livegolf So how did some of you younger folks retire early? High paying careers, two jobs, spouse working too, rental properties, no hobbies, side job, inheritance? What was your secret
Not retired yet here, but wife and I are way ahead of the game. Here's some of what we've done to help ourselves:
We're both savers, naturally. When we met at 26/22 we both had some nice savings already. Helps that wife's parents paid for her schooling, but she went to an inexpensive state school too. $40k+ a year for university seems insane.
I have never had a sip of alcohol. Imagine the money a normal person spends on drinking over 10 years, or a lifetime. Wife doesn't drink either.
We rarely go out to eat, and when we do we are pretty cheap about it. $20 a plate is way too much. Fortunately, we both really like Cracker Barrel.
We have cars that are 3 and 6 years old, a Hyundai and a Ford, both bought used, neither is fancy.
We both have jobs that pay quite well and we don't have kids. We don't have plans to have kids for a while or at all either, so that enormous expense is not present in our lives. We don't have pets.
We both spend about 7hrs a week in the gym, and our biggest expense is groceries. We spend around 150/wk for just us. Very healthy eaters, and we eat a lot.
Beyond the good decisions, we've been extremely fortunate. We're healthy (and spend a lot of time working on that, which is cheap,) she had a very comfortable upbringing (but was raised with morals and not spoiled) and we found each other young and unencumbered. She didn't even eat name brand cereal as a child because it was "too expensive."
We do have cable, road bicycles (bought at a deep discount!) lots of nice sneakers (DEEP discount!) and some amenities around the home we could live without if need be. She's put every dollar she has made over the last 4 years into paying off the house which is why we're so close so soon, and we had enough savings for a large down payment in the first place.
A good, fortunate life to start with and good choices made along the way. You can't always avoid medical catastrophe, but we make it a point to give ourselves the best chance at a long healthy life.