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Yesterday we talked about starting young, not just as it applies to saving, but as it applies to accelerating your retirement plan.
Maybe you couldn’t find your WHY?
After all, who wants to think about retirement when they are still in their 20’s or even 30’s? Most are still thinking about their job!
Yet, as yesterday’s post showed, there are some good reasons for starting early. And, who wouldn’t want to retire early if their goals matched these from a recent survey of GenXfinance‘s readers:
Being a ‘Gen X’ PF site, we can probably assume that most of the respondents were younger than, say, me. But, it’s even more interesting to notice how each of the first three categories (where the majority of the votes fell) require MONEY and/or TIME:
1. Extensive Travel
Think about it, you can escape money to a greater of lesser degree if you are willing to travel frugally, work at least during some of your stopovers (haven’t you noticed how all the ‘servers’ in restaurants in vacations areas are young foreigners?) …
… but, you can’t escape the time element: this means that you have to be ‘retired’ from your day job.
2. Not going to work; just taking things one day at a time
Obviously, this means that you are retired from your day job … but, two things happen when this occurs:
i) Your income goes DOWN
ii) Your spending goes UP
For those who subscribe to the “75% of current income in retirement” theory, I ask this: have you ever tried spending time doing anything BESIDES WORKING that doesn’t COST money?
Think about it … it stopped me from cashing out when I was offered $4 mill. a few years before I eventually did cash out (for a helluva lot more!).
3. Doing volunteer or charity work
All [charity] work and no play makes Jack a dull boy … this is really 2. plus you are spending some of your time (perhaps a lot) giving back. This is a good thing … as well as the great work you are doing, you are spending less time … well … spending!
4. Other
If you scroll down the comments attached to GenXfinance’s post, you will see that most of the ‘other’-folk either mean not retiring at all (like the ‘pursuing a second career’ option) or involve a similar outflow of money and/or a similar savings-account-draining, non-income-earning amount of time.
But, they are all things that you will probably want to start whilst still young enough to enjoy them …
… which means starting to build a pretty damn large nest-egg pretty damn soon!
Let me know what (and how much by when) ‘retirement’ means to you?
I put “extensive traveling” on the top of my list. As soon as my plan kicks in (it is now already, just not there yet), I will begin to do a “massive action” to plan for my world traveling. Right now it is massive action to jump start the plan.
So besides the number $2,000,000, world traveling is another goal. 🙂
PS: AJC, if you have the sound of the chat a bit louder, I’ll put captions for your clips and we can embedded them in your blog, in a separate page. Yes?
I’m thinking about retirement a lot (in my twenties) because much like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, things always go easier with the end product in mind.
@ SRD – TubeCaption is a great new product for captioning YouTube videos; but, you are welcome to do so. Just let me know during this Thursday’s 8pm CST live chat if we need to turn the sound up/down.
BTW: $2 Mill. TODAY should give you a safe (no-need-to-work) income indexed for inflation, for a long time (I hesitate to say ‘for life’) of $50k – $70k p.a. (again, TODAY – if you wait 10 years, you had better plan for $3Mill for the ‘same’ income) … does that pay for everything that you need INCLUDING travel? Or, will you need to find ways to earn an income in semi-retirement, instead?
@ Josh – Who knows, by planning for ‘retirement’ in your 20’s you might actually be able to retire in you 20’s or 30’s?!
I’d like to retire by 30. Lofty goals, considering I just turned 26 on Monday!
@ Heidi – depends on what you plan on eating 😉
i) Your income goes DOWN
ii) Your spending goes UP
Amen!
The problem retirement makes you have time on your hands, then you tend to spend to keep yourself busy.
I always say I am smi retired, meaning My income goes to my lifestyle and investments (retirement, stocks, colloge fun) I don’t work for payments, My side income and husband take care of bills.
I doubt if I can completely stop working. I will be bored as hell.
I will more likely take a sabbatical for about a year than straight retire
@ M/Monk – Or you can write a couple of blogs and research a book … seems to soak up a lot of time 🙂
I have a long list of things to do when I eventually retire (hopefully in about 5 years time). Writing a book, travel, cure my technophobia, some charity work, study part time etc. Apart from travel, most of these are fairly cheap. If I feel concerned about boredom or cutting myself off from the office life I will always have the option of reducing to part time working for a while.
@ Trainee – my list is very similar to yours, but when you get closer to 50, your needs suddenly jump from coach/backpacking to business class / 5 star … hope you plan for that, well in advance!
Inside the mind of ‘Kimbo Slice’
http://tubecaption.com/watch?v=0idnTreAFuU
A friend of mine is really into Kimbo, a street fighter. Fighting is not really my thing but this interview shows how much a guy goes thru to fullfil his dream, to take care of this family, to be able to pay the bills. It’s not about the fight, it is about his determination.
If you’re not okay with the occasional strong language, skip it till the 7th minute — but you may miss out some good insights about how hard life is for some of us.
I have more respects for people like Kimbo who literally fights for his dream. In the end, no pain no gain — unless you are born rich.
@ sr3d – Thanks, but struggled with the sound … wouldn’t it be great if the video had captions on it?! 😉