The Retire Sooner Method: Secret #5, The Happy Retiree Superpower of Sleep

Welcome back to my series on the great retirement book The Retire Sooner Method: The 5 Secrets Behind America’s Happiest (and Unhappiest) Retirees.

So far we’ve had the following posts in this series:

If you missed any of those posts, you’re going to want to go back and read them before you read this one, since today’s post is a continuation of the others.

Today we’re discussing Secret #5: A Generous Portion of Quality Sleep!

This one could be a snoozer! Hahahahahaha.

Ok, here we go!

Sleep Key to a Happy Retirement

Here’s how Wes begins this chapter:

Our research revealed something striking: Happy retirees are nearly twice as likely as unhappy retirees to say they get enough sleep. To put numbers on it, 69 percent of happy retirees on balance report getting enough rest compared to only 38 percent of unhappy retirees.

That one word — enough — is the whole ball game. Not “as much as possible.” Not “as little as you can grind by on.” Simply enough.

Enough sleep doesn’t just mean you feel rested; it supports and enables the other four secrets. Sleep clears your mind to make smart financial decisions and map out your future, fuels your energy for your core pursuits, and helps you fortify your social circles by supporting your health and lowering your anxiety. Without enough sleep, your ability to implement the Retire Sooner Method is compromised.

I have said earlier in this series that my sleep improved greatly almost immediately after I retired.

I attribute much of this to finally having a clear mind. When I was working, I was always thinking about work, dealing with issues, anticipating problems, managing people, thinking through decisions, or mentally preparing for whatever was coming next. Even when I wasn’t technically working, work had a way of occupying space in my head.

When I retired, my mind was finally at rest.

Another thing that almost never happened in my working days, and now happens almost every night, is that I fall asleep within a couple minutes of going to bed.

I’m not sure if that’s still the “mind at rest” issue manifesting itself, or if it’s because I’m tired from all the day’s activities — exercise, writing, social interactions, errands, and so on — but whatever it is, I’ll take it.

Retirement has been a game-changer for my sleep.

And by the way, I wake up at almost the same time every day and am usually up a bit before 6 a.m., fully rested.

Now the hurdle to be a happy retiree is that you get “enough” sleep. That’s a bit vague, so what does that mean?

Here’s how Moss addresses that:

Most adults — yes, even in their fifties, sixties, and seventies — still need seven to eight hours of sleep per night. Contrary to popular myth, sleep needs don’t shrink dramatically with age. What changes is our ability to sleep deeply and consistently.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society both recommend a minimum of seven hours per night for adults.? The research confirms that regularly falling short of this target increases risks for cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, depression, and cognitive decline.

The point isn’t to obsess over hitting exactly seven to eight hours every night. The point is to aim for enough — and to protect the consistency of your sleep patterns.

I’m right at 7.5 to 8 hours a night, as I get to bed at 10 p.m. and am up by 6 a.m. at the latest, unless something REALLY WACKY happens and both my wife and I oversleep.

It was so freaky the other day when we woke up at 6:20 a.m. It seemed so late! It threw off my whole morning. Haha.

Moss summarizes this feeling with this:

When you’ve worked hard your whole life, often getting by on less sleep than you really needed, it can be hard to feel like it’s okay to get a full eight hours. I’ve had many retirees tell me, “Whenever I sleep past seven a.m., I feel lazy.”

In what researcher Dan Buettner famously termed the “Blue Zones” — including Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; and Ikaria, Greece — rest and stress-reduction practices like afternoon naps and midday breaks are woven into the fabric of everyday life. While it’s difficult to prove direct causation, these communities where people routinely live to one hundred and beyond share several common practices, and prioritizing rest is one of them (others include strong social bonds, nutrient-dense diets, and staying physically active well into old age). Rest appears to be not just a luxury in these longevity hot spots but an essential component of a life well lived.

