Early Retirement Thread

It honestly depends on what kind of person you are but there's definitely something for everyone.
The major cities are very close to their western counterparts in most regards and are 99% white, much cheaper and friendlier overall.
You can easily wife a 9/10 average aryan qt and lead a quiet traditional life further out in the countryside if /pol/'s your thing.
It only sucks if you have to work (and aren't a software developer).

What's the culture like compared to France, Germany, etc.
And how much do software developers make?

Pretty sure my 225 bitcoin will allow me to retire in the near future

>when you're constantly worried about money
If you were constantly worried about money, you "retired" way too early. Like most extreme retirement stories, you probably VASTLY underestimated what you need to live a truly carefree, fulfilling life.

im already retired at a young age, Im a trader NEET

No, I'm ok now. I was talking about in my working days, being constantly vigilant about spending.

But it does become deeply ingrained over the years, so even when you do have enough, it never feels that way.

I honestly hope everything works out for you, but your post contained many red flags. Selling your house for something smaller, and moving to a less expensive location are "tricks" that extreme retirement type use to get out earlier. And then they wonder why they're not happy living in a strange place in a strange house.

In my mind, if you have to downsize and downgrade your entire life to retire early, then you shouldn't retire early.

You realize that just backs up what he said right?

Well, what's done is done, I guess. But to be honest, I was even less happy with the more expensive house, higher taxes, worse commute and job stress. I was in the Bay Area and things have been getting really bad over there in the past several years, so moving may have happened regardless.

I retired at 32, I'm 44 now.
I worked from the age of 12 till I was 32. From 12-30 was spent employed by others, and from 30-32 I was self employed.

When I retired I had a net worth of just over a million US. I live fairly frugally, I drive new cars and blow money on vacations and dining but other than that my expenses are extremely low. I still own my business so that pays for a significant amount of my house, vehicles, utilities, etc.

I didn't save for it. I just stopped working when I could afford to.

That's an interesting way to do the math, but nice work. Enjoy it. I doubt I need to tell you that, though. kek

This is an issue of poor planning and consumerism. If you feel that you can't be happy without spending a ton of money on frivolous nonsense (which you can, by the way, because purchases have exactly *nothing* to do with long-term happiness) then that just means you needed more money before you could retire.

The whole point is to lower your living expenses as much as possible, PERMANENTLY, so you get the two-fold benefit of 1) saving more each year and 2) needing to save less in total before you're free. You don't "cut living expenses for a while" and then suddenly have enough to cover an overinflated lifestyle.

>you can't do anything fun or have any hobbies unless you're spending 90% of your take home pay
You sound like a marvelously boring person.

Right. Well, look at 25% savings rate. A drooling retard could manage that even on a meager salary, and that gets you out at ~55 years old, assuming you never make more and never spend less. An extra decade of non-working life would absolutely be worth it to me.

Are you really "retired" if you're still running the business? Not disparaging what you've done, just curious what you consider retirement.

No, I'm never retiring. Or at least I hope to never retire.

Reason being is that I'm a former NEET babby and my mind turned to mush during that pitiful period of my life. Some days I'm surprised that I managed to regain my cognitive faculties but, since I know now how the inactive life is, I'll never go back.

Howd you get so much? Did you invest early?

How did you manage to lift yourself up from that lifestyle?

It honestly wasn't easy. It took a lot of coming to terms and setting up my life in such a way that I will not slip back into my old ways. Some days are better than others, and I still have my moments.

Eventually you'll get sick of your own shit, and that's where the change begins.

What job did you start with? I'm facing a similar situation now, and I want to get out before I sink too deep.

leddit's workonline board has a lot of sources. i did the mechanical turk shit for a while. what i did was a consecutive hour of work to start, followed by a break, another hour, break, so on. Protip: install addons, there's many for mturk.

Now that I actually feel less worthless I am piecing together the next step towards sustainable work, which I'm not at yet. Small steps, ultimately.

Thanks. Good luck, m8.

Saving for retirement depends on the person what their goals are for retirement. I personally don't require a lot of savings. To me retirement is the ability to quit working and have passive income and/or savings pay for my cost of living, which won't be that much after I pay off my house. To others retirement may be buying a Corvette and moving to Florida. They require a lot more before they are able to retire.

I should have my house payed for by the time I'm 39. Will probably be sooner as I didn't account for future rises in income and I could pay extra principle payments on my mortgage. After that I will probably try to start a business. I'm thinking of something with low initial cost like a janitorial company. If it grows then good, if not I spent $10-20K on a failed investment. If whatever my mid life crisis business doesn't work out, I will probably just continue working. I like my job and I'm not really that eager to retire early.

>just curious what you consider retirement.
I work an average of 6 hours a week, almost none of which is spent on the job site. I have employees I haven't seen or spoken to in years.

I'm 22, hoping to retire around 45. Maybe earlier, but there'll be a lot of variation based on my salary increasing over time and inflation.
My main concern is not having enough in retirement. Any input on how to secure retirement income without making massive investment sacrifices?

