Retire in Your 30s

The financial freedom of a modest, early retirement is actually achievable for many smart and motivated people in college or their early 20s. If you make early retirement your highest priority in life and follow a disciplined path to obtaining it, you should be able to leave work permanently in your 30s and spend your life and time at your complete discretion. Here's how to start moving in that direction.

Steps

 * 1) Define the dream, while documenting the reality. How do you want to spend the rest of your life, post-retirement? Where do you want to live? What do you want to do? And most importantly of all, how much will it cost, year after year, for the rest of your life? This will tell you how much money you need to save and what kind of investments you're going to have to make in order to support your retirement lifestyle. Don't forget to include things like health insurance and the effect of inflation. Make a detailed spreadsheet to chart all these variables exactly.
 * 2) Make a lot of money. Perhaps the quickest, high odds way to do this is by focusing on landing a high paying job. Consider the types of jobs that pay extraordinarily well in exchange for hard work, little psychological satisfaction, and a punishing lifestyle.  After all, you're not choosing a career in the sense that most people are, seeking lifelong satisfaction, as you hope to be only in this job for a decade. Focus on jobs that will reward the fact that you are willing to work harder than anyone else.  Some suggestions:
 * 3) *Investment banking - These Wall Street jobs can pay extremely well. In exchange, you sell your soul: the hours are a grind, the work is dull, and your boss is an egomaniac.  But the goal is to get in, work hard and bank the money.  Focus on delivering the results, and watch your peers melt away as they think "there's no way I can do this for 40 years" - you know you don't have to.
 * 4) * Sales (positions in high-ticket industries, such as many high-tech enterprise software companies) - Because your pay is directly linked to your sales, and your sales are in a large part proportional to how hard you are willing to work, you can earn a lot doing this dull job of sucking up to corporate IT drones.
 * 5) * Engineering - Software development, bio-tech, and other technical positions are high risk paths to wealth. Unlike the investment banking and sales which have high current income, many engineering jobs only hit the jackpot on chancy stock options. However, if you join early at the right startup, you might be be able to Buy a Private Island after 4 years of work. But more likely, you will grind away endless hours for an incompetent 27 year old CEO and his insatiable venture capital masters before the company goes belly up, leaving your options worthless.
 * 6) Lower your expenses. The #1 reason people in high paying salaried jobs are still working hard when they are fifty is because they can't keep their spending under control.  To soothe their agony regarding their dull, demanding job, they placate themselves with toys that fail to make them happy: a penthouse apartment, a fancy car, a diamond ring.  Resist the massive pressure to dress, eat and shop like your peers, and live a modest lifestyle.  Focus on work, as your play will come later.  Some keys to not spending:
 * 7) * Buy or Rent a modest apartment/condo. You will be at work all the time, so do not splash out on housing.  Clean and small will do just fine. Studies show that homeowners have 5x the net worth of renters, so buy something well within your means as soon as it's financially feasable.
 * 8) * Don't eat fancy dinners. Unless you are a gourmet connoisseur, you have to admit that a $5 burrito tastes 90% as good as a fancy steak served on fine china.
 * 9) * Keep a budget. Track your expenses.  Set goals for saving and celebrate when you meet them.
 * 10) Invest wisely. It is beyond the scope of this how-to to explain exactly how to invest your money, but do the research and find a way to make your savings grow and work for you. The richest people invest in real estate and the stock market. Remember that the more you play it safe, the longer it'll probably take you to retire; on the flip side, the more you gamble, the more you risk losing your money and having to spend another year or more at your high-paying but miserable job.
 * 11) Keep your eye on the mark. Not everyone is cut out for the kind of life you're going to have to lead in order to reach such an early retirement. There will be many times when you feel like giving in and throwing in the towel. Have a very clear vision and several ways to remind yourself why you're doing what you're doing, because you'll need them.
 * 12) CONSIDER JOINING THE ARMED FORCES. SERVICEMEN CAN RETIRE AFTER 20 YEARS OF SERVICE. THEREFORE, IF YOU ENLIST AT 18 YEARS OF AGE, YOU MAY RETIRE AT 38 YEARS OF AGE.