As the happiest retirees know, sleep should be a priority. If you’ve ever felt guilty about “too much” or “too little” sleep, let this be your permission slip to drop that guilt. There’s no shame in eight hours, no medals for five. You worked enough during your working years. Now it’s time to sleep enough, too.

My thoughts:

I consistently got less sleep than I needed when I worked. It was also often restless sleep, which is not a great combination.
Now I get my full eight hours, or close to that, on most nights.
If I slept in until 7 a.m., I would feel lazy. Haha.
I don’t take afternoon naps, though several in the MMM forums do. When I have taken naps in the past, I’ve had trouble sleeping at night, so they generally don’t work well for me.
I also don’t usually feel tired in the afternoon unless I’ve had an especially active morning, like playing two hours of pickleball in high heat and humidity.

This is one area where I think retirement has a big advantage over working life. Many working people are forced into schedules that don’t match their natural rhythms. They get up too early, stay up too late, work stressful jobs, commute, deal with family responsibilities, and then wonder why they feel exhausted.

Retirement doesn’t eliminate every sleep challenge, of course. Some people still have insomnia, health issues, sleep apnea, pain, stress, or other factors that interfere with good sleep. But retirement can give you more control over your schedule, which makes it easier to protect sleep if you’re intentional about it.

And before we move on, he makes this comment I thought was worth sharing:

This is the flywheel of sleep, health, and happiness. It’s one of the most efficient compounding systems in life. When you sleep enough, everything else improves. And when everything else improves, you sleep enough.

Sleep is like exercising. Doing it makes all your other hours better.

So why not focus on it? It’s an “easy” win that’s vitally important for your happiness.

Now, I know that many people have sleep issues, so I don’t want to make this sound too easy. We have a sleep expert as a mentor in the MMM forums, and we seek her out with any questions or tips on how to get better sleep. She’s been a great resource for many of us.

But if sleep is something you can improve, it seems like one of the highest-return areas to work on. Better sleep can improve your mood, energy, patience, health, workouts, food choices, relationships, and probably your financial decision-making too.

That’s a pretty good list of benefits.

What Impacts Sleep

The book now moves on to what might disturb your sleep in retirement with this:

So what’s really keeping Americans up at night? A recent Allianz study found that 64 percent of Americans worry more about running out of money than death itself. That worry has real consequences on sleep quality. In another watershed study from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM, two-thirds (66 percent) of respondents reported that they sometimes, often, or always have lost sleep at night due to worries about their finances.

Let this be yet another reason you want to get your retirement finances in order.

If you don’t, you will worry, and it will impact your sleep. If you do get them in order, you might just sleep like a baby because you won’t have money worries constantly running through your mind.

This connects directly to the earlier secrets. Money does not guarantee happiness, but money stress can absolutely damage happiness. And apparently it can damage sleep too.

Moss continues:

One key metric that provides clarity and security is knowing your Rich Ratio, the simple formula we use with the families we work with. To calculate it, take all the steady income you expect each month in retirement (Social Security, pensions, rental income, investment withdrawals, etc.) and divide it by the monthly expenses needed to enjoy the retirement you want.

That’s it: have divided by need. If your Rich Ratio is over 1, you’re rich — not because you have a certain dollar amount but because you have more than you need.

Let me show you with two examples. Biff loves to travel and figures he needs $10,000 a month in retirement. His income streams add up to $7,000: $1,000 pension, $2,000 Social Security, and $4,000 from 401(k) withdrawals using the 4 percent rule (all after taxes).

Biff’s Rich Ratio is 0.7. He’s not rich.

McFly, on the other hand, lives more simply in his paid-off home and only needs $5,000 monthly. His income streams consist of a $1,500 pension, $2,000 Social Security, and $2,500 investment withdrawals for a total of $6,000. His Rich Ratio is 1.2.

This is an old ratio from one of his former books. I’m not a fan.

