you get any of it.
The new scoreboard starts paying you with the very first dollar. And you never have to quit anything to collect it.
This isn't theory. We were just talking with someone who used this exact scoreboard to retire his wife in two years. They used a land business, and the notes they created from it, to get there.
Not 40 years of accumulating and hoping.
Two years, against a number they controlled.
What crossing 100% feels like
I know what crossing 100% looks like because we've lived both sides of it.
Today we can take 30 days off and be 100% present with our families.
That's the whole difference between high income and freedom. High income ends the second you stop showing up. Passive income that's bigger than your monthly expenses doesn't need you in the room.
I won't pretend it was quick or clean. It took years, and some of the streams that got us there lost money along the way.
But I'd take that scoreboard over the one that moves every year, every time.
Because I never want to tell my daughter "I have to go to work" again.
Your only homework: know your score
We built a free quiz that takes about two minutes. It tells you your Financial Freedom Score, the percentage of your monthly expenses already covered by passive income.
👉 Take the free Financial Freedom Quiz here
Whatever your number is, it's yours. Nobody gets to move it.
Your only job is to make it go up.
If you'd rather watch me walk through the whole thing, including the math on the 4% rule and the rest of the story about Adler, the full video is here. You can also read this article on our Substack.
Stop chasing a number somebody else controls. Start keeping score on the one you do.
Talk soon,
Joey Muré
Wealth Without Wall Street
P.S. Once you know your score, the next question is how to raise it without buying somebody else's bad deal. That's what we do inside the Passive Income Lab: you build your own investor buy box and learn to vet the operators behind the streams. Join the Passive Income Lab here
P.P.S. Want to see how we decide which streams are worth adding? We kill most deals in 15 minutes or less using the buy box method. Watch that breakdown here
DISCLOSURE: Wealth Without Wall Street provides educational and informational content only and does not provide legal, tax, financial, or investment advice. Any examples or case studies are illustrative and not a promise or guarantee of results. Earnings or income statements (if any) are not typical, and your results will vary based on factors such as your effort, experience, market conditions, and business decisions. You are responsible for your own actions and outcomes.