Tips

 * While you will almost certainly want to work somewhere like New York, London, or San Francisco while you are earning your retirement, it is entirely impractical to retire there. Your goal is to sock away savings while living in an expensive city, then move somewhere cheaper. There are plenty of wonderful, affordable places to live in the US, or you can reach your retirement level even faster by moving to a cheaper country.  There are entire colonies of retired Americans in cities like San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, OR Beautiful Morelia. One unfortunate outcome of this move is the distance it will create from your friends and family, although it is not as far as you think(-e.g. a flight from Guadalajara, Mexico to New York City is only 5 hours away!!!. But this is one of the trade-offs you will have to make in order to gain financial freedom).
 * Consider the single life, at least until you retire. To achieve an early retirement, a period of sacrifice and hard work is mandatory, and finding a partner who shares your ambition sufficiently to make that sacrifice will be difficult.  Furthermore, finding someone who shares your vision for geographic relocation and kids, and will maintain that vision, is doubly difficult.  You can pursue relationships at leisure once you are retired, and you will have more time and energy to focus on your career while you are earning.  But if true (and frugal) love should come your way before your retirement, you may want to pair up then instead of waiting.
 * Having children can be expensive, but it does not have to be. If you know how to stretch your dollar, the extra cost is very manageable.
 * Remember that you only need enough money to last you for say, 80 years, assuming that you don't live to be over 115. This reduces your required nest egg size, since you do not have to live only off of interest, you can take out capital as well. By investing at 7% you can accumulate $1,200,000, which becomes a $50,000 (growing at 3% a year for inflation) income for the next 80 years!
 * Even if you do not actually retire in 10 years because the money earned in this way may not result in the lifestyle of a lottery winner-millionaire, this is a good way to get ahead. If you are okay with working hard for about 10 years by following all of the above, you will have set aside a very nice nest egg, and be considerably ahead of your peers who chose the 'easy' route.  You can then get out of that high-stress job and continue working ... full or part time ... in a different environment, while you monitor your nest egg and let time-value/compound interest do their thing.
 * Even if you are "retired" you may wish to take up an enjoyable job, then you have no stress for getting fired, and you can supplement your nest-egg income to live really well, even on a teacher's salary, for instance.
 * Remember with all of these suggested options to take breaks whenever you can, and commune with nature or creatively express yourself. For example:  take urban day hikes; most cities at least have parks, and paint, draw, write, or sing and dance.  Don't forget who and what you are entirely or retirement will not be worth it - the journey is important, not just the goal.

Warnings

 * The retirement described here is a modest early retirement, not the "winning the internet lottery" type of retirement available to folks like Pierre Omidyar or Sergey Brin. This is a plan where hard work can get you most of the way, whereas the jet-set early retirees mix in a lot of luck and timing.  As such, your retirement lifestyle will be significantly more modest than most people think of when they consider early retirement.
 * Be aware this article is not titled "How to Be Happy". The financial freedom of early retirement described in this article requires sacrificing many things that most people believe are the greatest sources of happiness in life, such as friendships, having kids, or driving a Mercedes-Benz and wearing clothes with designer labels. It is critical that you are self-aware enough to understand whether the freedoms and benefits of retiring early will be sufficiently rewarding to offset the sacrifices suggested by this article.  This is a question only you can answer.
 * Unfortunately, if you're already in your late 20s, it may be impossible to follow this strategy for retiring in your early 30s. While controlling your costs may still put you in a better financial position, you will already be set on a career path that may be difficult to redirect.  Your ability to get those high paying jobs will be in a large part the product of hard work and focus in high school and college, therefore develop the work ethic during those years to land that investment banking job.
 * Consider that retirement may be boring. You may have a more fulfilling life by getting a lower paying job that you might enjoy and work until age 65.

Related Tips and Steps

 * How to Get Out of Debt
 * How to Live Cheaply
 * How to Get Started Trading Options
 * How to Live in a Foreign Country Cheap
 * How to Switch Careers
 * How to Retire with Security
 * How to Become a Financial Advisor
 * How to Find Help With Investing
 * How to Apply for Social Security and Retirement Benefits
 * How to Reduce Expenses

Sources and Citations

 * Greenspun.com: Nice article about the pros and cons of early retirement
 * The Retire Early Home Page: How-to site by a 38-yr old engineer who retired early.