There’s nothing better than being free to do whatever you want. However, unless you’re born with a multi-million dollar trust fund, you’ll unfortunately have to work for your freedom. This article will discuss how you can retire early and never have to work again.
You can follow my savings guide to increase your chances of a wonderful retirement by 50-65. But, what if you want to retire earlier? Say at the age of 40, 45, or 50?
You’re in luck. I have a very simple, yet effective plan for you on how to retire early. This is something I’ve been following since I graduated from college in 1999.
In 2012, I was able to finally leave my day job in finance at age 34. I haven’t returned since. The catalysts for my early retirement were: 1) negotiate a severance that paid for five-to-six years worth of normal living expenses, 2) having enough passive income to cover my living expenses, and 3) having something to retire to.
As I look back upon my time as an early retiree, there really isn’t much I would change. Having all the freedom in the world is priceless. You will not regret all the work it takes to achieve financial freedom. But you may regret looking back on your life and wishing you didn’t try harder or take more risks.
What’s important is recognizing your inner frugality, your Herculean discipline, the government’s generosity, and your enormous hustle. There’s nothing better than taking action with your finances and seeing results!
How To Retire Early: Example From People Who Have
Realize that it’s an absolute fallacy you must work until 60-65 to be able to retire. It’s up to you whether you want to have the freedom to do whatever you want. You just have to make some sacrifices.
I will assume that you enter the work force at age 22 after college. All you have to do is work for 18 consecutive years and save 55% of your after tax profits without fail. At age 40, mathematically you have now saved enough to last you 20 more years until age 60. At age 59.5, you are then allowed to withdraw any money from your tax-deferred retirement savings penalty free.
The money you saved in this time period can be spent in full, if so desired, every year until you hit age 60. By the time you are 62-65, you are then eligible for Social Security benefits to complement your other tax deferred retirement savings.
How To Retire Early: Average Jane
Jane is a University of Colorado grad who majors in English. She gets a job in Denver as a telecom services provider sales rep. It’s not the best job in the world given her interests, but it pays the bills while she stays with her parents for the first 3 years to save money. At the age of 25, she moves out and co-habits with her boyfriend, saving money in the process.
From ages 41-60, Jane can spend roughly $29,163 a year until age 60 and never have to do anything at all! That’s right. With her $530,250 saved up, she doesn’t need interest or investment returns to spend $29,163 a year. So long as she doesn’t increase her lifestyle she’s grown accustomed to for the past 18 years, she’s fine.
Jane can also earn a risk-free 2% return on her $583,275, which yields roughly $11,500 to go on top of her $29,163 to equal roughly $39,000 in after tax income a year.
If we exclude the interest income, $29,163 a year is not exactly a lot to spend, but during her working years from age 22 to 40, she was only spending about $32,000 a year after taxes anyway.
In order to make her money go farther, Jane could move to a cheaper country, live with a working spouse, work part-time, or attempt to invest their money. If she’s been used to living off $32,000 working, suddenly, there are 8-10 hours more a day to make $2,837 a YEAR to close the difference and then some!
How To Retire Early: Floyd, The Go-Getter
Floyd graduates from Virginia Tech and becomes a software Engineer at a small software company in San Francisco. Floyd isn’t the most brilliant of software engineers, which is why he couldn’t get into Google, and therefore doesn’t make as much as his fellow Googlers. That said, he’s making a healthy six figure income by age 30.
With a $902,605 nut Floyd has accumulated over the past 18 years, Floyd can spend a healthy $45,200 a year for 20 years without having to do a thing. At a risk free 2% return, Floyd can earn $18,000 a year to boost his annual spending to $63,200 if we want to get a little more realistic.
Couldn’t you live off $63,200 in AFTER-TAX income in practically every city in the world? Imagine if you found a spouse who worked, or actually made and saved the same amount of money you did?
You could both live of $126,400 a year quite comfortably. But, the theme of this post is to retire early and only depend on yourself, so this is what Floyd will do.
How To Retire Early: Felicity, The Talented
Felicity graduates in the Top 3% of her class at UC Berkeley and gets a job at the Boston Consulting Group, one of the world’s leading strategy consultant firms. She has a fantastic career and gets promoted every 3-5 years on average until she becomes a senior executive at age 38. She has a couple little ones, and decides to retire at 40.
With a retirement savings of $1.36 million, Felicity can spend $68,000 after-tax a year as she stays at home and spends time with her 6 and 7 year old sons.
