Accumulation
GAIT
Goals · Appetite for Risk · Interest · Type
Four honest questions that determine everything about how you should invest.
Retirement planning for thinking people
The money part
is only half
the journey
Most retirement planning stops at the spreadsheet. ThinkActRetire goes further — three practical frameworks that cover building wealth, spending it wisely, and building a life worth retiring into.
The frameworks
Two frameworks for the money. One for everything else.
Decumulation
FLOW
Floor · Layers · Order · Withdrawal Rate
How to spend your money as intelligently as you saved it.
Foundation
Non-financial
PINS
Purpose · Intellectual Stimulation · Networking · Structure
The framework for the life your money is supposed to buy.
"Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago."
About Mike Roberts
I learned this stuff the hard way, so you don't have to
I started investing in 1999, made plenty of mistakes, and retired at 53. I'm not a financial adviser and I have zero formal finance qualifications. What I do have is 25 years of lived experience — the failures, the course corrections, and the frameworks I developed to make sense of it all.
ThinkActRetire is what I wish I'd had when I started. Three frameworks, plain language, no product sales.
Read my full story →
1999
Started investing
53
Retirement age
25+
Years experience
0
Finance qualifications
Where to begin
Three stages. One journey.
01
Know yourself first
Before you invest anything, the GAIT framework helps you clarify your goals, appetite for risk, interest objectives, and the right investment type for your situation.
Explore GAIT →
02
Build, then spend wisely
GAIT builds the wealth. FLOW helps you spend it — covering essential income floors, lifestyle costs, flexibility, and wealth transfer in a framework designed for decumulation.
Explore FLOW →
03
Build a life worth retiring into
The money is only half the picture. PINS addresses purpose, identity, network, and structure — the four non-financial pillars of a genuinely fulfilling retirement.
Explore PINS →From the articles
Recent thinking
All articles →The Flip: Why Decumulation Is Harder Than Accumulation
Building wealth is hard. But spending it down — slowly, deliberately, without running out — turns out to be a completely different problem that most people are completely unprepared for.
Read more →What Is Your Number? How to Think About Retirement Savings Targets
Everyone wants to know "the number" — how much they need to retire. The honest answer is that it's the wrong question. Here's a better one.
Read more →Who Are You Without Your Job Title?
For most people, professional identity runs deeper than they realise — until the day it disappears. The 'I' question is the one retirement planning books skip entirely.
Read more →