Follow the solid underlying principles espoused by Mr. Money Mustache and others in the FIRE community but without the same intensity.
I recently had the opportunity to sit down to dinner with a group of writers who focus on real estate investing and entrepreneurship. At dinner, I shared that I wrote about early retirement planning and at the time was a few weeks away from my own early retirement at the age of 41.
Then it hit me. Even at a table of financially literate investors, educators, and generally smart people there were misconceptions about what it takes to achieve financial independence and retire early . But unlike Mr. Money Mustache, very few people pay attention to their own personal spending. This is how the vast majority of Americans, from minimum-wage earners to highly paid professionals, lock themselves into a similar narrative. Most follow the same script of going to a job for 40-plus hours a week until age 60-70. Then they retire.
Another simple, but not obvious, truth is that you determine how much money you need to retire by how much you want to spend in retirement. This stands in stark contrast to conventional wisdom that says the income you need in retirement is an arbitrary percentage of the income you had in your working years.
My wife and I ultimately realized that we needed to develop a retirement plan that reflected our needs and wants. This included building an ample security cushion and enabling a life of abundance consistent with our values, allowing access to the activities we love and the people that we want to spend time with. For example, we are avid skiers and we love to travel. Cutting these items from our budget was a non-starter.
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