Crucial Steps for the “Pre-Go” Years Before Retirement

August 22, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

“I was terrified, like truly like, oh my gosh, like that is just never for me.” That is Dana Onspok, a financial planner since 1995, describing her own emotional reaction to the idea of retirement — despite having spent her entire career helping other people plan for it. On this episode of the Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing Podcast, Onspok explains that the most critical phase of retirement planning is not the years after you stop working, but the decade before. She calls it the “pre-go” years, and she argues that getting them right requires both financial preparation and a rarely discussed emotional awakening.

The Pre-Go Years: A Decade of Preparation and Awakening

Onspok defines the pre-go years as the roughly ten years before retirement — whenever a person “really gets serious about, wow, I’m going to retire one day.” For her, this phase began at age 53, when she suddenly “connected emotionally to the idea that I was going to really retire one day.” She describes this as a “dimmer switch” turning on in a dark room — a gradual shift from intellectual awareness to genuine emotional readiness.

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What you'll learn

1 (00:47) **Guest Introduction & The "Pre-Go" Years Defined** - Dana Onspok introduces her concept of the "Pre-Go" years, a phase she argues is the most important in retirement planning.
2 (02:46) **Planning for an Early, Unplanned Retirement** - The conversation addresses the common gap between expected and actual retirement dates and how to plan for it.
3 (04:52) **De-Risking Your Portfolio: The 10-Year Income Ladder** - A practical, step-by-step strategy for shifting from accumulation to a secure withdrawal phase.
4 (07:58) **Strategic Tax Planning in the "Opportunity Years"** - How to use the gap between retirement and Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) to lower lifetime taxes.
5 (13:06) **The "Go-Go," "Slow-Go," and "No-Go" Years** - A breakdown of the three traditional retirement phases and how spending patterns change.
6 (16:28) **Real-World Spending: Clients Spend Less Than Planned** - An advisor's observation that retirees' actual spending declines over time, contrary to inflation-adjusted assumptions.
7 (18:23) **Giving "Permission to Spend"** - The psychological hurdle of transitioning from a saver to a spender in retirement.

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Show Notes

We spend years squirreling away money that we eventually hope to live off of in retirement. What should we be doing as we get closer to the big day? Host Robert Brokamp discusses potential strategies with Dana Anspach, who has been a financial planner since 1995 and is the CEO and founder of Sensible Money, a fee-only planning firm in Arizona. She is also the author of three books, including her latest: “Living Off Your Acorns: Your Guide to the Four Phases of Retirement.”

Topics covered:

-How to systematically de-risk your portfolio as you get closer to retirement
-Deciding when to retire, and planning for the possibility that it may be sooner than you prefer
-Strategies for lowering your tax bill over the course of retirement
-The benefits of categorizing the often-complex decisions about retirement as green, yellow, and red
-The “arrival fallacy” and steps to take to ensure your retirement is as fulfilling as possible

Host: Robert Brokamp, CFP®, EA
Guest: Dana Anspach, CFP®, RMA®
Engineer: Kristi Waterworth

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