Felicity didn’t have the best of luck with love, and divorced her $300,000 a year husband soon after the kids were born. They share custody of their sons, and also share the cost of raising them.
At a 2% risk free return, Felicity can generate $27,000 a year in interest income, boosting her annual spending to roughly $88,000 after tax. Felicity was living off of around $88,000 a year in disposable income at the age of 35, so it’s not that big of a stretch for her.
Related: The Negatives Of Early Retirement Nobody Likes Talking About
Study This Simple How To Retire Early Chart
If you save 50% of your after-tax income a year, you only have to work 1 year to accumulate 1 year of retirement savings. If you keep saving at this rate for 15 years, you will logically accumulate 15 years of retirement savings. Finally, if you save only 10% of your after tax income a year, you have to work roughly 10 years to accumulate 1 year of retirement savings!
The key here is after tax income and what you live on. The default, base case scenario is that one can live off 50% of their after tax income. Living off less for an extended period of time without making more than $100,000 a year is not very realistic or sustainable.
Use a simple $100,000 after tax disposable income figure, and a $50,000 yearly living expense target for retirement to work the math yourself. Save half of $100,000 = $50,000 = 1 year of retirement. Save only 10% of $100,000 = $10,000. You need to save $10,000 for 5 years to accumulate your $50,000 annual living expense!
Below is another savings good you can follow to help you retire early. I recommend saving at minimum 20% of your after-tax income. If you can save 50% of your after-tax income a year, you should be able to retire after 18 years.
How To Retire Early With Children?
Children are obviously a big determinant in whether you’ll have the ability to retire early or not. But, are children really that expensive if you see plenty of couples who earn $50,000 or less have multiple children? The Child Tax Credit is worth up to $2,000 per qualifying child in 2022. The age cut-off remains at 17 (the child must be under 17 at the end of the year for taxpayers to claim the credit).
The conventional wisdom is that if you decide to have children, you should immediately slap roughly 22 years of work to your life. You want to be able to provide for their living expenses and tuition through college, just in case your child isn’t that gifted to get a scholarship, or work to support themselves.
The good thing is that conventional wisdom is often times wrong. If two parents decide to save 55% of their after-tax income every year after college for 18 years, the “Average Janes” of the world will have $78,000 a year to retire on and provide for a family.
The “Floyds” of the world will have roughly $120,000 a year to spend, and the “Felicities” of the world will have about $170,000 a year to spend. Can you make these numbers work to provide for your family? I think so, but it will obviously be much harder if you were a single parent.
It’s Not Easy Retiring Early With Kids
What’s even “easier” than both parents saving 55% of their after-tax income is that one parent works, while only one parent saves as aggressively. This way, the early retiree parent can simply be added on the working parent’s healthcare and all other benefits.
Hey wait a minute, I think this is what happens already for stay at home moms or dads. Again, the difference is the aggressive savings plan, so study the chart above once again.
As a father now, one thing I strongly believe is this saying: “have children and the money will come.” I have never been more motivated to earn more and provide for my family than after my son was born.
But I will be honest with you guys, we pay a hefty $2,380/month in health insurance premiums in 2020 for a family of four. When the stock market began melting down in March 2020, I felt an uneasiness I had not felt in over 10 years. Retiring early with more than one child is hard!
Not only are we aggressively saving in each child’s 529 plan, we’ve got to pay for preschool tuition and potential grade school tuition of our children do not get into a good public school that’s close by.
What About Inflation Eating Away At Returns?
If you want to retire early, you need to pay attention inflation. Inflation is elevated (~8%) in 2022 due to tremendous quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve and the Federal Government. Inflation eats away at your cash and earnings power.
Inflation rises when the economy starts to heat up, and falls or stays flat when the economy cools. Therefore, in a way, higher inflation is a good thing if you are invested in assets that inflate with inflation. We’re talking mainly real estate and stocks.
People often ask, “What happens when inflation hits 8%+? We need to invest and save more! We’ll be screwed!” We won’t be screwed. If inflation ramps higher, it means the economy is ROCKING AND ROLLING! There is too much money sloshing around the system, and demand is too great, causing prices to rise.
What happens when “prices” rise? Your income, stocks, and real assets rise. Nominal interest rates also start to rise. Meaning the real interest rate return on your investments, money market savings rates, and real estate also rises.
Take a look at this year-over-year rent change chart for 2021. If you own rental properties, you are benefitting not only from rising rents but also from rising property prices. I expect higher prices will continue for years, which is why I’ve invested $810,000 in real estate crowdfunding, physical rental properties, and other online real estate investments.
