When I was 30, my goal was to retire in 2017 at the age of 40. I figured, after spending my 20s learning, I should spend my entire 30s earning.

Now that I’m almost 41, I’m glad I didn’t wait until 40 to leave the workplace for good. Life doesn’t end once you retire. It simply morphs.

Although I no longer consider myself retired with all the work that goes into running this site and being a stay at home dad, here are some things that have happened since 2012:

1) Written a book called, How To Engineer Your Layoff: Make A Small Fortune By Saying Goodbye.

2) Traveled to 30+ new countries in Europe and Asia with my wife. Angkor Wat, Cambodia was truly amazing.

3) Gotten my USTA tennis ranking up from 4.5 to 5.0. This would have not been possible without all the newly found time to practice.

4) Consulted for several financial technology startups ranging from seed stage to series C.

5) Built this site into over a million organic pageviews a month with no forum.

6) Grew passive income by 2.5X.

7) Bought and remodeled a fixer.

8) Became a foster child mentor.

9) Became a high school tennis coach.

10) Became a father.

I’m excited what the future will bring!

Whenever I publish posts with six figure household incomes and detailed expenses my comments section and social media light up with displeasure.

Instead of accepting the fact that higher income leads to higher taxes and that living in large metropolitan areas result in higher expenses than in less densely populated parts of the country, there is denial. There’s also a segment of people who display hatred for high income earners, as if living in a three bedroom house and wanting to eat healthier in order to be around to see their children grow up is an affront to their way of life.

Based on my observations, here are the types of people most triggered by others paying a lot of taxes while also trying to raise kids and save for retirement in an expensive city:

• People who don’t live in an expensive coastal city.
• People who don’t have kids.
• Students who haven’t even gotten a job yet.
• People who see a $1.5M house price tag and scoff, but don’t understand that if the median house price is $1.5M, then the house is quite average.
• People who work 40 hours a week or less and think they should be far ahead of the game compared to their peers who work 60 hours a week or more.
• People who are too afraid to make a change in their career or are too afraid to move for an opportunity.
• People who don’t tell the full story of how they make ends meet e.g. a reader claims to save $200K on a 300K income without explaining his taxes and housing situation.
• People who have a tendency to discriminate against others, otherwise, they would be more accepting of other people’s situations.
• People who feel their reality is the only reality that counts.

What the heck is going on folks?!  It’s OK to be skeptical and disagree, but to hate is unbecoming. If you are easily triggered in a personal finance context, I’ve got a solution for you. Focus on achieving equality instead of being mesmerized by the numbers.  

Ever since landing my first job post college in 1999, I’ve been determined to build enough passive income in order to not have a job. A future that included getting into work by 5:30am and leaving after 7:30pm each day for decades seemed too brutal to endure.

In 2010 I decided that if I could earn about $80,000 in passive income, I would leave my job permanently and work on Financial Samurai while traveling instead. So I left work in 2012. Then once Financial Samurai started growing, I decided to shoot for $200,000 in passive income with the funny money I was earning online.

With $200,000 a year in passive income, I would have enough income to provide for a family of up to four in San Francisco or Honolulu given that my housing costs in either city would be low due to low purchase prices. Now that we have a son, I’m happy to say that $200,000 indeed does seem enough, especially if you don’t have to save for retirement.