I'm 381 days from retiring (November 12th 2027). If you want to know my financial situation, see this reddit post .

I want to share something I learned recently, that may helps others.

In my humble opinion, the biggest risk in early retirement is not having enough money outside of 401K to help with SORR and MAGI juggling to help stay below the ACA subsidy cliff.

I learned this lesson much too late and I'm worried about not having enough tax-efficient money to weather these two monstrous issues. But this is not the lesson here, though it is important to understand.

The new thing I learned is that I can move money within my 401K to safer investments/bonds/cash to help offset any market downturn. That's the lesson. This assumes a few things. Your income may exceed the 400% FPL for ACA, you are FIRE-ing before 65 and you need ACA until medicare kicks in.

Now, if you have Fidelity, like I do, your company may allow access to 401K Brokerage Link.…