If you had the money to retire at 30, your savings would be invested and on an average year your earnings would cover your expenses. You would have health insurance, so no worries there. The only catch is that you would have to keep your expenses at 65% of what you spend right now. Would you take it, or would you rather work a few more years for a better lifestyle and financial security?
65 percent of jack shit is not enough to live on my guy.
Good point, but also my question is pointless if you are already living frugally, because that would basically be “would you like more time and money?”
Yes I would like more time and money thank you
Can I get like 3 time and 1 money and… uhhh… a chocolate shake.
Become younger and get money? Sure.
If I could retire right now at 38, and kept my expenses at 100% of what they are right now, I’d still be choosing which bill can wait a week and a half past the due date to make sure we can all eat.
65% and we start drawing straws for who gets eaten this week.
We “retired” when my wife was 30 and I was 33. That was nine years ago.
As Australians, healthcare is free, so that wasn’t a concern. (That being said, we also take out yearly travel insurance policies, which are surprisingly cheap compared to regular private insurance.)
That, not having kids (but we’ve met people who did a similar thing BECAUSE they wanted to spent time with kids), and living very frugally was what made it possible, and continues to make it possible. When we were working, after having paid off our small apartment, we could live on less than 20% of our combined income by being very tight.
The more you save, the more you can invest, and the less you’ll need invested to sustain yourself. It’s a positive feedback loop, and after three years of trying to be as frugal as possible, tracing every dollar, it became second nature.
After building our investments, our cost of living has gone up, but not by much. When you’re building your portfolio, being extra stingy pays off greatly. We have been slow traveling non-stop for the last nine years, because the cost of living is cheaper in (almost) every other country, even when you consider paying for short-term rentals. Next year we’ll hit 100 countries visited.
We’ve also done extra university courses, languages courses, and have a ton of hobbies. Even without work, there’s not enough time in the day if you have an active mind.
That’s the dream! Travel a ton, learn languages, work on just the stuff you care about…I hope to be able to do that someday!
lol… You need like 2 million dollars and a paid off house to make it work in the US and that’s if you know how to manage money and control spending. AND no critical event happened like major illness etc
aka system is designed that vast majority of people can never ACHIEVE IT.
This is a highly pessimistic take. 2 million dollars would conservatively yield $80,000 per year. This would place you at the 70th percentile in the USA for individual income.
I won’t argue individual angle… But not having a family is sacrifice in of itself then.
My numbers did account for a family of 3.
With that being said, cashing out stocks or clipping coupons is a taxable event. Plus inflation and health insurance on a private market.
It is doable but still has risk.
Plus which 30 yo has paid off house and 2 million they earned?
I would have retired at 16 if I could.
100% I would do that but that’s a bit unfair because:
- I make enough money to splurge more than I need to, namely eating out, and I would happily never eat at a restaurant again if it meant I got 40 hours of my week back for the rest of my life.
- I would spend the next 60 years of my life doing all the hobbies I want to do. I have stories I want to write, video games I want to make, furniture I want to craft, themed parties I want to throw, a TTRPG I’m working on, a card game (gods to make a card game before I croak!). Even if I did what I plan to do which is sell all of that at the lowest price I could (including giving as much of it away for free as possible) inevitably some of those things will make me a bit of money. Enough I’d hope to splurge into an international trip every now and then or keep my PC rig rather new.
I just don’t expect to stop working in retirement, I just plan to work doing stuff I love instead of stuff that pays well.
So if anyone in the comments is a wealthy person or dying with no heirs feel free to send me enough money to retire. I would love to create things for people for the rest of my life and not worry about anything but if I could afford a thing I don’t need and if my hobbies are worthy of other people’s time/attention.
It is almost as if all of humanity could survive and provide for each other without psycho billionaires owning the means of production and housing!
Ah, to own a house… Wouldn’t that be neat? And imagine if it wasn’t a piece of shit produced at the lowest cost possible by overworked and underpaid builders. Hell, imagine a custom house for my particular tastes!
What a world we could live in if we just taxed the rich out of existence and owned a portion of our work place.
For sure no. I don’t want to live frugally for the long term. I played that game in college and I’m not excited to go back.
I think this question varies greatly depending on your current salary, if you have dependents, and what your cost of living looks like.
Fuck yeah. Nothing’s more tiresome and stultifying than the whole work routine. That’s time you’re never getting back.
The whole idea of retiring at 65 after you’ve been squeezed like an orange that’s been sent twice into the press, just to “enjoy” your failing body, failing senses, failing brain in your twilight years is absurd.
If you can retire at 30, hell yes do it.
If living on 65% of my current income was possible.
If I had that little I would be homeless, not retired.
But by 30 most people have already contributed way more than they will ever consume by existing peacefully.
I don’t think I could keep my expenses at 65% of what I spend now because I already spend as little as I can since I’m trying to save up for an early retirement. I’d love to retire as early as possible.
If you had the money to retire at 30
Not possible, since I am well above 30 :)
Yes.
Easy. Currently I am probably saving close to 35% of my income as I don’t really know what to spend it on and already live pretty frugally, but I have to work still. So just stop the spending on savings and live like I do now.
Earning £26k so nothing special but a bit over minimum wage. Can save at least £500 a month without trying after paying my half of the bills and mortgage. Would probably save more if I didn’t buy so many cat toys.
Easy. Currently I am probably saving close to 35% of my income
They did specify 65% of what you currently spend, not what you currently earn. I save a high percentage of my income too, mostly because I’m largely anti-consumption. Cutting my current spending down by 35% would be a bit leaner than I’d like to live.
