Want to retire now? You might be able to. We are often told that we need million and millions of dollars to retire. That is only true depending on what kind of retirement we want for ourselves. If we want to continue with new cars every few years, living in our McMansions, eating out all the time, and enjoying the big city life we probably need even more!
But think how great it would be to just leave it all behind and enjoy life for what it is. If you didn’t have to work you could sleep in late, enjoy a leisurely coffee at a cute little coffee place with hipsters and artists. You could have long walks looking in all of the store windows. You could meet someone for coffee everyday and start doing all of the other things that you long for day to day.
Doesn’t that sound awesome? Let’s find out how much it would cost. Now if you cut all of your expenses and started fresh, how much would you need to live on? Let’s take the example of moving to a cheap retirement destination now, for example Mexico, Northern Ontario, or Istanbul like where I want to retire. Look around and see if you could get a cute pad for $500-$1,000 a month. You would need to eat, have some extra spending cash, and maybe some money to a have a trip home once a year to see all the workers!
Does that scenario sounded good to you? I could do that for $2,500 a month. Here is how I’d do it. I would have a pad for $800 per month, eat for $700 and have another $1,000 a month for travelling and trips home. To get $2,500 a month at a very conservative 6% return by laddering GICs I would only need $500,000–far from the $3 million that people call for today.
Now how would I get there? Knowing what my dollar amount is I can do some extra jobs before I go and teach English to earn extra money when I retire. I probably won’t be off to Istanbul this month, but I could if I wanted! My point is to set your dollar amount and start saving.
Anchor yourself to how awesome early retirement would be and look at ways to do it. The standard of living is so much cheaper in fantastic areas of the world. Get excited by the idea that it is possible now.
Life should be about enjoying our time, more freedom, more time with friends and family and more joy. Why spend another day in a bad office cubicle?
Love your money and it’ll love you back with early retirement and an awesome life.
Dave