To be clear, I don’t mind the calculation itself. It does show whether you have enough income to cover your monthly expenses. But then again, you could simply calculate your monthly income and monthly expenses and see if the income is larger.

Do we really need a “ratio” to tell us that?

My main beef is with the name: the “Rich” Ratio.

A few thoughts:

I think it’s more appropriately named the FI Ratio or the Can I Retire Ratio.
“Rich” implies that you’re killing it, and someone who is barely over 1.0 is not killing it. He’s doing enough to get by, but I don’t think that automatically means he’s rich.
Or maybe he is rich. If his monthly expenses are $50,000 and he has a Rich Ratio of 1.2, maybe he’s rich. But we don’t know because the ratio doesn’t tell us the underlying numbers.
To me, “rich” says more about net worth than income versus expenses, so the name seems off.
That said, if the ratio helps someone understand whether their income covers their expenses, then fine. Use it. Just don’t let the name make you think you’re wealthier than you really are.

The useful part of the calculation is that it forces retirees to compare what they have coming in with what they need going out. That’s a worthwhile exercise.

If the number is under 1.0, you have a problem or at least a gap to close.

If it’s over 1.0, you have breathing room.

If it’s well over 1.0, then you probably have a lot of flexibility.

So the idea is fine. I just wouldn’t call it the Rich Ratio.

Structure Helps Sleep

We’ve discussed in other posts how important structure is for retirees, but that’s usually in the context of making sure they are living active lives and doing what they want, not just sitting around watching time pass and their lives slip away.

But it turns out structure is good for sleep too!

From the book:

I want to share an insight that’s been hugely important to me on the path to better sleep: the power of daily structure and consistency.

Research backs this up in compelling ways. A comprehensive review by the National Sleep Foundation analyzed sixty-three published studies covering over forty thousand people and found that irregular sleep timing is consistently linked to negative outcomes, impaired mood, disrupted metabolism, and poor overall sleep quality.? The message is clear: Your body craves predictability.

Of all the factors that contribute to quality sleep in retirement, physical activity matters, eating well certainly helps, and having engaging core pursuits is essential. But above everything else, I’ve become convinced that structure is the secret ingredient most people overlook. I’m talking about having a consistent schedule for when you’ll pursue your core pursuits, when you’ll exercise, when you’ll socialize and yes, when you’ll sleep. When you wake up knowing you have tennis at nine, volunteer work at two, and dinner with neighbors at six-early enough that you can still be in bed by eleven-your body learns to anticipate these patterns. That kind of structure naturally leads to more consistent bedtimes and wake times.

The most successful retirees I work with don’t treat their weeks as blank canvases to fill however they please. Instead, they build purposeful frameworks around their core pursuits, volunteer commitments, exercise routines, and social activities. This isn’t about rigid scheduling — it’s about creating gentle rhythms that signal to your body when it’s time to be active and when it’s time to rest. You’re dropping anchor points that help regulate your internal clock. Your body learns to anticipate these patterns, making it easier to wind down naturally when evening arrives.

While you should certainly build big-picture retirement dreams — the yearly cruise, the major renovation project, the cross-country RV trip—the research suggests focusing on the day-to-day might be the ticket to overall sleep quality. I like to think of it as “consistency over heroics.” Having something meaningful to wake up for tomorrow in addition to next week, next month, and next year creates the kind of forward momentum that naturally leads to better rest.

Of all the factors that contribute to happy retirement-financial security, physical activity, close relationships — maintaining a structured approach to your days might be the most underrated.

This is really an argument for structure in retirement more than it is for sleep in retirement, but I agree with him 100%.

A gentle rhythm to life helps out a lot of things.

I’ve said before that, for me, this means I have some things planned and some things that are possible, but I also have enough time to be flexible.

For example, I went to bed last night knowing I would play pickleball from 7:30 to 9:30 a.m., lift weights sometime in the early afternoon at home, and go to Costco with my wife around 3 p.m. Those things were fairly set. Everything else was up for grabs.

