<prompt> Human: I was always under the impression you couldnt retire until a certain age--and you had minimum retirement ages MRAs. Are these MRAs only dependent on whether or not youll get your employers full pension and have certain tax? breaks on your 401k?Im all for retiring early obviously, but everyone on PF acts like you can retire earlywhenever you want provided your fiscal house is in order. PS: 27 year old, just over 30k in a 401k and no IRA or other retirement packages. Income is 70k but will increase in coming years to 80k-100k. Currently only investing 6 up to employer matching while I knock out some smaller debts. Edit - Thanks everyone for the feedback. I understand now, and Im glad this was able to generate further discussion into the mechanics of retirement. Assistant: uaBoglehead hit the nail on the head. Early retirement typically refers to retiring before you can withdraw without penalty from your tax advantaged retirement accounts 401k and IRA.Hate to say this, but if you are contributing only 6 to your 401K, have outside debts, and have no outside investments, you are not going down the path to early retirement. Dont fret though, thats fine, but if retiring early is a major goal for you, then you need to adjust spending habits to obtain that goal.Human: Your explanation makes sense--so when you retire early you just get penalized for taking out withdrawals. Also, its not a major goal by any means. more or less curiosity. I have major plans to increase contributions to the max 17.5k soon. My debts other than a mortgage total about 5k. Almost done with student loans!  <response>: so when you retire early you just get penalized for taking out withdrawals. No, you live off other money youve saved people who plan for early retirement have additional funds saved in other accounts or find ways around the penalties, such as 72t distributions. You should never plan to incur penalties to access your money; thats just lighting money on fire and wasting it. 