The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: Gone Fishing on August 12, 2014, 09:41:00 AM
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I started really thinking about it at 16 or so...
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When I was still in grad school and before my 1st job when I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad.. although many would not agree with Robert Kiyosaki's approach, the basic idea he taught is timeless and universal: save more than you spend and invest what you save (but how he deals with the "invest" part is a bit controversial.)
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Either 22 or 23.
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About 37, two years ago. Although I had always been frugal and able to save/invest a good chunk of $$ the past 15 years. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, and I would have put even more into my 401k the past 6 years than I did. Oh well.
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Damn, I must be a major slacker.
Started thinking of it when I was 40. Was a good saver, but was not very frugal (I still am not ...).
Unfortunately, there was no MMM around when I started thinking about it and everyone laughed when I said my goal was to FIRE at 50.
Well, I am 55 now and should FIRE in an year (Serious case of OMY)
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50, 14 months ago
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A few months into my first real job at 21.
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At the age of 30 on a six-month overseas backpacking trip, which I had saved extensively for as "my big trip". I realized that I wanted to be able to have that freedom as a lifestyle. Still working towards it, 11 years later, getting close :)
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About three years ago when I was 24 and got back from my first international vacation (England!). Luckily I didn't have any sort of giant debt hole to dig out of or outrageous locked-in expenses, just a mildly consumery lifestyle that was pretty easy to fix.
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When we decided to have kids. Age 29.
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When I was 22, that was also the same time I got out of college and landed a real job. Coincidence? I think not!
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When I found out about the term: 3 months ago.
In reality, I always wanted to take semi-retirements, work part time (for myself), and management my own investments from probably ~20. I always wanted to figure out how to build up semi-passive income streams (willing to put in work/time, never looked to get rich quick).
MMM put into works what I was always trying to piece together.
Your story is mine almost to the letter, including the 3 months ago number. FIRE is just the solution to what I've been pondering in my mind for some years.
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When I was 30 (discovered MMM/ERE then) and got rid of my financially draining condo so that FIRE could eventually become a reality for me!
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When I was 3, I think I wanted to be a garbage man. When I was 4, when adults asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I'd say "I want to be rich!" Oh, like a CEO? "No, just rich."
So I guess since I was 4.
But I've only seriously considered FI since 2008 scared the crap out of me.
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Just over a year ago - age 24. Thankful for my especially lazy SIL who discovered MMM herself, converted my brother, and informed me of this blog. Note my "other" age. :)
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About 25. I'd always been very good at living cheaply and saving money, but finding MMM and similar sites gave me something to work towards
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22. I set a goal to be a millionaire by 35 and retired by 40.
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25 after I found out I was going to be a dad
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I was 48 when I saw this website for the first time. Obviously i'm too old to retire early but for the last year or so I've been doing the best I can with my money. Before i came across MMM I didn't think early retirement was possible.
I hope the word really gets out there about this option - my paraphrase: don't be a consumerist sucker and retire early.
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23 - an asshole second boss threatened my job for telling the truth. I said never again will I have to be in that position
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I think I was 12. Kept hearing my Dad complain about BS at work every day. He worked in a nice office, making good money, with a secure job. I was thinking this whole job/career thing just can't be that good then.
Although I think the seed was planted when I first started having to get up early for school so maybe really age 5-6?
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When I was 22 and got my first real job.
I had always been a dollar stretcher though. In my school years, I made the summer job money last all year.
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I think I was 12. Kept hearing my Dad complain about BS at work every day. He worked in a nice office, making good money, with a secure job. I was thinking this whole job/career thing just can't be that good then.
Dad's job wasn't that great, it was certainly what got the ball rolling for me! Even as a kid I couldn't figure out why I would want to sit in a BS classroom just to get a BS job to work for 40 years just in enjoy a BS retirement plauged with health problems. I still remember the day my dad explained compounding to me, I was about 8, it made instant sense. My parents were pretty mustachian, not hard core, but still maintained a lot of the depression era frugality my grandparents instilled in them, especially mom. I don't think they really started investing until they were in their mid 30's or so, though.
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I had the fairly abstract idea in my head since my teenage years ("It'd be pretty cool to retire early.") and was always fairly frugal, but a lot of saving-to-spend instead of saving-to-save. Found MMM two years ago at 21. It all clicked pretty quickly. Only took reading a few blog posts to know it was possible and slate it as Financial Goal Numero Uno.
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22. I set a goal to be a millionaire by 35 and retired by 40.
How are you doing with the goals?
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When I started this job/career @17 years ago, because I'm a LEO with a pension waiting for me at retirement after 22.5 years. But I also knew that a pension alone (only 34% of base salary) wouldn't cut it, so began saving aggressively into the TSP (401k) right away (sorta; stupid feds had a dumbass policy back when I started that forbid contributing in your first year -- WTF?).
