What does early retirement mean to you? Retiring at 60?
55?
40?
Retiring at 40 (or earlier) really isn’t all that impossible, especially if you set your sights on it early on in life.
I was prompted to write this little piece by a piece I read on BBC Capital about retiring early. With some diligence, tough decisions and very intentional frugal living, those with a decent job could save a good amount of money.
As pointed out in the article, with a retirement fund of $1 million, you can live on $40,000 in perpetuity without depleting your fund (assuming an average ARR of 4%), which is sufficient for a moderate lifestyle (assuming all of your debt [mortgage included] is paid off). Couple that with the fact that you’ll probably still work part time or foster your own side business, you could live quite comfortably. It definitely requires the work up-front though.
While retiring at 40 is probably out of the question for me now (since I just turned 30), I certainly plan on retiring by age 50. And by retiring, I mean not working full-time any more. I doubt I’ll stop working altogether for many years beyond that, but I want it to be on my terms and I want time to do the things that I couldn’t while raising children and working full-time.
Time to put a plan together…