I want to ride the inflation wave for as long as possible.
Real Estate Can Help You Retire Early
Inflation is why I’m a big buyer of real estate. Not only does the price of real estate rise and often increase faster than the rate of inflation, rental income also rises with inflation. One of the easiest ways to gain exposure to real estate is through Fundrise, my favorite real estate crowdfunding platform.
With Fundrise, you don’t need to come up with a 10% – 20% downpayment. You don’t need to take on massive leverage to buy a single property. You can invest a small amount in one of their specialty eREITs. The eREITs give you exposure to specific regions of the country. Fundrise is free to sign up and explore.
Also check out CrowdStreet, another top real estate crowdfunding platform that has over 100 individual deals a year in 18-hour cities. 18-hour cities have cheaper valuations, higher cap rates, and higher growth rates. You can build your own select real estate portfolio with CrowdStreet.
Everything is rational folks. Don’t let the inflation pollyannas scare you. Look at the 40-year chart of the 30 year mortgage rate. It’s done nothing but go straight down.
But if inflation does tick up, interest rates will tick up. If interest rates tick up, risk-free coupon yields, dividend yields and rental yields will also tick up. In other words, you’ll be earning a higher rate of return on your income producing investments.
You just need to have the appropriate investment exposure. Always invest congruently with your risk tolerance. Don’t let investing FOMO make you take excessive risk and blow yourself up.
What If You Desire To Do Something After You Retire
Believe it or not, some people actually want to continue being active during their early retirement. Maybe they become park rangers, tour guides, freelance writers, or consultants.
If your monthly individual operating expense is $50,000 a year, and you find a job you enjoy that lets you work part-time and make $20,000 a year, then you’ve suddenly bought yourself many more years in living expense coverage. Or put it differently, all you need to do is be an “Average Jane” in the example above.
There are thousands of things in this world that you can do to make money. And to let your mind languish after retiring from your day job is one of the dangers of early retirement. By making just $20,000 a year in a hobby she enjoys, “Average Jane” increases her disposable income in retirement by 50% to $59,000 from just $39,000 previously.
How To Retire Early: A 4th Early Retiree Example
For 13 years after college, I saved 50-80% of my after tax income. As a result, I was left with roughly 16 years worth of living expenses. The chart shows 13 years x 1.2 based on my cash savings.
If I decide to sell my house and downsize, my living expense coverage rises to about 25 years. And If I sell my rental properties, the living expense coverage shoots to over 30 years.
What’s important is not so much the amount saved, but the annual living expenses coverage saved. This is important since each person’s desirable living expenses are different.
Maybe some people in the Midwest are happy with $3,000 after tax a month to live on. While others in NYC need $10,000 in after tax income to comfortably survive. Shoot, some of you might even want to move to Southeast Asia where $2,000 a month in after tax income will let you live like Kings and Queens! The right dollar amount. It all depends on the individual.
My Journey As A “Fake Retiree”
Since leaving work for good in 2012 at the age of 34, I’ve done the following:
- Consulted part-time for financial technology startups
- Wrote a book on how to negotiate a severance that now brings in ~$40,000 a year in passive income
- Became a father of two children
- Became a championship high school tennis teacher
- Built Financial Samurai into one of the largest independent personal finance sites on the web with over one million organic pageviews a month.
- Published an instant Wall Street Journal bestseller entitled, Buy This, Not That: How To Spend Your Way To Wealth And Freedom
Clearly, I’ve been very busy since retiring from finance in 2012. At times, it’s been overwhelming, especially when I was writing Buy This, Not That during the pandemic while raising two young children during lockdowns. However, I was doing what I wanted to do, so I can’t complain.
Some of these post-retirement activities bring in income, which is why I refer to my situation as fake retirement. And you know what? Awesome! I love being able to make money doing what I enjoy. Who doesn’t?
Latest Passive Income Streams
In 2017, I decided to sell my SF house I bought in 2005 for 30X gross annual rent and reinvested $550,000 of the proceeds in real estate crowdfunding for less hassle, lower valuations, and higher passive returns.
The below passive income streams are what fund our early retirement lifestyle with two young children. We aim to generate $300,000+ in passive income for a third year in a row. Hopefully, our investments will beat inflation each year so we can stay “retired” or stay at home parents.
My wife and I no longer have to work day jobs again. We can remain stay at home parents because we have saved and invested regularly for the past 20 years.
