Comment by macNchz
9 years ago
I'm not a subscriber to this strategy, but the theory goes that if you save, in that scenario, 80% of your take home pay (annually saving ~$100k, spending ~$20k), you'll have, say, ~$500k invested in 5 years and can safely withdraw 4%/$20k per year indefinitely. Then you can quit your 200k job, 'retire', and enjoy the same lifestyle as you lived while employed.
Personally I agree with the message about the power of saving to offer financial stability and independence, but I prefer saving reasonably while also trying to find ways to do work that I enjoy instead of saving super aggressively in search of an early retirement from a job I hate.
I agree with your approach and that is what I have implemented so far as well. As much as I would love to have the 40-60 hours a week I work back to myself, it is just much too difficult for me to live off of only 20k or less per year. I am not interested in living like that anymore, I'm too familiar with it.
20k/year is tough to measure up to. From the Reddit community around financial independence, "build the life you want then save for it". [1] You might look at your expenses and decide "_____ really doesn't provide me much happiness. Maybe I should reduce or eliminate it".
If most people would look at their spending and eliminate the 5% that brings them the least happiness, they would be in substantially better positions financially in the long run. Many people spend 100% of their paychecks and have little to nothing to show for it.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/58j8...
GP's example of 5 years is a very short timeframe, however. A big part of achieving financial independence is compound interest returns on investments in low-fee index funds.
Try a quick spreadsheet for yourself. You can assume 5-6 % real returns. Play around with savings rates, GP suggested over 80%, which is more agressive than I've ever heard. Try 60%, which would leave you with 60k disposable, and you'll see things go up very fast in the 10-15 year range.
In fact, MMM shows that it actually all reduces to a really simple calculation, and with that 60 % savings rate, you're 12.5 years away from retirement (if you start at 0 net worth).
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-sim...
That's pretty much most of us. I couldn't imagine sitting around at 30 with nothing to do.