wealthschema/archetypes/re-01-active-early-retiree
RE-01Retirement EarlyDistributionmoderate tax complexity

Active Early Retiree

Recently retired, active lifestyle, managing withdrawal strategy, Medicare transition, part-time income.

RE-01 is the post-retirement-date, pre-RMD window — typically ages 60 to 70 — where withdrawal sequencing, Medicare transition, and the Roth-conversion runway determine how cleanly the next twenty years unfold.

Age Range
60–70
Net Worth
$100k–$1M
Cohort
Retirement Early

About this archetype

RE-01 models the household in the first decade of actual retirement: the elections are made, the paychecks have stopped, and the planning problem is now withdrawal sequencing rather than retirement-date planning. Three regulatory and behavioral surfaces define the archetype. Medicare enrollment at 65 reshapes the healthcare line item and introduces IRMAA premium-tier sensitivity to the prior two years' MAGI — so a Roth conversion done at age 63 lands in a higher Part B and Part D premium two years later. The Roth-conversion runway between retirement and RMDs (now starting at age 73 for those born 1951–1959 and 75 for those born after) is the planning surface that drives lifetime-tax differences in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the corpus is sized to make that runway calculation realistic. Sequence-of-returns risk is the third surface — RE-01 households are inside the first decade where a poor market start can permanently impair the safe withdrawal rate.

The financial signature reflects active-lifestyle, mass-affluent retirees rather than the pension-dependent or frugal-FIRE profiles. Median combined income is $81,387 — typically a mix of Social Security, partial pension, partial part-time work, and portfolio withdrawals — against $1.39M median net worth, $1.02M median investable assets, and 70% homeownership. Travel spending, second-home carrying costs, and active hobby budgets are implicit in the goal targets but not separately enumerated. Every RE-01 household carries both a legacy/estate goal and an emergency-fund goal; the corpus contains no households with active retirement-savings goals because, by definition, the household has already retired.

What separates RE-01 from neighbors is the specific combination of completed-retirement-date, active-lifestyle spending profile, and not-yet-RMD age range. RE-02 households retired a decade earlier under a FIRE plan and have a different ACA/healthcare-bridge structure; RE-03 households are largely pension-funded with limited investable assets to sequence; RL-01 households are inside the RMD years and have a different withdrawal-order calculus entirely. The 30-household corpus deliberately concentrates the Medicare-transition, IRMAA-sensitive, Roth-runway scenarios where the highest-stakes early-retirement product surfaces live.

Defining characteristics

  • Withdrawal strategy active
    The household is funding lifestyle from portfolio withdrawals supplemented by Social Security and, in many records, a partial pension. Withdrawal sequencing — taxable first, then tax-deferred, then Roth — is the dominant planning lever.
  • Medicare transition
    Households age into Medicare during the corpus window. IRMAA premium-tier sensitivity to MAGI on the two-year lookback creates a hard interaction between Roth-conversion timing and Medicare cost.
  • Roth conversion runway
    The gap between retirement and RMD start (age 73 or 75 depending on birth year) is the cleanest window for partial Roth conversions, and the corpus is sized to make multi-year ladder modeling realistic.
  • Part-time income common
    A meaningful share of RE-01 households carry part-time consulting, board, or encore-career income. The corpus encodes this as ongoing earned income alongside retirement-status flags.
  • Sequence-of-returns risk window
    The first decade of retirement is where a poor market start can permanently impair the household's safe-withdrawal rate. Monte Carlo sensitivity to the first 60 months is the relevant stress test.
  • Active lifestyle spending
    Travel, second homes, hobbies, and family-support transfers are implicit in goal targets and lifestyle assumptions. Liquidity needs are higher than the pure-income profile alone would suggest.

Corpus signature

n = 30 households

Aggregated across the 30 RE-01 households in the shipped v3 corpus corpus. Numbers describe the corpus, not population claims.

Median income
$81k
p25–p75 $71k–$88k
Median net worth
$1.4M
mean $1.4M
Liquid net worth
$535k
median
Investable assets
$901k
median
Income distribution
$45k–60k
5
$60k–75k
4
$75k–90k
16
$90k–105k
5
Net-worth distribution
$900k–1.2m
9
$1.2m–1.6m
13
$1.6m–1.9m
4
$1.9m–2.2m
4
Goals across the corpus
Legacy / estate30 / 30
Emergency fund30 / 30
Liability composition
Credit cards30 / 30
Mortgages21 / 30
Auto loans15 / 30
Student loans11 / 30
  • 21 of 30 (70%) are homeowners; the remainder rent.
  • CA, FL, WA account for 13 of 30 households — 43% of the corpus.
  • Median adult-member age is 66 (range 53–74 across primaries and spouses).
  • 14 of 30 (47%) carry one or more dependents.
  • Married filing jointly is the dominant filing status (30 of 30).

Representative household

RE-01-seed-18
Daniel H.Married filing jointly·Spokane-Spokane Valley, WA

Daniel and Sandra, both 65 and 66, sit at the cohort hinge: one of them is in their Medicare-enrollment year, both are post-retirement, and $541k in liquid assets sits inside the eight-year Roth-conversion runway before RMDs. Combined income of $83k against $214k of total liabilities (mostly mortgage) signals a household where the partial-pension-plus-Social-Security base covers core expenses and the portfolio is staged for tactical withdrawals. The diagnostic pattern is IRMAA sensitivity — at this income level, a $50k partial Roth conversion this year can lift Medicare Part B premiums two years later.

