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Agreed. I have read a few things written by people in this position. They are bored out of their minds. All their friends have jobs, families, lives to live so they end up playing golf or going on trips by themselves. They find themselves with no reason to get out of bed in the morning, or in many cases after noon. They have no purpose. It's like Christmas every day, it would get old very very fast at that age.
These people are identifying themselves with having a 9-5 traditional job.
If I retired now at 29, I would definitely not being interested in working a traditional career. The playing golf every day, going to the gym in the morning, etc., sounds quite nice to my butt in a seat from 9-6.
Eventually, yeah, I'd find something to do, but it wouldn't be a traditional occupation ever again.
I had a couple I knew that did what they called "temporary retirement" in their 30's. They had worked and lived a frugal lifestyle since college and had saved up a nest egg that they could life off for a year or so. They quit their jobs (RN and IT) and bought an RV. They traveled the US in their RV for a little over a year and when they arrived in CA, they found jobs and went back to work as per their plan. They wanted to hike and bike the country while they were still in their prime health years. Looking back, that would have been really fun, I just didn't have a partner that would have embraced the concept. In the end, I guess you can take a "gap year" or "temporary retirement" anytime that you could afford it.
I had a couple I knew that did what they called "temporary retirement" in their 30's. They had worked and lived a frugal lifestyle since college and had saved up a nest egg that they could life off for a year or so. They quit their jobs (RN and IT) and bought an RV. They traveled the US in their RV for a little over a year and when they arrived in CA, they found jobs and went back to work as per their plan. They wanted to hike and bike the country while they were still in their prime health years. Looking back, that would have been really fun, I just didn't have a partner that would have embraced the concept. In the end, I guess you can take a "gap year" or "temporary retirement" anytime that you could afford it.
This isn't retirement in the traditional sense at all though.
I could save up $30k-$40k and take off for a year. These days, I'd be more worried about how an employer would view that than the difficulty of saving up the cash.
I had a room mate in college (this was in 1969) who was looking forward to the $2M (that's like $20M today) that he was going to inherit from his grandmother at the age of 21.
That totally messed up his life. His attitude was, "why bother, I've got it made."
He never studied, got into drugs, and failed out of school. I doubt that he is still alive today.
If you "retire" in your 20s, you need to have a life other than just sitting around.
It seems difficult and ambitious but not impossible.
One has to be frugal of course.
Saving from an early age(possibly before 18) and getting no or little college debt seems like key points.
After couple of years work and aggressive savings it seems doable.
But you need good stock returns which are not possible at the moment.
Retiring at 25-28 sounds nice
It sounds good, on the one hand. On the other hand, one of the joys in life is to find something you're good at, do it, and get paid well for it. It can be very fulfilling, builds self-esteem, and be fun, too. If you're a great salesman, it would be thrilling to sell, I imagine, knowing that you're one of the best. Very gratifying and even fun. (Selling would not be something I could do very well, though.) Or engineering or architecture or a statistics geek or a professor. Or maybe a talent for being the fastest buy on the assembly line. Whatever it is you excel at. Then there's the social aspect of socializing and working with others in your field.
If you retire at 25, what do you do? You get another job or start another business! Because just floating around not using your skills and brain would be very boring, indeed, and result in missing out on one of the joys in life. It's not the only joy in life, but it's one of them.
Then there's the lack of close friendship, perhaps. Almost everyone is at work all day, except you. When they get together, there's shop talk, career talk...except for you. It can be lonely, I expect, unless you're Paris Hilton and chum with other multi-millionaires who don't work. But even THEY have endorsements and product ventures, and a work schedule.
When a person gets to be 50ish or so, maybe burnout sets in, and you can think about retiring then. Or starting a new challenge, when you don't need the money and can be a little riskier in your ventures.
There are people who inherit millions and are able to do this. But usually they don't turn out very well. It might seem like fun at first but after a decade or so--what do they do? What's their purpose in life? What do they have in common with their friends? What do they think of their own personal value to the world?
They would need to have been very well raised in order to achieve a balanced life style and not turn into a nut case. They would need to find a way to contribute by volunteering or doing something else useful. If not, they end up on drugs or die in their expensive sports car because they feel so entitled that they don't think they have to obey the rules of the road.
Sheesh, even royalty have things that are required of them. That way their lives are not totally meaningless.
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