Author Topic: How to retire at 40 - Daily Mail  (Read 3597 times)

londonstache

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How to retire at 40 - Daily Mail
« on: July 07, 2017, 07:42:30 AM »
Marvellous little article on how Mustachian saving enables early retirement in the Daily Mail online.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/femail/article-4673030/How-retire-40-don-t-earn-fortune.html

Bonus: the comments section is full of hilarious complainypants who explain in detail why they never will.

WoodStache

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Re: How to retire at 40 - Daily Mail
« Reply #1 on: July 07, 2017, 10:32:18 AM »
I know this is seen on every single article, but I hate stuff like this in the comments:
 
I could have retired at 30 if i didnt have kids .now i have work into my retirement.

Having kids slows you down. I know that from the thousands of dollars I throw at the daycare center. But it isn't the difference between 30 and 65. It's sad to see people that need to drag someone down to feel better about where they are at in life.

That said, I'll never argue with someone over comments like that. A man convinced against his will, and all that.

SpreadsheetMan

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Jrr85

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Re: How to retire at 40 - Daily Mail
« Reply #3 on: July 07, 2017, 01:36:54 PM »
I know this is seen on every single article, but I hate stuff like this in the comments:
 
I could have retired at 30 if i didnt have kids .now i have work into my retirement.

Having kids slows you down. I know that from the thousands of dollars I throw at the daycare center. But it isn't the difference between 30 and 65. It's sad to see people that need to drag someone down to feel better about where they are at in life.

That said, I'll never argue with someone over comments like that. A man convinced against his will, and all that.

It's not the difference between 30 and 65, but it can pretty easily be a 15 -20 year difference.  We have pretty cheap daycare, and we will spend about $35k per kid just for day care.  So a hundred thousand dollars relatively early on makes a pretty big difference.  We will still have childcare costs after daycare, and of course our housing is more expensive because some of the cheaper housing would come with expensive private school tuition. 

And it's fairly normal to feel some obligation to remain financially flexible for your kids.  Even with all the extra expenses, we could still retire when the oldest one is 18 or 19, if we were willing to tell him he's on his own for college.  In reality, we'll probably keep working until the youngest is at least half way through college and we feel reasonably sure he's going to launch successfully, just to make sure we have the financial means to help any of our kids if necessary, and if all three thrive, we'll just end up having a little more significant of an inheritance for them. 

Parents shouldn't be complaining about that, but it is a big difference for retirement planning, and while trying to do things like pay for college is certainly a choice for parents, it's a pretty normal choice driven by a pretty common urge that makes retirement that much harder.     

WoodStache

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Re: How to retire at 40 - Daily Mail
« Reply #4 on: July 07, 2017, 02:38:40 PM »
I know this is seen on every single article, but I hate stuff like this in the comments:
 
I could have retired at 30 if i didnt have kids .now i have work into my retirement.

Having kids slows you down. I know that from the thousands of dollars I throw at the daycare center. But it isn't the difference between 30 and 65. It's sad to see people that need to drag someone down to feel better about where they are at in life.

That said, I'll never argue with someone over comments like that. A man convinced against his will, and all that.

It's not the difference between 30 and 65, but it can pretty easily be a 15 -20 year difference.  We have pretty cheap daycare, and we will spend about $35k per kid just for day care.  So a hundred thousand dollars relatively early on makes a pretty big difference.  We will still have childcare costs after daycare, and of course our housing is more expensive because some of the cheaper housing would come with expensive private school tuition. 

And it's fairly normal to feel some obligation to remain financially flexible for your kids.  Even with all the extra expenses, we could still retire when the oldest one is 18 or 19, if we were willing to tell him he's on his own for college.  In reality, we'll probably keep working until the youngest is at least half way through college and we feel reasonably sure he's going to launch successfully, just to make sure we have the financial means to help any of our kids if necessary, and if all three thrive, we'll just end up having a little more significant of an inheritance for them. 

Parents shouldn't be complaining about that, but it is a big difference for retirement planning, and while trying to do things like pay for college is certainly a choice for parents, it's a pretty normal choice driven by a pretty common urge that makes retirement that much harder.   

Damn. Wow. I knew we were cheap but we're at just south of 10k per kid by the time you take your allotted 10 "free" days off.

WildJager

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Re: How to retire at 40 - Daily Mail
« Reply #5 on: July 07, 2017, 04:00:33 PM »
That was a particularly salty crowd of commenters. 

I loved the ironic comments to the vein of, "Attempting this is foolish!  You could die in an accident by 30!  That's why I spend everything now." submitted to an article about people who accomplished it.  But I get it, math is hard...

Jrr85

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Re: How to retire at 40 - Daily Mail
« Reply #6 on: July 07, 2017, 04:17:51 PM »
It's not the difference between 30 and 65, but it can pretty easily be a 15 -20 year difference.  We have pretty cheap daycare, and we will spend about $35k per kid just for day care.  So a hundred thousand dollars relatively early on makes a pretty big difference.  We will still have childcare costs after daycare, and of course our housing is more expensive because some of the cheaper housing would come with expensive private school tuition. 

And it's fairly normal to feel some obligation to remain financially flexible for your kids.  Even with all the extra expenses, we could still retire when the oldest one is 18 or 19, if we were willing to tell him he's on his own for college.  In reality, we'll probably keep working until the youngest is at least half way through college and we feel reasonably sure he's going to launch successfully, just to make sure we have the financial means to help any of our kids if necessary, and if all three thrive, we'll just end up having a little more significant of an inheritance for them. 

Parents shouldn't be complaining about that, but it is a big difference for retirement planning, and while trying to do things like pay for college is certainly a choice for parents, it's a pretty normal choice driven by a pretty common urge that makes retirement that much harder.   

Damn. Wow. I knew we were cheap but we're at just south of 10k per kid by the time you take your allotted 10 "free" days off.

Sorry, that wasn't very clearly written by me.  I meant $35k per kid for their entire ~5 years in day care.  So just looking at daycare, for someone with 3 kids, you're talking about $100k relatively early in their career, so easily a $200k difference for people trying to retire in their mid to late 30's.  Since many of those early retirees are retiring on $1M or less, you're talking about them being 20% short or more just based off of daycare. 

Throw in incremental costs for clothes, food, health insurance, doctors bills, housing and utilities, with fairly modest spending you're looking at an additional say $500 a month of spending?  So that's $6k per year less for saving and also another $150k nest egg you to retire while the kids are still reliant on you to cover that $6k of spending. 


 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!