How They Retired Before 40 (Wisconsin, spouse, shopping, compare)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
As eddiehaskell stated, how he did it is irrelevant. If you have no mortgage or car payment, you've pretty much got it made.
What his link of house for sale doesn't tell you is that Gastonia, for lack of a better term, is a dump. High crime, high poverty. So yes you can buy a cheap home somewhere, but do you want to keep looking over your shoulder ?
LOL if you think a city of 80,000 people is a complete dump everywhere you go. Plenty of teachers, police, firefighters, nurses, small business owners, farmers, pastors, little old retired ladies, etc etc just making a living like people in any other place. They all live somewhere. You’d have to be **severely** sheltered if you’re looking over your shoulder in 90% of Gastonia. I’m talking a completely lunatic. Someone in another thread even mentioned it being 3rd in home sales in the Charlotte metro.
Regardless, there are smaller cities outside of Gastonia like Cherryville, Bessemer City, Stanley, King’s Mtn, etc - they are all about as boring as watching paint dry. Populations between 5-10k.
I refuse to drag groceries home on a bicycle in OK where the choices are freezing or broiling. Living in a home the way you describe it in the House Forum, spending time to find eggs a nickel cheaper,.... . We initially retired at 40/41 to turn hobbies into careers and it may happen again at 60.
I don’t do any of that. My home is completely remodeled and has increased in value over 300% compared to what I paid. I’ve rode a bike maybe once in the last 3 years although I am within 2-3 miles of about everything I need (stores, restaurants, etc). My inside temps stay around 74 degree year round. Who’s freezing or broiling?
If getting a health insurance subsidy means you live off the government than there’s a lot of people doing so. But heck, I’d be completely ok with a cheap catastrophic plan with a 10k deductible. I’ve been sick enough to visit a doctor once in the last 5 years (sore throat).
Well we're at a point now that our investments at a 4% WR could produce the $20k, so that's doing absolutely nothing and earning $20k/yr. Plus I honestly have no desire to quit my current job. I work from home and get to create new products in an area I loved enough to pursue a PhD in. Same for my wife, at this point she really likes what she does. By the time we would be able to retire (early) our kids would be in elementary school, so you're kind of stuck for 9 months out of the year anyway and travel would be the thing that interests us the most. Other than that my interests are sports, working out, being outdoors and data science. I get my sports in the evenings and weekends, can workout in the morning and during lunch break, and my work is data science. So I'd probably do very similar things if I was retired. Might as well make a good income and do them. For example you could both live the same lifestyle you currently live working 20 hr/week part time jobs.
My main point was that living on what many people would consider a low income is extremely doable. I'm not even that extreme and have an infant and a toddler and when you back out the mortgage payment (which most people pay off before they retire) and daycare which isn't necessary if you are retired, we are spending less than $3k/month.
Sounds like you’ve been working toward financial freedom even though y’all don’t absolutely need to live on $20k or $30k. That’s a comfy position to be in knowing that work could potentially become totally optional...and probably is optional if one of you wanted to quit or pursue something that pays significantly less money. For example, you could live the same lifestyle working 20hr/week part time jobs.
Look at it like this - there are people in the south getting by on $12.50 hour...rent and all. If you have no housing expenses and no car payment, you can live a decent life on $12.50/hour. Heck, $8/hr. That’s about $300/week.
That’s $300, $300, $300, $300. If you can come up with the equivalent of $300 four times for times per month - you *could* be retired. If you have a household making double that you can live really good with no housing/car payments.
Look at it like this - there are people in the south getting by on $12.50 hour...rent and all. If you have no housing expenses and no car payment, you can live a decent life on $12.50/hour. Heck, $8/hr. That’s about $300/week.
That’s $300, $300, $300, $300. If you can come up with the equivalent of $300 four times for times per month - you *could* be retired. If you have a household making double that you can live really good with no housing/car payments.
ACA or just pay out of pocket for the cheapest you can get with a high deductible. You basically want something that won’t require really tapping into your nest egg so a $5-10k deductible will work. If you decide to get married, perhaps your partner can add you to their insurance.
Healthcare is cheap if it looks like you don't make much money. I put in $15k as an income for 1 adult 25 years old and in my state it says I'm eligible for medicaid. I've done estimates for me at a taxable income of $50k with a family of 4 and it says for a family of 4 we'd be looking at $269/month for a silver plan. It's even cheaper if you go with a bronze plan.
1) @Eddiehaskell's life works for him and him only. that is one thing that annoys me about these gurus. I agree that certain parts can be transferred to the masses but for the most part IMO these things need an alignment of all the "prescribed" parts. knowing his spending really is useless information because it can't be transferred to everyone. knowing his healthcare is useless, I have 3 kids and I'm in my late 50's.
2) lol remember the old saying 'If it were really as "easy" as they say it is EVERYONE would be doing it". hey we're a country that plays mega millions in order to get out of work so if extreme frugality was simple as MM would like to make it, we would all do it. It's like dieting, it's a billion dollar industry trying to sell that magic pill that will make it easy to lose weight and yet we are getting fatter every generation. I googled home building and the reality is in the US it is not as easy as he makes it, in 2014 only 55K people did it.
3) It's a quality of life issue also. No offense but I've been to Gastonia (just to use that example) many times (tons of family in Charlotte and Bowling Green. yeah I could get a much cheaper house and lower cost of living, I would also be swinging by the beams within one year so being able to retire at 45 just to be miserable makes no sense to me and it's not a trade off I would make. BUT others would be perfectly happy
I have 3 kids, I wanted to be able to send them to college without loans up the wazoo. That was important to my husband and I.
Again I'm glad for the MM, he made it work. I read his website and think "I like the guy who post as the realist better".
To me, so many of these debates come down to your personal values and what makes you happy ultimately. If you value your time above all, and have ways to fill that time that are inexpensive (maybe your favorite thing is just watching Netflix, which is so cheap, or writing, or spending time in nature like hiking, so many things), it makes perfect sense that you'd do just about whatever it takes to retire earlier and start enjoying your life more. Especially if you just never found a job you really enjoyed. You could probably plot these things on a graph even. If someone rates their job 8/10, they may be completely fine with living a higher expense lifestyle and enjoying "the finer things" because they also like their work, maybe it's very satisfying to them, maybe they like their coworkers, maybe they feel personally fulfilled by it, who knows what the factors are for them.
If someone hates their work, or they're just being honest that no work sounds THAT appealing to them (hey, I can't judge, honestly most jobs sound horrible to me, too), then earlier retirement even if it's not a luxurious retirement starts to sound like a pretty good option.
Yes, you explained that very well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JonathanLB
Of course, if it were me, I'm a cautious person with anything in life, I don't like to do the minimum. If I knew I could retire with $1M I'd want to have $1.5M just to be safe, or more. For me, if I were in most peoples' shoes, I wouldn't stop working until my passive income was enough to live on. I would never dip into my net worth to live. That's just me.
Most of the people in the FI crowd are pretty cautious, too. The 4% rule is cautious, and most of them follow it. On top of that, most of them will work passion projects, part time jobs, side gigs, writing gigs, small businesses, etc. It's usually the type of work that gives them much freer and more flexible schedules than they had in their regular jobs. And for daring to earn some extra income at something they enjoy on a sane schedule, they get accused of being frauds by some.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.