It’s possible to exit the rat race at a young age and explore the world, there are examples of people around the web doing just that. Typically the stories I see involve people saving over half of their income for typically 8-15 years. The numbers behind retiring early simply don’t lie. If you save 70% of your income for 10 years, you’ll reach the crossover point and be able to retire early, it’s just simple math.
Go Curry Cracker
A couple and their young child saved for 10 years over 70% of their income. They believe in only renting, using geo-arbitrage and use travel credit cards for discounted travel. In 2016 they visited 16 countries and it looks like they don’t have any plans on stopping soon. Very inspiring couple. Check out their blog
Adventuring Along
Unlike Go Curry Cracker this couple used real estate to finance their retirement and travels. By scooping up discounted real estate first in Vegas, then other cities in the US this pair of teachers were able to eventually buy 15 houses and live off the income to travel by the time they reached 30. Their journey took approximately 8 years. Here’s a brief article summarizing their retirement journey.
The Power of Thrift
This former corporate lawyer was able to save and invest her way to over $700,000 by the time she reached the ripe old age of 30. She now spends the majority of her time travelling and working on her bucket list. Check out her article on Forbes or click on the link above to go directly to her blog.
Brad and Cynthia Bowman
Brad and Cynthia don’t have a blog or website I can link to, but they do have a very nice write-up in Time magazine, which you can read online. They currently live in Spain on roughly $3,500 a month, which is paid for half by investment real estate in the US and the remainder from freelance writing and proceeds they earned from selling their furniture business. The couple was working a ton and getting burned out:
“The couple had been running their Los Angeles furniture business for fifteen years, working every day and putting in 60 or 70 hours each week, struggling to find quality time with their daughters. Brad, in his 50s, and Cynthia, in her 40s, were burnt out. Cynthia asked herself, “If the business closed tomorrow, what would I have to show for all this effort?”
–Time Magazine–
So they decided to prioritize their time over money and live a slower life in Spain. They were inspired by the book How To Retire Early And Live Well With Less Than A Million Dollars, which you can check out on Amazon. Here’s a synopsis of the book:
In 1981, at the age of 29 the author Gillette Edmunds began living off his investments of just several hundred thousand dollars. In the intervening years, he has made more than $5 million in investment profits. Edmunds was not an investment adviser or a commissioned mutual funds sales representative: he was a financial journalist and an individual investor.