But for a while there, I kind of assumed I was going to have to find another job after this one, if only until I reached 59 1/2. But finding MMM and other like-minded bloggers helped me to see that FIRE'ing for good at the end of this career was not only possible, but entirely doable, with some lifestyle changes.
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Probably about 24, didn't really get serious till about 28. I am 31 now.
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I'm 23 now, and in high school (lets say 16) I had the vague idea of wanting to be rich enough to have whatever I wanted and not have to work a job my whole life. So I did what I had to do to get good grades, pay for college without debt, and keep my expenses low as an adult. Reading ER blogs like MMM just gave me more information to make my personal finance "system" that much more efficient.
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24, which is my age now. I've read financial blogs for longer, though... but didn't actually set up goals for it until the past 6 months or so after returning home from abroad.
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22. I set a goal to be a millionaire by 35 and retired by 40.
How are you doing with the goals?
Happy to say I met the first goal and am on track to achieve the second one in a few years time. It's funny because over the years my attention to those early goals has waned, but because I went so hard at them in my twenties, I was set upon the right track and didn't need too much course correction.
Now that I'm getting closer to 40 and realised that it will be possible to FIRE, I've recommitted to that goal.
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31
Killed off all my debt except the mortgage in 8 months. Made some basic lifestyle changes and did my first round of retirement at 36. I couldn't make it stick, thought, so I'm hanging out in semi-retirement until I'm ready to fully pull the plug. I have enough free time on my hands to allow me to do most of the things I really want to do and the additional cash means I can fund some non-essentials.
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About 26. I don't know if any mods are reading, but could we put a poll on this thread? I'd be curious what the forum demographics on this question are.
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38: last year when I first ran into MMM.
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At 26. I remember having lunch and beer in a small restaurant in Cobacabana, Bolivia. Enjoyed the place and made a quick calculation in my head: if I could save 30.000 euros, that would allow me to live there for the rest of my life :)
Following two summer holidays I spent backbacking in South East Asia where I convinced myself that 30 euros/day is all I need to lead a nice life.
Fast forward about 10 years and now my expectations have moved "a bit" higher. Anyhow, the idea of FIRE stuck and will happen next year.
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Would be interesting to see this in Poll form.
24 for me. A year after I started working and discovered MMM. My goal FIRE date is when I turn 40.
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27 or 28 for me. I've always been a natural saver but when I happen to read an article about ERE it all clicked. At that point I figured that I could RE in my mid-forties. Now I'm 35 and after discovering MMM I've trimmed it down to 37 or so.
Would be interesting to see this in Poll form.
Side rant: there are SO MANY threads that would benefit from a poll.
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23. After a year on the job and right before getting married.
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At age 18, my current age. I found MMM after researching stories of people living on lower than average amounts. It's exciting to know that I won't have to work my entire life.
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27 or 28 for me. I've always been a natural saver but when I happen to read an article about ERE it all clicked. At that point I figured that I could RE in my mid-forties. Now I'm 35 and after discovering MMM I've trimmed it down to 37 or so.
Would be interesting to see this in Poll form.
Side rant: there are SO MANY threads that would benefit from a poll.
I've started a couple polls, and the problem with them is that they will sink down if there are no comments. Someone has to feel that they want to reply to the actual post in order for the poll to gather enough data - a vote doesn't count as a bump :/. Which is fine. No biggie. I ain't complainin' or nuffin'. *Sniffles*
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Age 46.
My goal then (a few months ago) was simply to retire "ever". I now know I can not only retire before death, I can even do it before "normal" retirement age. I've been told I could do it now if I committed to more change, but those changes will take me some time.
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At 21-22, when I had cancer. Resolved not to die with regrets. Happy to say I'm still here :-)).
FI took a lot longer, as there was no MMM, ERE or GRS then. I also had to keep working to have healthcare coverage. FInally made it at age 54. So worth it, so happy to be here.
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I found MMM around the start of this year, shortly before I turned 23, but the foundations were laid long ago.
I'm one of four children, and my parents always emphasized budgeting and talked openly about the balancing act between things like sending us all to Catholic school (their priority, not mine) and their occasional unemployment or falling back on freelance work. We dealt with money being tight sometimes but we always enjoyed a solidly middle-class lifestyle, including our share of car-clowning. It still got me wondering when they'll be able to retire, and I spent most of high school and college watching the recession and the long slow recovery.
Other positive influences: A friend in high school who introduced me to the bus system, a group of friends who focused on just hanging out rather than going out and spending money, and my longstanding attraction to thrift stores -- albeit to collect lots of music and electronics I've spent the past year downsizing!
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It's interesting to me that so many of you can pinpoint it so precisely. I have no idea.
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I was 22 or 23. Just getting my foot in the door. Been saving for about two years and think I'm getting a good handle on it.
