It's amazing how many people naturally save money, yet don't even consider the idea of retiring early until it's in front of them and they realise that it's possible.
So true.
I started off pretty happy about my low-hours low-stress job. My friends are mostly programmers and engineers, but I studied social science and education, couldn't get a teaching job, and settled for clerical work at a university. Low pay, good benefits, and I worked only 40 hours per week. All I had to do was be frugal. And I could retire at 53 (52 after I bought a year of service). Easy! Had no clue it could be better than that.
Then I read Your Money or Your Life. Unfortunately, my net worth beyond savings and investments was pretty much zero because my stuff is mostly super old and uncool. Also, I spent almost zero extra on work stuff (free transportation, thrift store clothes, brought my own lunch), so I couldn't lower my retirement costs. I evaluated all my spending and found that I was happy with all of it. It still wasn't obvious to me that extreme early retirement was possible for me.
But then my job turned icky--way too much work for one person and much worse working conditions. I had found Early Retirement Extreme and was doing equations every day, hoping eventually to find good numbers. I had lots of savings, but it was all for things like repairs and replacement; I had nothing for job loss emergencies because my employer never used to lay people off and I never guessed I would want to leave so badly. So I started saving more.
Finally I had to quit for my health and sanity, three years from the pension. I immediately got some consulting jobs from some of my old co-workers (who knew you could get these kinds of jobs from a government entity?). When those ran out, I was still two years from the pension--four if I didn't get another job with them because it's based on both years of service and age. I started job hunting again and qualified for unemployment.
Then last week, after still having gotten zero interviews, I quit the serious job hunting, thus also giving up the unemployment. So I've still got 40 months until my pension and only 12 months of FY money. But I also know I'm FI because I've got three years of contributions in my Roth IRA. I'd rather not use that up, but have decided, hey that's what it's for. I still have one possible consultancy in the works, plus in my area I was told that if you pass the tax prep course and aren't a jerk, you're almost guaranteed a job, and they let you pick the hours you want, so I'm in that class. I'll try for those jobs to not drain my money too fast, and if I like tax prep work, that will be a nice way to get "earned" income so I can go back to contributing to my IRA once I get my pension. And if I don't like it, no big deal.
When people ask what I'll do all day, although I don't really know (besides all the usual stuff but more of it), I can assure them that I will be much better at thinking up stuff I'd like to do than any boss will.