I love to write online, coach high school tennis, and stay active in the community. Ideally, I’d like to spend 15-20 hours a week working on only things that bring me purpose and joy.
During a bear market, ironically, it’s easier to generate even more passive income. With interest rates higher, investment yields on everything are higher too. Silver lining!
The Sacrifice Is Worth It
If I wasn’t whipped so hard my first two years out of college, I would never have saved so much. Thank you sir, may I have another! I worked for a firm that made me get in at 5:30 am every morning and have me stay until 7:30pm on average every evening. Some evenings, we went to 10:30 pm, which was brutal.
Further, I constantly had to work at least five hours a weekend, leading to a total time spent of roughly 75+ hours a week. I gained 20 lbs, was constantly under pressure, and was generally pretty stressed. Despite the pain, the one thing I knew was that if I could just get through these first two years, I would be set.
Given the difficult experience right out of school, I swore to myself that I would save like a maniac to have the optionality of retiring early if I wanted to. I NEVER wanted to go back to that situation again. I overcame the desire to earn maximum money.
To be able to have the freedom to answer to no one is priceless. Hence, saving 50-75% of my after tax income is such a bargain for priceless!
There is no rewind button in life. Save aggressively, invest consistently, and I’m sure that after 10 years, you will be able to see the finish line.
Related posts:
The Best Time To Retire May Be Under A Democratic President
The 10 Worst Times To Retire Early Or Normally
Recommendation To Help You Retire Earlier
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Join 50,000+ others and subscribe to my free weekly newsletter. Since 2009, the newsletter has helped people achieve financial freedom sooner, rather than later. How To Retire Early is a Financial Samurai original post. I retired early in 2012 for one year and got back to “work” writing on this site because early retirement is boring!
“What If You Desire To Do Something After You Retire
Believe it or not, some people actually want to continue being active during their early retirement. Maybe they become park rangers, tour guides, freelance writers, or consultants.” In my book, then you’re not retired. Retire definition: “leave one’s job and cease to work…” The key part is “and cease to work.” If you quit your job then start another job and/or freelance/write for money you’re NOT retired. You’re still working. Sure, you’re probably not working as many hours as you did in your previous job. But, yep, you’re STILL working.
I am definitely still working. Doing something productive that you enjoy and would do for free. That’s what life is all about.
Related posts:
Overcoming The Downer Of No Longer Making Maximum Money
The Internet Retirement Police
The Worst Times To Retire Early Or Retire Normally
Hi Sam, I kinda agree with Shaun. When I think of early retirement I think of quitting my high paying job and doing something I enjoy with no requirement for making money. for instance I am thinking of doing a prison ministry or volunteer drug addiction counseling (maybe very small pay). With all due respect I don’t really see you as retired. I see you as “getting out of the rat-race and becoming an entrepreneur and doing what you love on your terms.” Don’t misunderstand me. I love your work and follow you religiously, but you are making aot of money and are sitting on big bucks when you sell this website. I really don’t see you as ever having retired yet, you just became an entrepreneur. You went from working for THE MAN to working for yourself.
I am 57 and when looking at needing 50X annual expenses, or about 7.5 million and investable assets for early retirement, that would be my target. Not 5 mill and then make up the rest by working…In that case I’ll just work five more years where I am. Don’t love it but not interested in working 20-30 hours somewhere for $15/hour.
I do think 50x seems awful aggressive. My wife and I can live comfortable with 150k per year. With a target and reasonable conservative 4% portfolio return, then starting with 4 mill, there would be no drawdown in principal.
Oh, I’m definitely not retired any longer. I stopped saying I was retired after one year of early retirement from 2012 to 2013. After traveling a lot, I decided to “get back to work” by writing more on Financial Samurai. I was too bored during early retirement. See: The Negatives Of Early Retirement Nobody Likes Talking About
Everybody’s expenses and desires are different. Depends on what type of legacy you want to leave.
See: Two Retirement Philosophies Will Determine Your Safe Withdrawal Rate
Good luck!
Psst… I plan to re-tire again soon though :) The best time to retire is under a Democratic presidency with a larger safety net and higher taxes.
Thanks for the quick reply. Good luck to you also as you seek to re re-tire!!
Planning for retirement typically includes saving enough to cover your expenses, reducing costs and maybe downsizing your home. All of this is done in anticipation of the day when you will finally be “free of working”! But will not working really bring you the happiness you are anticipating?