Invest in passive income if you want to retire that early. You won't make it with just savings alone.

Just graduated college and found a high paying tech job. Should have enough to retire in 5-6 years.

Dump your money in an S&P500 index fund like Vanguard's VOO.

~2% dividend and long term average 7% total returns.

That really is it. Mr Money Mustache, website linked earlier in the thread, has a good majority of his money invested ONLY in VOO.

Going to retire at the age of 66 instead of 67. Feels good man

Worked shit jobs until I won the lottery in an office pool. Was frugal as shit, still am to a large degree. That shit is a hard habit to break.

>S&P500 index fund
For the millionth time, no. Investing in a broad market index will increase your average long-term return by 2-3% annually without significantly increasing your risk. Please learn to type "VTI" instead of "VOO."

I'll just make it if not just live off the land and then an hero peacefully, that is if I don't make it which is very unlikely

Selling anything of value that i own and building hunting cabins to rent out.

We will see i guess.

Source? Genuinely curious.

I'm early 40s and was laid off multiple times in my life. So if save money then lose it trying to survive until I got another job.

Finally landed a decent job. $50k and rent is only $200. Owe money on a credit card but that's being paid off pretty rapidly. No other debt. Next year i should be able to save 20k a year plus about $7k more from 401k company match program. Another 1-2k from profit share. Other money outside of pretax 401k that i do happen to save goes in an IRA. So about 30k a year towards retirement. I can live on 10-15k comfortably. Will inherit land and a nice home that I could sell, rent, or do something else with.

I also have 2 side jobs. One is playing stocks, the other is writing software. If I make just 5k from that per year i should be able to retire mid 50s or earlier. Especially since I've gotten pretty good at trading. And none of that savings includes pension or social security.

Only issue will be health care. But hopefully by then that will be manageable

>Source?
Mid-caps and small-caps, which are excluded from the S&P 500 (VOO), have historically had better returns than large-caps. They also have greater volatility, but this tends not to matter to a long-term (10+ year) investor.

VTI is Vanguard's total market fund. It's a cap-weighted index that includes small and mid caps as well as all the stocks in the S&P 500. If the future looks anything like the last several decades, then we can reasonably expect VTI to outperform VOO by a couple percentage points, annually, on average.

Interesting, I'd be curious to see the really long-term averages of small and mid caps. I have thought about that though, since the returns of small caps have been so much higher over the last few decades... But at that point it's just gambling. I guess VTI does make more sense.

There's credible evidence that small-caps -- specifically small-cap value stocks -- have outperformed the market without adding appreciable risk to a portfolio given a long enough investing horizon.

bengrahaminvesting.ca/Research/Papers/French/The_Cross-Section_of_Expected_Stock_Returns.pdf

Any prudent person would be wise to choose VTI over VOO. There's just too much evidence that small-caps -- and mid-caps, for that matter -- are accretive to portfolio performance. And because VTI is cap-weighted, your basically getting a 70% VOO fund anyway. I think its pretty much a given that VTI is superior to VOO for anyone with a long-term investing horizon.

In fact, there are many intelligent investors who believe in strategically over-weighting into small-caps (and in some arguments, mid-caps too). I'm personally slightly overweighted in both, but only to about +5% in each compared to the market weighting. Some are big supporters of the idea, while others (correctly) point out that there's not enough data yet to be sure that over-weighting into small-caps will pan out in the years to come. (Indeed, it's worth noting that large-caps have outperformed small-caps in most of the years since Fama's study. That's likely just a coincidence, but its true nonetheless.).

My ideal portfolio recommendation to a young person would be something like:

50% VTI (Total Market)
20% VXUS (Total International)
10% VNQ (REIT)
5% VO (Midcap Blend)
4% VBR (Smallcap Value)
8% BND (US Bonds)
3% BNDX (International Bonds)

That gives a well-rounded highly diversifed portfolio with a moderate over-weighting into mid and small-caps. But most people don't want to own seven funds and have to rebalance them annually. The lazier way would be to buy a Target Retirement fund (which includes VTI, VXUS, BND, and BNDX already, and rebalances itself) and then add the REIT, mid, and small caps to that.

That's my 2 cents. Do the research and make up your mind.

It's not often that someone will actually back up what they post on Veeky Forums. I'll check out that study, thanks user.

>Right. Well, look at 25% savings rate. A drooling retard could manage that even on a meager salary, and that gets you out at ~55 years old, assuming you never make more and never spend less. An extra decade of non-working life would absolutely be worth it to me.
lol you fucking retard it's exactly what i said
55yo you can roll up and die that's not early retirement. fucking asshole. you think i haven't read that blog?

personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundId=0548&FundIntExt=INT#tab=1

8.47% in the last 16 years. Not that much better than just holding the entire market.

y = (i-e) / e

hmm, so basically the most effective way to attack this is to decrease your expenses.

>8.47% in the last 16 years. Not that much better than just holding the entire market.
Large-caps have outperformed small-caps in the last ten years. I said as much in .

