You may have read stories about people who have retired early. There really is no magic to it. Lots of articles, lots of books, entire careers devoted to helping other people end their careers early, but no magic.

You normally have a variety of levers you can pull when looking at retirement. If you target a certain age for retirement, you eliminate how far you can pull one of those levers, which is time--you are taking away the option of delaying retirement beyond a certain date. That's OK; it's just something to be aware of.

If you have the good fortune to have $2 million or more saved for retirement, perhaps you're asking the question: Is this enough money for me to retire with? Can one live a stress-free retirement with this much money?

Many people are surprised by how large their Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) are in retirement. You should prepare for the tax hit that comes with these withdrawals by using a good RMD calculator to project your RMDs.

We'll just get this out of the way right up front. You need to start contributing more to your 401(k). And you should consider trying to max out your 401(k) contributions eventually.