Retiring early and spending more than a few short years living life at a leisurely pace is the dream of many, if not most people who are tethered to the world of work, but most of them will never make it happen. They won’t make it happen because they are simply not willing to sacrifice what needs to be sacrificed in order to retire early.
If you aren’t one of them, and you are willing to give a few things up to gain a lot more leisure time in life, it would be useful to know exactly what you need to give up, so we’ve put together a list of some of the things people who HAVE retired early say they sacrificed in order to do so.
- Mindless spending
This one is pretty much a no-brainer, but if you are a mindless spender, it can be pretty difficult to give up. Some people count every penny, while others never count any pennies at all, and if they see something they like, they buy it. If you’re the latter type of person, and you want to retire early, you need to change.
Start by implementing the 30-day rule whereby instead of purchasing things straight away, you add them to a list and wait 30 days, If you still want them after that time is elapsed, go ahead and buy if not, you’ve just made a saving you can add to your retirement fund. You’d be amazed how well this works.
- Managing your own money
Unless you happen to be an accountant, investment banker, or some other kind of financial whizz, if you want to retire early, you should probably give up managing your own money and let Shawn Meaike and his team of financial experts do it for you instead. Why? Because most of us don’t really know much about money or how to build it, nor do we know how to best protect it for our future and the futures of our children, these experts do, so even if you have to pay to have your money managed, it will undoubtedly pay off.
- Lifestyle inflation
Lifestyle inflation is the process of spending more as you earn more. Most people will buy a bigger house or invest in a nicer car when their salary starts to rise, but this is a pretty foolish thing to do if you don’t really need those things. Why? Because that extra money could be invested to provide for your early retirement, it really is that simple. Save that money and you’ll get out of the rat race way sooner than you think.
- Eating out
This is just a small thing, but if you eat out for every meal five days a week, you could be spending hundreds of dollars a month that you don’t really need to, so although it may not be as convenient, or as much fun, to brown bag it, it really is worth doing if you want to save enough money to retire early.
Think you can do it?