However, 10 years really isn't that long a time period when it comes to developing predictions for model portfolios. It's recent performance trend is long enough to be noteworthy, but not long enough to dismiss Fama's research altogether. (He did win a Nobel Prize, after all; let's give him a little credit.)

As the case stands today, I'm in the camp for moderate overweighting into small and mid caps. But the research continues.

In any event, the evidence is clear that VTI is superior to VOO. The long-term performance data confirms it, not to mention the additional diversification that VTI brings (3000+ holdings versus 500).

>99% white
>much cheaper
>friendlier overall

I'm black. I want proof not promises.

Thats why you keep working part time once you get to your goal. It allows you an easy life with some structure and keeps your hands off the principal.

>fighting off lifestyle creep

I don't think so. If anything I've gotten more frugal over the years. as you learn more skills and workarounds you don't want to go back to paying for shit. And cooking skills only get better with time. Right now I'm a better cook than any restaurant serving under $20 a plate. In 5-10 years I'll be even better. Now I only eat out for things I can't make myself, like if it requires a lot of difficult to find ingredients. I've stopped owning a car, never going back, I buy all clothes from goodwill now and barely buy clothes at all. I use amazon to get assorted stuff I need for super cheap. I'm full on minimalist at this point. I make better coffee at home than the shops, so I don't go out for that anymore. Except for rent all my expenses have decreased over time.

Thing about being NEET is that you have financial worries and you worry about the future. It causes anxiety and depression. Early retirement removes those concerns so there are no negative mental effects. You could also work on what you WANT to. For example I know a guy who retired early, and he runs a hostel now because he enjoys it. You could pursue a hobby or move wherever you like.

I'm 24 with about $55k savings. I'm a gov employee with a pension too which I expect to be about $25k to 30k in real dollars per year. Earliest I can get the pension is age 53 I believe but I plan on retiring at around age 40 and waiting until I'm retirement age to start getting it. I can retire no problem with $500k which I expect to have in my mid $30s but unless I have some sort of mid life crisis I'll probably just work for 5-7 more years to get to the million dollar mark at early 40s. So my income with my pension and investment income will be over $100k annually which is more than enough. This is the conservative plan which I believe is pretty achievable. My more ambitious plans is to start a business that increases my savings rate and retire in my 30s with a million plus and just keep the business running on the side while I travel around and have fun.

>retired
>work part time
Look, I'm not going to tell you how to manage your life, but I hope you understand that most people don't consider those two things to be consistent. Working less is cool, but its definitely not the same as not working at all.

I easily make double my expenses.
>owning a car
>living alone instead of room mates
>not spending $2 a day on food
>drinking/smoking
>girlfriend
>going out every weekend
>buying new iPhone

then congrats you can retire relatively early. in 17 years or so as that user said.

there is a program where you put $1000 every month into vanguard and in 20-22 years you have a million dollars in savings i think.

you have to set a target sum and date and start saving up. basically you need a sum of your yearly expenses * 25 to keep up a certain lifestyle.

>yearly expenses * 25 to keep up a certain lifestyle
The 4% safe-withdrawal rule (source of the 25x rule-of-thumb) has been proven less reliable than originally thought. This is especially true for someone in early retirement. If you want to be very confident that your money will actually last, you should be using a 3% safe-withdrawal rate (33x yearly expenses).

I wouldn't worry about it so much. 4% rule assumes no social security/pension in old age. It also assumes that you won't reduce expenses drastically in case the market tanks. It assumes that you won't find a part time job to supplement income when going gets bad etc.
You can definitely attempt 4% SWR given that you're willing to be flexible and hustle if need be.

i'm imagining in case of an early retirement i would still work the odd jobs that suit me and still add to my savings from them. i would only say goodbye to full employment. i would definitely try to make my own business on the side at the very least. 25 is minimum 35 is more optimal i agree.

As soon as you save more than you spend, and you have enough saved to cover any immediate emergency, you are financially free.

>I wouldn't worry about it so much.
While I see your points, the most important consideration is that the Trinity Study (source of the 4% guideline) only looked at "normal" retirements covering 15 to 30 years. If you retire early, you may need your money to last 40, 50, or even 60+ years. Plugging those extended durations into a Monte Carlo simulator produces a lot more uncertainty.

Running out of money in the latter years of your retirement is pretty bad. By that time, its too late to do anything about it except curtail your standard of living. So basically you don't get to live the life you wanted. That sucks, and suggests you should be more conservative (3% rule) to avoid it.

>i'm imagining in case of an early retirement i would still work the odd jobs that suit me and still add to my savings from them
Maybe. Depends on your skills. It's not always that easy to jump in and out of the work force.

I'm still paying off student loans but my expenses are only 15% of my income. The plan is to have $2M saved up and invested in the next 10 years and quit my job to start my own small business.

Get a skill in a niche that's highly demanded.

A relative does Aesthetic Surgery (Lefort 1, etc) and made bank, he retired with a fucking massive nest egg after 6-7 years.

for me it's pretty easy. i used to freelance for years.