20 Tidbits of Advice From People Who Retired Young

According to Investopedia, when you're weighing the retiring young pros and cons, you should consider that early retirement gives you the opportunity to start a new career. This can be a good thing in the sense that you can do what truly fulfils you. Maybe you want to try your hand at one of the best jobs for retirees, for instance. However, a new career or business can also take on a life of its own and you won’t really be able to call yourself retired anymore.

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Millionaire and blogger Justin McCurry told Business Insider that after retiring at 33, it took him at least six months to slow down and feel comfortable doing nothing. It takes a while to realize that you don’t need to be productive every day. Like Justin, you might find it helpful to draw up a list of your activities for the week. Make sure that among all the leisure activities, you make time to do things that engage your brain.

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David Cox of the blog I Retired Young says that early retirement is an evolution. You’ll have days when you’re not sure you’ve done the right thing by retiring early. You may also feel like you’ve underachieved if you didn’t do anything thrilling all day. However, you’ll grow into the retirement lifestyle and realize that you can enjoy the things others might find boring.

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Author Grant Sabatier retired at 30 and told Business Insider that he wished he’d known beforehand that the goal wasn’t early retirement. The goal was actually to have more time to do what he wanted to do. His advice is that you need to define what retirement means to you and not what others think it should be. Grant retired with $1.25 million. You too can become a self-made millionaire even if you don’t have much money.

Reader’s Digest cites several case studies of people who made their money work for them to create a passive stream of income. Some people invest in the stock market. Others start businesses and sell them for a profit. There are, in fact, many ways to earn money while you’re sleeping. Having sources of passive income will ensure that you don’t run out of money while retired.

Author Grant Sabatier told Business Insider that he wished he’d known how much he would change. He’d spend the latter half of his twenties working almost non-stop to reach financial independence, only to find that when he retired at 30, his goals and dreams were different than they had been at 24. Your goals will change too. And it’s perfectly fine.

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If you want to retire young and travel the world, you need to have enough savings to finance your travels. Or you can follow blogger Mr. Crazy Kicks’ lead and start travel hacking. He retired at 34 and, as he told Business Insider, the moment he had more free time, he started signing up for travel cards which earned him travel credit, which in turn paid for flights. If you’re new to travel hacking, a good place to start is with these tips for finding cheap flights.

Financial advice blogger Brad Kingsley started a business in his twenties, sold it in his mid-forties and then retired early. He told Reader’s Digest that during their highest earning years, he and his wife would use the cash left after paying their retirement contributions to pay as much extra into their mortgage as they could. Paying off your debts is one of the most important things to do if you want to retire at 40.

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Another tip for early retirement from financial blogger Brad Kingsley is to downsize your home. It’s one of the top rules for budgeting in retirement. Brad told Reader’s Digest that because he and his wife had been paying extra money into their mortgage, they had built up significant equity by the time they retired. They used this to buy a smaller home and paid it off in cash.

Personal finance blogger J.P. Livingston retired at 28 with more than $2 million to her name. She told Business Insider that she wished she’d started a side hustle earlier. After retirement, she started using some of her hobbies and projects to build an extra income, but realized that she could have done it earlier. After all, she created an income stream of more than $60,000 in less than a year, using only five hours a week.

If you want to ease into the retirement lifestyle, it’s a good idea to start with one of the surprising jobs you can do from anywhere.

Andrew Van Fossen told Reader’s Digest that one of the things he did to keep costs down after retiring early was to relocate to a city where the cost of living was lower. When you’re retired, you don’t have a job that dictates where you should live. This makes it much easier to move to one of the best places for Canadians to retire and to start a whole new adventure.

When you’re young and retired, what to do depends very much on what your partner can and wants to do. After all, you can’t just pack your bags and travel the world if your partner still has job responsibilities. As financial planner David Rae told Reader’s Digest, you and your partner need to be on the same page when it comes to saving for retirement and making the dream a reality.

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Just because you’re retired doesn’t mean you can stop paying taxes. When you start planning for early retirement, you should consult with a financial advisor. This way you can get retirement tax tips that will protect your nest egg.

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Most advice about retiring early will include the tip that you shouldn’t take the plunge unless you’re ready. However, as travel blogger Joe Olson – who retired at 29 – told Business Insider, it’s perfectly fine to retire before you think you’re ready. If you run out of money, there are many ways to get back on your feet. Going back to work for a few years doesn’t mean you’ve failed.

Kristy Shen and her husband Bryce retired from their jobs as computer engineers when they were in their early thirties. As Kristy told Business Insider, one of the things they decided to do in order to manage their money was to avoid the herd mentality. Just because everyone else is buying a house, doesn’t mean you have to as well. You need to focus on the math rather than on emotion when it comes to making decisions post retirement.

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Ali and Joe Olson were teachers who lived frugally and invested in real estate. This made it possible for them to retire in their early thirties with $1 million in the bank, so they could travel the world. They continued living frugally, though. As they told Mad Fientist, it takes a shift in your mindset and learning to be happy with what you have. This attitude will also help you to retire with less money.

The Mad Fientist, real name Brandon, is a blogger who retired from his job as software developer at 34 and moved to Scotland with his wife. In an interview with Business Insider, he said that he was shocked at how few people take advantage of their local library. After all, at the library you have access to books, music, movies and much more, all of it for free.

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One of the things about early retirement that may surprise you is that others may find it difficult to accept. They may keep offering you jobs, for instance. As Mr. Tako, who writes the blog Mr. Tako Escapes told Business Insider, he had to face lots of criticism from others when he made the choice to retire at 38. You’ll need to learn not to let the haters get to you.

Blogger Chris Reiner told Business Insider that it was hard to reach the goal of financial freedom. Harder still, however, was finally leaving work at 37. It’s scary to embark on this new journey, but once you’ve done it, you’ll never look back. As Chris says, his only regret is that he wishes he’d retired even earlier.

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"Lifestyle creep" refers to spending more money as soon as you start earning more. Steve Adcock and his wife worked as engineers, one of the highest paying jobs in the world, before retiring in their mid-thirties. Steve told Vice that one of the ways they managed to pull this off was to resist "lifestyle creep". Instead, whenever they got a raise or a bonus, they’d just put the extra money straight into their investments.

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