Or is what you are seeking a way to spend your time doing something that you are passionate about? Being constantly under time pressure and on the hook for various nonsense and then constantly worrying about restructuring and being laid off does create a lot of stress. This can sap the enjoyment out of life, but suddenly going from the rat race to idle time with no commitments does not seem to lead to ultimate happiness. In fact, my observations have been that suddenly having nothing you must do can lead to feelings of boredom, isolation, depression and having no purpose. I have witnessed this happening within my own family.
Family gatherings have gone from discussing:
· How stressful work is, how bad management is, how unfair the policies are and what a bad boss they have and how they cannot wait to retire and get out.
To
· Aches and pains, complaints about the government and society, dealing with limitations due to medical issues, losing touch with other people, regrets about opportunities not taken when they had the chance and never getting to enjoy retirement before it was too late.
The point is, long term happiness is not as simple as ditching your job and then being totally stress free. The human mind is always active and you need something to focus your thoughts and energy on to keep you engaged and maintain your mental and physical health. This must be something compelling and meaningful to you. What we are really seeking is not to stop “working” but to spend our time “working” on something that brings us joy and satisfaction. Haven’t you heard people quoted as saying something like “do something you love and you will never work a day in your life”? The fact is that the people who are working in jobs they really enjoy don’t feel stressed and burned out, even if they are putting in many hours and lots of effort into their work. Think about people who could easily retire with the wealth they have built over many years, like Warren Buffet or Oprah Winfrey or Paul McCartney. But they keep “working” why? They choose to keep on with their work because this drives them, it is not a chore at all. And this is the one to the big keys to enjoying our “retirement years”.
How many times have you heard some say “Once I retire, I will finally have time to …………”? So the questions is – why wait to retire? Why not start now? There are many part time ventures which can be started on the side while still working a full time job, and these can be scaled up or grown as appropriate. Pick something that you enjoy doing and could make you some extra money. I have a friend who has started a side business making furniture and has set a woodworking shop. Someone else I know makes jewelry and sells it online, another person I met makes stained glass window ornaments and sells them at flea markets on her website, and another friend write fiction novels and edits movie scripts on the side…
For me my passion project is information publishing; writing instructional ebooks, how-to guides, business plans and printable items. This satisfies my creative side while utilizing my technical experience and I can see myself continuing to do this once I “retire”. It makes me enough money to fund itself and extra to invest and enjoy on fancy dinners and weekend getaways. Who knows, it might grow to make me enough money to retire earlier that planned. This is not just a sketchy get rich quick scheme. I view my side business as an investment in my long term happiness and health, just like investing in retirement funds, I am, investing in myself. You never know where this may lead you and you never know what will happen with your current company that says they are doing so well, as I’ve learned several times the hard way. Now is the time to start! Remember, it is never too late…until you decide to give up.
Hi my wife and I are both 33 and want to pursue the early retirement goal but are reluctant to do so and worried we haven’t saved enough or invested in the investment. We’ve got 585k in cash, 200k in retirement accounts(50% is in cash), about 350k rental property equity in 4 rentals which brings in ~23k a year net cash flow, 100k in equity in our primary home.
My wife used to have a 110k/yr salary plus healthcare but Covid put an end to that parade and I bring in 80-115k a year in self employment commission sales income, we’ve got two kids under 3 and are accustomed to spending 80-120k/yr. Trying to figure out what we should invest our cash in and what a good structure and strategy we should have to retire in the next few years. I’ve liquidated most of my stocks and have been sitting idle waiting on the stock market to drop but it’s doing the opposite of what it probably ought to be doing and is being influenced by the fed so I’m not excited about dumping 500k in the stock market, I know real estate very well but suck at stocks and equities. I’ve considered trying to retire at my sales job and focus on investing our 550k in cash into leveraged real estate. Figure if I can buy 13 200k homes with 20% down Loans at today’s stupid low rates I’d hope to net $500 on each 13×500= 78k a year plus our existing rental income. Then in 30 years when the homes have been paid off, we’d have a portfolio of 17 paid off properties we can live nicely off of. This is the safest strategy I’ve thought of, but if you have other suggestions please let me know.
I’m 35 and want to retire at 50. 53 at the most. What’s my best strategy here? I can’t touch my pension til I’m 67. So that’s no help.
My grandpa is planning to retire from his work after 25 years of serving; therefore, he’s currently looking for a service that can help him with his retirement plan. I never knew that if my grandpa has saved 10% of his after income tax, he will be able to gain a 1-year retirement plan within 10 years. Also, I never take into consideration that inflation is quite advantageous as well since real estates will most likely rise which will be beneficial for my grandpa.
