Early-retirement wannabe

cns06

penwise wrote: »

Who are the F.I.R.E. Community ?

I am Negan

cns06

Anonymous101 wrote: »

I started thinking the way you do around 2-3 years ago.
I'm 36 now and my initial retire at 55 idea became a retire at 50 and more recently a retire at 48 plan. Hopefully I can get this down another couple of years so that in 10 years time I can choose what I would like to do for work and the money doesn't matter.

I hate to call it the F.I.R.E. community as some people do but once I'd found the information which they use I was totally switched onto my own version of that. Its certainly gone from strength to strength for me which is something I've read happens to others too.

In a similar position / gone down a similar path. Are you on MMM?

Anonymous101

cns06 wrote: »

In a similar position / gone down a similar path. Are you on MMM?

It's interesting that most people's plans seem to shorten and gather pace rather. Perhaps people don't talk about their setbacks quick as freely.

I've registered on MMM but haven't been posting much as yet. I take it you're active on that forum?

Reue

Anonymous101 wrote: »

I started thinking the way you do around 2-3 years ago.
I'm 36 now and my initial retire at 55 idea became a retire at 50 and more recently a retire at 48 plan. Hopefully I can get this down another couple of years so that in 10 years time I can choose what I would like to do for work and the money doesn't matter.

I hate to call it the F.I.R.E. community as some people do but once I'd found the information which they use I was totally switched onto my own version of that. Its certainly gone from strength to strength for me which is something I've read happens to others too.

I became interested in this a few years before you and have been pretty active in the 'community' for the past 3-4ish years.

Unlike most who stumble across the various FIRE stuff I wasnt in a particularly bad position to begin with; expenses were already low and I'd already started saving. What it did do instead was really focus me on increasing income, investing and overpaying the mortgage rather than the following what I used to consider a 'good' savings rate of 5-10% each month.

jamesperrett

Anonymous101 wrote: »

It's interesting that most people's plans seem to shorten and gather pace rather. Perhaps people don't talk about their setbacks quick as freely.

I know that once I'd made up my mind to go I became less tolerant of some aspects of work that I was finding frustrating. I ended up going 9 months earlier than I'd originally planned.

robdogg11

IanSt wrote: »

I don't know what type of job you have but i found a good way for myself was to move the majority of any salary increases or bonuses immediately across into investment based savings. It helps to stop you from just spending your increases on new things and it makes it a lot easier to retire if your pension pot has less expenditure that it will need to cover.

Yeah that is the way im trying to go about things now, I've spent most of the last 10 years in massive debt so most of pay rises before this one have gone on servicing that. In fact I think this is the first time I've had a pay rise and not felt the need to up repayments to creditors.

OldBeanz

jamesperrett wrote: »

I know that once I'd made up my mind to go I became less tolerant of some aspects of work that I was finding frustrating. I ended up going 9 months earlier than I'd originally planned.

Got to echo this. I had planned to go at 65 but had enough at 60; lasted until I was 60 and 8 months

Anonymous101

robdogg11 wrote: »

Yeah that is the way im trying to go about things now, I've spent most of the last 10 years in massive debt so most of pay rises before this one have gone on servicing that. In fact I think this is the first time I've had a pay rise and not felt the need to up repayments to creditors.

Definitely agree with this. Its easy to plan to upgrade your car or spend the extra if its left around. By investing any pay rises you get the benefit of the saving without the of having to give something up.

Anonymous101

Reue wrote: »

I became interested in this a few years before you and have been pretty active in the 'community' for the past 3-4ish years.

Unlike most who stumble across the various FIRE stuff I wasnt in a particularly bad position to begin with; expenses were already low and I'd already started saving. What it did do instead was really focus me on increasing income, investing and overpaying the mortgage rather than the following what I used to consider a 'good' savings rate of 5-10% each month.

Likewise. I wasn't in a bad position. I was already running a tight ship paying a decent percentage into my pension etc but my saving's were being spent on expensive holidays, cars etc. Its wasn't actually a big change for me to switch my focus onto investing that surplus money.

gadgetmind

Wow, I might not even need to be back in after Christmas, or if I do, just with a van to clear my office!