I assumed I would write, read, and do a few household chores between getting home from pickleball and going to Costco, in addition to lifting, but those things weren’t written in stone. I also knew it was likely that we’d return from Costco, eat dinner, and watch TV a bit, but again, that was a general idea, not a set-in-stone plan. Something else could have popped up, like our daughter calling and wanting to go for a walk.

So I had just enough scheduled to provide structure and a general idea for the rest of the time, but a lot of flexibility available if needed.

This is the gentle rhythm I have on most days.

A few thoughts:

Too little structure can make retirement feel aimless. You wake up, the whole day is open, and suddenly you can drift through hours without doing much of anything.
Too much structure can make retirement feel like work. If every hour is scheduled and every day is packed, you may lose the freedom retirement was supposed to provide.
The sweet spot, at least for me, is having anchor points. These are activities that give the day shape without controlling every minute.
Exercise, writing, pickleball, family time, church, errands, chores, and a few regular routines give my week enough rhythm without making it rigid.
This kind of structure also helps sleep because your body and mind know what to expect.

As for sleep structure, we almost always go to bed at the same time, 10 p.m., and get up at the same time, 6 a.m., every day.

If we go to bed late for some reason, like staying up for the Super Bowl, we still get up around 6 a.m. and we’re back on schedule quickly.

I agree with his findings. I think our bodies do better when we’re consistent with sleep times.

How about you? When do you go to bed and get up? And are you consistent with these times?

The Key is “Enough”

The author wraps up this chapter, and his review of the five secrets, with the following:

Here’s what makes sleep such a perfect fit for the Retire Sooner Method:

It embodies the philosophy of “enough.” This common thread runs through all the secrets we’ve discussed.

- Enough money doesn’t mean the most — it means enough to live with freedom.
- Enough core pursuits doesn’t mean filling every hour — it means enough to feed your purpose.
- Enough social connection doesn’t mean a hundred friends — it means enough close ones to confide in.
- Enough planning doesn’t mean spending ten hours a week tweaking your financial plan —it means enough of a roadmap to quiet that buzzing mosquito of worry.
- Enough sleep doesn’t mean marathon slumbers or proud deprivation —it means the right amount to stay healthy and fuel joy.

This is the wisdom of “enough” — not settling for less than you need but also not obsessing over exceeding what serves you. Whether it’s money or sleep, the happiest retirees have mastered the art of enough.

What a great way to sum up the entire five secrets.

You don’t have to have some unrealistic amount of them to be happy. You just have to have “enough.”

This also says a lot about desires, wants, and expectations. If you are easily pleased and can get by on the simpler things in life, it’s going to be much easier to be content and have enough. But if you’re expecting the world to be handed to you in retirement, your definition of “enough” is going to be a lot higher and much harder to reach.

A few final thoughts:

Enough money means your needs and reasonable wants are covered, not that you have the largest portfolio among everyone you know.
Enough core pursuits means your days are engaging and meaningful, not that every minute is scheduled.
Enough social connection means you feel supported and known, not that you have hundreds of friends.
Enough planning means you have clarity and confidence, not that you spend retirement constantly tweaking spreadsheets.
Enough sleep means your body and mind are rested, not that you turn sleep into another performance metric.

This is one of the best themes in the book because it pushes against two bad extremes. On one side is under-preparation, where people enter retirement without enough money, activities, connection, planning, or rest. On the other side is endless optimization, where people are never satisfied because they’re always chasing more.

The happiest retirees seem to avoid both extremes.

They have enough. And they know they have enough.

That second part matters a lot.

This brings us to the end of the five secrets, but there’s still a good amount of the book left.

Stay tuned as we’ll get into the rest of it soon.

Sleep Key to a Happy Retirement

What Impacts Sleep

Structure Helps Sleep

The Key is “Enough”

Don’t Miss a Post

Leave a Reply Cancel reply