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Briefly I considered retirement plans in my first year of engineering job in Silicon Valley in 1996. I was 23. A group of us newbies were in boot camp training. The subject of retirement came up in the car on the way to lunch (retro-active face-punch). We came to the conclusion that in theory, it would take $1M invested to retire. At that point the stock market was on its way up up up, so putting together a $1M stach seemed very doable within a few years.
While our assumptions were faulty (we assumed 10% withdrawal rate), the answer was largely right ($1M). The next time I seriously considered retirement was last December - but I've moved that story over to my journal entry (http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/journals/fire-in-t-minus-30-days/msg385900/#msg385900) in the MMM journals forum.
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50. I had expected to go on until about 60, but got offered a redundancy package that would make me FI and was gone in 3 months.
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Ever since I've been 24. Will be 29 in couple days. Started with a whole lot of CC debt and had to save like mad to pay it off before the end of the 6mo. interest-free period.
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I think I was officially 33 (35 now).
However, the first summer after graduating from undergrad that I was working in an office....I remember the dread, sadness, thinking "is this where I'll be for the next 40 years of my life?" I felt like a caged rat, with no escape. I think summer was hard because while I had office internships in previous summers, this was the first time it felt like there was no end. This was my life.
Luckily, I work from home, because not sure what I'd do if I had to sit in an office all day.
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28. Once I became a homeowner in 2006, I created excel sheets for my income statement and a monthly balance sheet, and have tracked everything closely since then. The real estate swoon and financial crisis only served to motivate me even more towards FI.
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It was only last year I think, so I was 37.
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I have been frugal all my life, but have always thought that one just have to work to the pension age at 67-70. I did not even question it until I started reading MMM and ERE at the same time I started working after graduation at university at age 24. I did not hate my job, I did not love my job, but it was that feeling that I wasn't the boss or even the owner of my own time. I want to be FI so I can do what I want to do, if that is to found my own company, to do volunteer work or just travel around...
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At 19 I had a class called "Financial Mathematics" so I bought my first financial calculator. I could easily see that with 10k a year for 35 years would get me a million for my retirement so that became my goal.
Later and wiser, at around 28 I realized that I could go much faster by increasing 10k to 20k/30k or more a year. I also realized lately that I didn't need a particular number of net worth, what I need is diversified income streams that cover my expenses. I should be FIRE before age 45.
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Since I started my job at 23 I was planning to RE. But thought I needed ~5MM. but after finding this site at 27. My RE dropped from 45-50 by ten years to 35-40.
Found this site with a google search on the page "shockingly simple math... ". It was just what I had been looking for. A roadmap and a realistic list of what I needed to retire. I'm still 27. And now pushing for a part time week by 30
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@52 about the first time I heard of that, so early retirement for us will be age 60 for my wife.
Bit that's OK as we'll have a great time till then and a wonderful retirement
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Two months ago when I discovered MMM, so 34.
I always assumed I'd have to work until at least 67 or so and probably well beyond it. I just never considered the basic mechanics involved in saving a little more and spending a little less..which means saving even more, and needing even less...I would read articles saying that people should save 10-15% of their gross salary into a 401k and at least a few months expenses worth of emergency savings, and since I did that, I figured I was doing what I was should be doing and didn't really consider what else I could be doing. I think that an optimistically realistic picture could have me retiring at 50.
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27 (maybe a year ago?).
Wanted to retire by 50 before this but viewed that as traditional retirement. Reading more on the idea of FI got me thinking a lot harder. I am taking steps and have brought my FI target back to 45 years, still doing the things I always wanted to do. Will see where my priorities evolve too along the way, but I think my FI target will probably creep down over time.
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About 10 years ago (age 44). But I've always been very frugal. Since I was 8 years old, or as long as I can remember.
This thread got me wondering- how does that age you report correlate with how much you liked your career at that age. Or how the job prospects looked for a dream job at that age. Or realizing the 'fallback' plan was going to be called into action.
For me, when I was 35, I couldn't understand the concept of retiring. I loved what I did at that time.
At 45, I was much more jaded, but still had passion for my work. At 54, I still enjoy what I do, but am really relying on my fallback (real estate investing) and working for FI chiefly through that avenue, not my day job.
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We were in our mid-thirties when we read Your Money or Your Life and Voluntary Simplicity and decided to make work optional by our mid-50s. I'm now 52 and could retire but I'm only 2 years and 2 months away from getting a whole lot of retirement benefits from my company, so I'm sticking it out for the benefits (including a number of travel benefits). My husband isn't sure he wants to retire since in retirement he wants to do exactly what he gets paid to do now (read history and write) and tenure is a pretty sweet deal.
