When one of his friends tell him they're thinking about retiring, Dirk Cotton's first advice is to find an expert. "Find a good a retirement planner, because retirement planning is incredibly complex," he said. "They're extremely helpful and worth the investment, and it's worth it to start talking to them in the years before you retire."
He also suggests focusing on your investments. "The major thing that I would say is, 10 years before retirement, you probably want to end up somewhere in the neighborhood of 40% to 50% equity allocation," Cotton, who retired at 52, said. He said this is one of the big things that helped him retire comfortably in 2005 and get through the Great Recession.
"I weathered that storm extremely well," he said, crediting this advice. "A lot of people had 100% equities when they were saving for retirement, and lost over 50% in a very short period of time."