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Now 39, McCurry lives with his wife -- who followed him into retirement in 2016 -- and three children in Raleigh, North Carolina.
McCurry and his wife are followers of the Financial Independence, Retire Early (F.I.R.E.) Movement. But even with three kids, McCurry and his wife have managed to not turn back to their jobs in order to cover their family’s expenses.
Speaking as someone who has kids, it does help that certain things have gotten a LOT cheaper since I was a kid myself.
For example, back when I was middle school aged only very spoiled, rather rich kids had a TV in their room. Any TV. Even a 12 inch CRT dinosaur. I was literally 12 or 13 years old before I knew game consoles even existed because not only did we not have one ... no one I knew had one. The first game console I ever saw was a Super NES that belonged to the cousin of the guy who lived across the street when he came to visit.
I was 14 or 15 before I realized that computers were more than just a glorified typewriter. This was because all we had was a IBM clone with 5 inch floppy drives, MS-DOS, Word Perfect, and a dot matrix printer. Everyone I knew had something similar. I was 13 years old before I saw a GUI on a neighbors computer. My jaw hit the floor. I was 15 or 16 before I had 40 hours of free dial up Internet access from Netzero. I spent most of that time searching for how to turn off the ad bar Netzero put in their program and how to use the hosts file in Windows to manually block ads on webpages. Bandwidth was really, really precious back then.
I distinctly remember to this day that the only kids I knew back then that had anything other than rabbit ear access to basic channels like NBC and CBS were the rich kids across the way. Their parents had one of those old school satellite dishes that were so big you could lay in it and watch the stars. Those were the same rich spoiled kids who had a TV in their room.
Nowadays our own "deprived" children have 42 inch flat screen smart TVs in their own rooms with unlimited streaming over broadband. They have game consoles, albeit not the newest generation. They have access to an all in one PC with broadband Internet access. They think life sucks because "the computer is a little slow" or they don't have a PS4 like someone they know from school does
Edit to add: joking sarcasm aside, they have it so good they don't even know or begin to comprehend what wireless or WiFi or 802.11ac even is. They literally take broadband access from anywhere for granted. We're not rich, according to the common definition of Middle Class [2/3 - 2x the US median household income] we are solid Middle Class. Yet our 9 year old daughter seems a little fuzzy on the difference between youtube, a TV show, and a movie because they have grown up knowing nothing but real time hi def streaming. They don't even know what buffering is.
Last edited by happygeek; 11-07-2019 at 09:44 PM..
Now 39, McCurry lives with his wife -- who followed him into retirement in 2016 -- and three children in Raleigh, North Carolina.
McCurry and his wife are followers of the Financial Independence, Retire Early (F.I.R.E.) Movement. But even with three kids, McCurry and his wife have managed to not turn back to their jobs in order to cover their family’s expenses.
They don't address how they handled daycare, am I'm interested in hearing if they still like their "crappy school district" in middle and high school. I don't wish them ill, but I think it's a bit premature to think this is sustainable for the next 50-60 years.
They probably handled day care by his being a 'stay at home dad' since age 33. I've heard of Justin McCurry before, the Internet Retirement Police were always saying "he's not really retired, he's just a stay at home parent. His wife works!".
Now that his wife retired at age 39 I suppose they will find something else to hate on him for.
They don't address how they handled daycare, am I'm interested in hearing if they still like their "crappy school district" in middle and high school. I don't wish them ill, but I think it's a bit premature to think this is sustainable for the next 50-60 years.
Meh. Naysayers always say this. I think it reflects a lack of understanding of the mathematics of compounding. They've been retired for 5 years and they've got more money now than when they started.
Quite frankly, I think the whole financial system will collapse in the next 50 years, so whose to say what's sustainable? These folks have more put away in their 30s than most people in their 60s and they are taking out something like less than 3% of their portfolio every year, which is an uber conservative withdrawal rate.
I dont know if its nay sayers, I mean alot of stars have to align PLUS extreme discipline. At LEAST one of them at one point had to be making BIG money, the money does not just come out of thin air and even with compounding at best he had, what, 7 years of REAL income (not the "building up skills", Mcjob, college years) so he had to save BIG money in that time to be able to do this. You dont retire at 33 putting an extra $200 a month away.
I did not read the article but I doubt they provided a detailed spreadsheet of how they did it. And yes, if the market takes a bad hit they may be living like homeless people for a few years in order to avoid spending down a lot of principal.
If they published a detailed spreadsheet of how they did it with detailed explanations on item costs that are unrealistically low that would be a book worth buying.
I mean just maintaining a professional career to keep your income high requires a fairly non-trivial spend (continuing education, professional licenses, books, home office, equipment, etc).
This guy was not working a low barrier to entry mcjob to retire at 33.
Naysayers often don't but seem to love commenting anyway.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pittsflyer
but I doubt they provided a detailed spreadsheet of how they did it.
The details are on their blog. They're very open about their income and spending. You can only include so much in an article. And you don't have to buy a book. Their blog is free.
There must be more to the story. To retire in your thirties, you either got a large inheritance or started a company and sold it for big bucks. No way a person could save enough in 10-15 years to retire and have enough to last the rest of their life.
After reading more, it looks like he got lucky with blogging.
Last edited by jasperhobbs; 11-09-2019 at 04:31 AM..
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