OUR STORY
About GapYears Lab
Make the most of the years between.
Why I Built GapYears Lab
After more than 20 years working in financial technology and analytics, I stepped away from full-time employment and began navigating a new chapter: early retirement.
For me, early retirement wasn't simply about leaving a career behind. It was about having greater freedom to decide how to spend my time, pursue meaningful interests, and explore what comes next.
But with that freedom came a new set of financial challenges.
I had spent much of my career helping organizations use data to make better decisions. As I started managing my own financial future, I discovered just how complicated those decisions could become when a traditional paycheck was no longer part of the equation.
I had questions that seemed relatively straightforward:
- How should I generate income from my investments?
- How much could I convert to a Roth IRA without creating unnecessary costs?
- How would capital gains and dividends affect my health insurance?
- What happens when a decision that saves money on taxes increases costs somewhere else?
The challenge wasn't finding financial information. There was plenty available. The challenge was understanding how all the pieces fit together.
A decision that looks favorable from a tax perspective might have an unexpected effect on healthcare costs. A Roth conversion that makes sense over the long term might create a significant expense today.
I wanted a way to explore those decisions together, rather than evaluating each one in isolation.
So I started building one.
From Personal Spreadsheet to Planning Platform
What began as a spreadsheet to better understand my own finances gradually evolved into the GapYears Income Planner.
The idea was simple: create a tool where I could change assumptions, compare scenarios, and see how different income decisions affected the overall financial picture.
That approach reflects much of what I've learned throughout my career. Good decisions require more than accurate numbers. They require understanding the relationships between those numbers, questioning assumptions, and recognizing tradeoffs.
The more I worked on the planner, the more I realized that other people navigating early retirement were likely facing similar challenges.
GapYears Lab grew from that realization.
What GapYears Lab Is About
GapYears Lab is a growing collection of tools and resources designed to help people explore the financial decisions that come with early retirement.
The first tool, the GapYears Income Planner, focuses on how income from investments, work, retirement accounts, and Roth conversions interacts with federal income taxes and ACA healthcare costs.
The Income Planner is currently available at no cost. As GapYears Lab develops, my focus is on learning which tools and features provide the most value to people navigating early retirement.
Over time, I hope to expand the platform to address other financial planning challenges that arise during the years between full-time employment and traditional retirement.
The goal isn't to predict the future or tell people which decisions to make.
It's to help them understand their options, recognize potential consequences, and approach important financial choices with greater confidence.
Because ultimately, financial planning isn't just about money. It's about creating the freedom to spend your time on what matters most.
A Commitment to Transparency
Financial planning tools are only useful when people understand what the numbers represent.
That's why GapYears Lab emphasizes documented assumptions, financial calculation testing, clear explanations, and transparency about what the tools can—and cannot—do.
The Income Planner uses published tax and healthcare rules, independently derived reference calculations, and automated testing to evaluate its modeled results. It also has important limitations, which are documented openly.
These tools provide educational planning estimates, not personalized financial, tax, or investment advice.
About the Founder
I'm Wade Olcott. My background includes more than two decades in financial technology, revenue operations, analytics, and business leadership.
Throughout my career, I've focused on helping organizations make sense of complex information and use it to make better decisions.
GapYears Lab gives me an opportunity to apply that same approach to something personally meaningful: helping others navigate the financial choices that come with greater freedom over their time and income.
I hope the tools and resources here make those decisions a little easier to understand.
Wade Olcott
Founder, GapYears Lab