This thread got me wondering- how does that age you report correlate with how much you liked your career at that age. Or how the job prospects looked for a dream job at that age. Or realizing the 'fallback' plan was going to be called into action.
At the time we made that decision we were deeply in debt and filled with anxiety, part of the anxiety was realizing that my company had "layoffs" that somehow seemed to primarily hit those who were reaching age 35 or were just about to vest in the retirement plan. I loved the job but it was a shaky position and when the dotcom bubble burst a few years later, it turned out we were wise to have take steps to put ourselves in a better position.
It feels so good to be where we are now!
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For FI, I started getting serious at age 25 and for RE, age 31.
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This thread got me wondering- how does that age you report correlate with how much you liked your career at that age. Or how the job prospects looked for a dream job at that age. Or realizing the 'fallback' plan was going to be called into action.
I was in my first fulltime job (22) and realised I did not want to have to work for someone else forever. I didn't mind the work I was doing, rather I hated being beholden to someone who could make my life miserable. I hated the lack of freedom. I quickly came to the realisation that I needed to find a way to earn enough passive income that I didn't *have* to work. Then came the tricky part of finding a way to do it. There was no MMM to refer to back then so I made it up as I went along. It's worked out pretty well in the end.
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At age 42,
when we cleared every single debt, including mortgage
and realized that children were just not going to feature in our "life plan".
9+ years later, we are within 6 months or so of FIRE.
(So not really that early, actually)
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This thread got me wondering- how does that age you report correlate with how much you liked your career at that age. Or how the job prospects looked for a dream job at that age. Or realizing the 'fallback' plan was going to be called into action.
For me, it's entirely that I found MMM and realized it was possible. I like my job pretty well, I have a good setup, I hope to stay in the position (or perhaps grow within the company) for however long I work, if it's my hopeful 16 years or a more practical 20-25. My drive is partly that sometimes things that I want to do, I can't, because I have to work. When there are meteor showers that peak at 2 am on Wednesday nights...I would love to go outside with my SO and lay there and watch them, but we have to get up and go to work, so it's not really an option. I'd like to be able to take road trips to see distant family and friends, but that takes a lot of time, and it's not reasonable to be able to take weeks at a time off work. Not hardships in the least, just minor annoyances. My other drive is that I'm lazy, and would prefer not to have to do anything unless I want to :)
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I guess just before I did.
I didn't realise I was already at FI.. Only when I read the blog and Pete told me.. "Dude.. your done working give it up!".. So a little more research and I'm like.. cool..:)
Frank
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About 10 months ago, age 44, when I realized that 'retire early' was a thing you could do. I'd always been pretty good about money but somehow the idea that we could retire early because of it never crossed my mind.
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Hmm, let's see, I'm 45 now, so must have been ... 45. ;)
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About 42 when I realized it was possible and that I no longer wished to work for somebody/anybody. I wish I known this philosophy earlier as I would have made the decision then. Of course I always had an inkling but always filed it under "when I get rich", some impossible time in the future.
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About 10 months ago, age 44, when I realized that 'retire early' was a thing you could do. I'd always been pretty good about money but somehow the idea that we could retire early because of it never crossed my mind.
I was the same way, it's amazing how something can just click and change your mindset.:)
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53. But for me its retire earlier, rather than retire early.
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52.
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Just before my 25th birthday. So... last year ;)
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When I was 22, that was also the same time I got out of college and landed a real job. Coincidence? I think not!
Cool. You're either really smart or that job was really bad. Could be both, I suppose.
Took me 3 full years of working -- I figured it out at 25.
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29- about 1.5 years ago. Wow, feels like yesterday...
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Started reading MMM about a year ago. It's taken about this long for us to finally decide we're ready to take the plunge. It took some time to get hubby on board, but he's a real numbers person so once he opened up to the idea, he realized how much sense it made. We've made several improvements over the last year though such as planting a garden, shopping at Costco, maxing 401k, getting rid of cell phones, Netflix, Hulu, random subscriptions we forgot we even had, going down to one car, etc.
I'm currently 24 and know that we can do it in 10 years time!
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25, with my first full-time job. Didn't want the shackles of consumerism to tie me to work (even though I like it).
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I was probably in my early to mid 30s when I read Your Money or Your Life, The 4-Hour Work Week, and The Millionnaire Next Door consecutively (borrowed from my company's library no less!). Those books blew my mind and planted the seed. The seed needed some more germinating...
I told my constantly-tired-consultant-ex-boyfriend in my mid 30s to just put up with it a little bit longer so that he could do what he wanted in his 40s.
The thought has always been on the back of my mind as a single female not wanting to have to depend on another person financially. I've always invested and spent judiciously.
I really started to put the plan into action around age 41, when I was stuck at a soul-sucking-mind-numbingly-boring job that I could not fathom doing for the rest of my life. I'm 45 now and inches away from the FIRE.