As with most Americans, you don’t understand the inflation devastation that is wreaking havoc upon our shores. Do you want to know the *real* inflation rate in the U.S.?? Look up the Chapwood Inflation Index and you will then understand why saving and investing in fiat currencies is a strategy born of delusion. If you think that inflation is running at 2%, you don’t shop at grocery stores, you don’t eat in restaurants, and you don’t pay rent or pay for health insurance. Convert fake money into real money ASAP. Do what Central Banks do, not what they say.
Not sure why you think I don’t understand inflation. I have the majority of my net worth in real estate, stocks, and business equity is inflating faster than inflation since I retired in 2012.
It’s been a great run thanks to the bull market.
For feedback, did you read my post as saying most folks should keep their money in a bank or under their mattress? If so, I can clarify.
Here are other pertinent posts:
* The Best Way To Get Rich: Turn Funny Money Into Real Assets
* Ranking The Best Passive Income Investments To Retire Early
My latest after-tax (non 401k, IRA) retirement portfolio produces about $250,000 a year in income to fund our retirement. But our goal is to get to $300,000 by 2023.
Hi Sam,
I started noticing your blog and have been reading. Really enjoyed seeing your perspective on various topics you discussed.
However, I have a question on the calculation you gave on your own financial income. For an SF condo that rents out for $3050 a month, you probably won’t get 12 times that as “income” per year given there would be insurance and tax even if it’s mortgage free, not to mention about possible repairs and maintenance.
It would be fine if you want to treat “revenue” (instead of “profit”) as “income”. But I think it’s misleading in the context because you were comparing this amount of money to salaries from full time jobs. Just want to call it out so that your readers aren’t gonna think they can generate the same amount of income for a 100k annual salaried job with 3 of these rental properties.
Thanks,
JK
Nice to have another blog for the upper class.
Why don’t you try something more challenging and describe how you can retire early on $30-50.000?
Why not start one yourself targeting your desired demographic instead of telling other people to do something?
Take action, otherwise, opportunities will pass you by.
Because that is impossible, you will work until you die on your feet.
Hi Nono372,
Financial Samurai is correct, it IS entirely possible, but you must take action. Opportunity is ALL around you but most people just let it pass by- and it never fails to surprise me.
I know because I did it. I become independently wealthy in under 10 years on a measly TEACHER salary. I started at 16k a year…a YEAR. You do have to get your income as high as you can first (which is barely around the 50k mark after nearly a decade in education) and then you have to find other ways to bring in income. I have multiple sources of income from real estate to stock investments and I am completely self-taught in everything that I do. I now own 5 houses all but one (the one I live in) produce a combined income each month that’s more than my teaching paychecks after 12 years of teaching (I still teach because I love helping kids, even though I don’t need the $). And I still invest all my profits, if not in real estate then in the stock market. I live very far below my means, save every penny I make, reinvest and repeat. I’m not even 35 by the way and had an incredibly rough start in the beginning. So, YES, yes you CAN do it, even if you are not upper class. But do YOU believe you can do it? As Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can or can’t–you’re right.” I hope the meaning is not lost on you.
And Sam- just wanted to give you a shout-out. Huge fan of yours for years, love that you are helping people by sharing your knowledge and you always get me to laugh somewhere in your posts. I just started a blog actually to try to hit the angle that Nono372 was talking about, so hopefully, I can reach more people who want to join the FIRE community (and FAT FIRE which is what I am going after now) even if they are making very low incomes. I’ve got a TON to learn about blogging, I literally know nothing about it–so I am also super grateful to you for your “how to start a blog” section, on top of the endless posts that you have shared with all of us over the years.
Anyway, thanks for everything Sam, keep up the amazing work and Nono372–I hope you find the courage to believe in yourself. With that and a boatload of passion–anything is attainable.
What a weird perspective and blog! Who TF wants to retire? What a sad prospect, may as well just die and get it over with. You just have to find and follow you passion and it isn’t even work anyway. I’m sure there’s a blog post here about the best way to save money is to stop living.
You are alive but once and anyone of us might die TOMORROW.
A lot of people want to tell their employers to pound sand and retiring early from that career allows them to so they can do what they want (i.e. follow their passion). Most people aren’t good enough at their passion to make a living out of it anyway and i’ts very unrealistic for the vast majority of people. If you respond, I’m curious what you do for a living? I love hearing stories of people making a living at something they love.
Your life is not your job (at least for most people)