Combined income
$83,476
Net worth
$1,324,269
Liquid NW
$541,050
Ages
65 / 66
Top goals on this household
Legacy / estate
$1,623,683
Emergency fund
$36,816

Schema fields covered

Every RE-01 household ships with — at minimum — these JSON fields populated. The full schema is documented in the data set you purchase.

members[].age
income.combined_gross
net_worth.total
filing_status
accounts.taxable.lots[].acquisition_date
accounts.taxable.lots[].cost_basis
accounts.taxable.lots[].unrealized_pnl
taxes.wash_sale_flags

Who builds against this archetype

Three buyer profiles use RE-01 most heavily. Retirement-income software teams use it to validate withdrawal-sequencing algorithms — taxable-first vs proportional vs tax-bracket-targeted — against realistic balance-sheet mixes where Social Security, partial pension, part-time income, and portfolio withdrawals all contribute. Medicare-and-IRMAA testing teams (Part B/D plan-selection tools, supplemental-insurance comparison platforms, and CMS-aligned billing software) use the corpus for the two-year MAGI lookback and the standard-vs-IRMAA premium-tier branches at the ages 63–67 range that dominates this archetype. Wealth-platform engineering teams testing Roth-conversion ladder calculators with IRMAA-aware bracket management and beneficiary-IRA SECURE Act 10-year-rule projections use RE-01 as the canonical pre-RMD active-retiree fixture.

Testing scenarios this corpus is calibrated for

  • 01Withdrawal-sequencing optimizers (taxable → tax-deferred → Roth vs proportional vs tax-bracket-targeted) tested against multi-source-income retirees.
  • 02IRMAA-aware Roth conversion ladder calculators, with the two-year MAGI lookback applied at ages 63–67.
  • 03Medicare plan-selection UX: Part A/B enrollment timing, Medigap vs Medicare Advantage decision support, and Part D formulary matching.
  • 04Sequence-of-returns Monte Carlo stress tests with first-60-months drawdown sensitivity and dynamic-spending rules.
  • 05Social Security claim-vs-claim-later decision support for households still inside the deferral window past 65.
  • 06Beneficiary-IRA SECURE Act 10-year-rule projections layered onto the household's qualified-plan stack.

Edge cases and what's not in this corpus

RE-01 is calibrated as the mass-affluent active-lifestyle early retiree, generally healthy and not yet RMD-aged. FIRE-style early retirees who left the workforce in their 40s with a different healthcare-bridge structure belong in RE-02. Pension-dominant retirees with limited investable assets to sequence are in RE-03. Households already inside the RMD window are RL-01. Widowed retirees on a survivor benefit with limited assets are RL-02. The corpus excludes long-term-care claimants and households with significant cognitive-decline indicators — those edge cases live in S-04, HC-02, and RL-02. Cross-border retirees and US households with foreign-pension income are not represented; expat-tax-software teams will need overlays beyond this corpus.

Calibration notes

Income and asset bands during v3 synthesis were anchored to mass-affluent percentiles of the Survey of Consumer Finances for the 60–70 retired-or-partially-retired cohort, with Social Security claim-age distributions loosely tracking SSA published data and skewed toward claims at FRA or later (the testing-relevant cases). Roth balance share of total investable assets was informed by EBRI participant-behavior research for the cohort. State distribution leans toward CA, FL, and WA — a mix of in-place retirement and FL/AZ-style retirement-destination patterns. Per CLAUDE.md §9 the corpus is frozen and not regenerable; calibration claims here are descriptive rather than reproducible.

How this differs from related archetypes

Frequently asked questions

What does the RE-01 archetype represent?+

RE-01 is the Active Early Retiree: a household in roughly the first decade of retirement, ages 60–70, mass-affluent, with the retirement-date decisions made and active withdrawal sequencing in progress. The defining feature is the combination of post-retirement status, pre-RMD age, and active-lifestyle spending profile.

How does RE-01 differ from RE-02 (FIRE Achiever)?+

RE-02 households retired in their 40s or 50s under a FIRE plan and have a multi-decade-long ACA-bridge healthcare structure. RE-01 households retired at the conventional age range (late 50s to mid 60s) and either entered or are entering Medicare during the corpus window. The healthcare-cost line item, the withdrawal rate, and the planning horizon all differ.

Are part-time and consulting incomes represented in RE-01?+

Yes. The income range and the explicit 'Retired' industry tag in the representative-household block reflect that a meaningful share of RE-01 households continue some part-time, consulting, or board work. The combined income figure should not be read as portfolio-withdrawal-only.

Does RE-01 include RMD-aged households?+

No. By design RE-01 sits in the pre-RMD age range (60–70). Once RMDs are active the planning surface shifts materially — QCDs become a primary tool, the Roth-conversion runway is closed, and withdrawal sequencing is constrained by the §401(a)(9) mandatory distribution. Those households are in RL-01.

Which data sets include RE-01 households?+

RE-01 is tagged for six bundles — B02, B03, B06, B07, B18, and B22 — covering tax planning, retirement income, healthcare and Medicare, estate, decumulation, and behavioral-finance scenarios. See the sidebar for the specific data sets that ship RE-01 households.

Is the RE-01 corpus regenerable?+

No. The v3 corpus is frozen and not regenerable from current code (drift was confirmed on 2026-05-09). The 30 RE-01 households are a fixed reference dataset; sampler improvements land in v4.

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