Stairstep Retirement in Real Life: How We Work Less Now So We Can Work More Later

Most retirement advice assumes you’ll either grind full‑time until 65, or burn yourself out chasing early retirement. Stairstep Retirement is the middle path I follow with my family.

In short: we worked full time to get out of debt, then gradually pulled back as our finances strengthened. Now, while our kids are young, we work much less than a typical couple—without quitting completely or giving up our future earning power. Later, when our kids are adults, we plan to ramp work back up.

This article is the “behind the scenes” story of how that looks in real life, and why Stairstep Retirement intentionally frontloads freedom and backloads work.

The Core Idea: Frontload Freedom, Backload Work

Traditional retirement says:

Work full‑time for 40+ years. Relax later.

FIRE says:

Save aggressively and try to quit forever as early as possible.

Stairstep Retirement takes a different angle:

Use your 20s and early 30s to build financial stability.
Then use your 30s and 40s to buy back time—without leaving the workforce.
In your 50s and 60s, when kids are grown and your earning power peaks, ramp up if needed.

It’s a plan built around life stages, not just a retirement date.

For us, that’s looked like:

• Stage 1: Work full-time to get out of debt and build savings

• Stage 2–3: As investments grew and kids arrived, cut our work hours in steps

• Stage 4 (future): When kids are grown, ramp back up and optimize income before traditional retirement
  

Let’s walk through those stages and the real decisions behind them.

Stage 1: Full-Time Push To Get Out of Debt

In our early years, my wife and I did what most people do: we optimized for stability.

• We both worked full‑time jobs

• We focused on:

  • Paying off debt

  • Building savings

  • Growing our investments

This wasn’t glamorous, and it wasn’t about “retiring by 35.” It was about buying ourselves options.

The key difference is what we did next. Instead of locking into that full‑time pace for decades, we used the stability we’d built to create our first “steps down” in work.

Stage 2: The First Steps Down (Ages ~25–35)

Between about 25 and 35, we intentionally stepped down several times—not by quitting, but by:

• Taking more paid leave

• Using holidays strategically

• Moving to shorter schedules and more flexible roles when we could

We didn’t flip one big switch. We made a series of smaller adjustments whenever our finances and life stage allowed.

When we had kids, this became even more important. Weekends stopped feeling like rest. We were always behind on chores and life admin. We didn’t want our only “family time” to be two rushed days spent exhausted, catching up on laundry.

So we started asking:

“If we’re already out of high‑interest debt and investing, do we really need to work this many hours right now?”

The answer, for us, was no.

We chose to spend less time at work and more time at home—even though it meant walking away from extra income and, in some cases, promotions.

One example: my wife once turned down a $50,000 retention bonus so she could take a new job that didn’t require weekends. On paper, that looks like a crazy decision. In real life, it bought back every weekend with our family. That was a deliberate Stairstep move: give up a financial spike in exchange for a permanent step down in work intensity.

Stage 3: Flex Years While the Kids Are Young

Today, our kids are still young, and we’re deep in the “flex years” of Stairstep Retirement.

We’ve designed our work lives around presence:

• We both still work

• We both maintain our skills, professional development, and networks

• But our total hours are far below what two full‑time careers would look like

One powerful example:

The year our fourth child was born, my wife and I each averaged about 850 hours of work—roughly 16.5 hours per week—and our investments still grew.

That’s not normal in the traditional retirement playbook. In that system, you’re “supposed” to peak your hours—and often your stress—when your kids are small and demand the most from you.

Stairstep Retirement flips that logic:

• When we’re young and energetic and kids and family heavily tax our attention, we want more time at home, not more time at work.

• We use that energy for raising kids, camping trips, time with friends and extended family, and taking care of each other, not just for putting in extra shifts.

We’re not out of the workforce. We’re not trying to “never work again.” We’re simply using our freedom earlier while still laying the groundwork for later.

Why We Don’t Quit Completely

If you look at our chart, you’ll notice something: Our hours step down, but they don’t fall to zero for years at a time.

That’s on purpose.

Quitting completely in your 30s or 40s feels tempting, but there are tradeoffs:

• Your skills and resume start to age

• You lose momentum and network connections

• Coming back often means earning less and starting from behind

  By staying in the workforce, we get to:

  • Maintain professional development

  • Stay relevant in our fields

  • Keep our income potential alive
    

This is what makes ramping back up later much easier. We’re not trying to re‑enter the workforce after a decade off. We’ve stayed connected the whole time.

Stage 4 (Planned): Ramp Up When the Kids Are Grown

We haven’t hit this stage yet—but we’re already planning for it.

Here’s the logic:

• In your 50s and early 60s, people often earn their highest incomes because of:

  • Experience

  • Tenure

  • Established reputations

At the same time, your kids are usually older or out of the house. Your attention is less split. You’ve had more of the family moments that can’t be rescheduled.

That’s when it can make sense to ramp work back up for a while.

Instead of saying, “I never want to work again,” our version is:

“When the kids are grown, and life is simpler, we’ll be ready and able to earn more again—on purpose.”

We expect to:

• Increase our hours

• Take on higher‑pay or higher‑impact work

• Use those years to top off savings and retirement accounts

Because we didn’t burn out or permanently step away earlier, we should still have:

• Useful skills

• Recent experience

• Professional relationships

That’s a huge advantage compared to restarting a career from scratch.

Stage 5 (Future): Flexible Traditional-Age Retirement

Looking ahead to our 60s, we don’t picture a hard stop.

Instead, Stairstep Retirement aims for options:

• If our investments, pensions, and Social Security are enough, we can work very little or not at all.

• If markets are rough, or we simply want structure and purpose, we can keep working part‑time, or on projects we enjoy.

Because we’ve designed our careers as something we can dial up or down, it’s easier to imagine working a bit longer without dreading it.

The long game is simple:

• Frontload freedom and family time when it matters most

• Backload higher‑pay, higher‑skill work to the years when it’s more natural

• Never make yourself completely dependent on either extreme (all work, or no work)

Why This Tradeoff Feels Worth It

Stairstep Retirement came with real costs for us:

• We’ve walked away from meaningful sums of money (like that $50,000 bonus)

• Our net worth would almost certainly be higher today if we had both stayed full‑time

But here’s what we got instead:

• Weekends that feel like actual weekends

• More time with our kids during the short, intense years of their childhood

• Less burnout, more energy, and more bandwidth for each other

• The comfort of knowing we can ramp up later without reinventing ourselves

For us, that’s a trade worth making.

What Stairstep Retirement Is (and Isn’t)

Stairstep Retirement is:

• A structured way to re-balance work and life at each stage

• A plan that accepts you’ll probably still be working in your 60s—and uses that as a feature, not a bug

• A framework for using your best energy where it matters most: kids, health, relationships, and later, higher‑value work

Stairstep Retirement is not:

• A promise that everyone can work 15–20 hours a week with no tradeoffs

• A guarantee of specific investment returns or retirement outcomes

• Financial, legal, or tax advice

It’s an alternative lens for planning your life and career: frontload the freedom, backload the work, keep your options open.

If the idea of working a bit more later so you can live more now resonates with you, Stairstep Retirement might be worth exploring with your own numbers, constraints, and values.

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