It’s a world where extreme anything gets the attention, even when it comes to early retirement. News flash! Early retirement isn’t only possible for those going extreme. I just lived a normal ordinary life and found a way to financial independence. Mine is an ordinary early retirement story. Married, 3 kids, house, and a long career that started at age 20. A career where I worked my way up from entry-level call-center representative to lead engineer. During all of that there were side gigs, night school, all the ordinary boring stuff we do to keep our heads above water and trying to get ahead.
The ordinariness of my early retirement story doesn’t end there. I didn’t retire early in my 30s or 40s, I was 51 years old. Young by traditional retirement standards but hardly extreme or a sensational headline. A total snooze. Nothing to see here folks, unless maybe you are also ordinary and interested in the possibility of retiring earlier than most.
My Very Average And Ordinary Early Retirement Story
When many early retirement stories are centered around highly educated middle class folks making big bucks and deploying super saver strategies to retire really young, mine is a more unremarkable common man’s story. I grew up in a lower-income family. My father worked hard but was economically limited by his 6th grade education, my stay at home mother made it through the 9th. I was unable to snag a scholarship so college was out of reach. I did what most did in our socioeconomic situation, I got a full-time job right after graduating from high school.
In a nutshell…
Marriage
Married my high school sweetheart just before I turned 19. We just celebrated our 42nd!
1rst Home
Bought a new 980 square foot starter home a year later in the less than desired side of town with a FHA loan and a low 8% interest rate. We put in a lot of sweat equity to help cover the minimum down payment. They offered stuff like that back then in the late 70s.
College
Working full-time I took night college classes when I could, mostly paid for by work tuition aid benefits. I sure couldn’t afford to pay for it on my own with what I was paid.
Little bandits show up
At age 22 become a parent. We had 3 kids two years apart. All little blessings that we freely gave all our love and money to. Sure glad my job offered healthcare benefits.
Making it work
Childcare costs is and has always been a financial killer. My bride gave up her secretarial job and became a stay at home mom until the kids started school. I worked 2nd jobs and side hustles to make ends meet. Well, the ends almost met.
Debt issues
Incurred too much debt along the way when kids were young as we tried to get by. It was a struggle and a royal pain to manage until my wife could start working again. The same sad story for a lot of ordinary people.
Finally, saving for retirement
Started saving in a newly promoted company retirement thingy called a 401K when I was 27. Something new that had a little company match to go with it. What an amazing concept!
Job mobility traffic jam
Stayed at the same telecom company 31 years through thick and thin, slowly advancing through the ranks. It took 17 years from my start as a service rep to becoming a network engineer. I don’t know if this means I have superpower patience or I’m just stubborn.
Move or lose your job
At age 37 I reluctantly accepted a corporate restructure inspired interstate relocation to keep my job. Moving my family to stay in my line of work was good for my career but a personal life regret.
Taking financial control
At age 40 became personal finance aware. I wanted something more out of life than constant corporate and employment obligation. Met with a financial planner aligned with my early retirement goal of retiring 10 years later at age 50. Things got real.
Hardly a salary superstar
I worked hard and was respected in my field, even nationally, but could never hit the 6 figure salary club. Talking with my peers from other “like” companies nationally I was fully aware that I was a chump. My company just salary-treated long-time employees differently, in a bad way of course.
Damn recession
October 2008 was my target retirement date but the deep recession caused me to flinch and delay my early retirement. I’m told that recessions will do that to a lot of people. Well, maybe only ordinary boring people.
That’s it, I’m done!
Late 2009 I decided the recession had hit bottom and the economy was going to eventually climb out. It was time to stop wasting time and retire at the age of 51 to live life on my terms. I gave a one month notice and started making preparations. Company lawyers chimed in as if I cared and f’d with me as much as they could. Turning in my pager to end the years of being on call 7 X 24 X 365 took a huge weight off of me and I felt taller as I left the building for the last time. Now who’s the chump!
Pursued some interesting opportunities
I believe that retirement is the absence of needing to work, not the absence of work. So I carefully chose some great retirement gigs. That’s nothing that retirement traditionalist will get excited about. Staying open to opportunity in early retirement is far from being an extreme topic that causes a buzz anywhere. In fact, I think a lot of early retirees understate how common it is to work and earn money doing something they enjoy in their retirement. So I’ll call this secretly ordinary.
Here are a few of my boring ordinary financial impacting moves that worked in my early retirement favor….
Debt and Savings
Sorry, but I had no secret investment strategy. What can I say? Automatic payroll deductions, compounding interest, reinvested dividends, stock growth, consistent dollar cost averaging, it works when given enough time. My motto – Saving anything is better than saving nothing. I started only saving the minimum for the full company 401K match and concentrated all extra money on debt payoff. Once debt free I stayed debt free other than our modest mortgage. I just piled all extra money into maxing out the yearly allowable 401K contributions and ROTH IRAs. Soooooo ordinary….
House
No house flipping, moving up to larger or better homes every X years, or leveraging equity to build wealth. I have seen some exciting stories of people who have successfully done that. Nope, not me. I just bought a house that I could afford without stretching finances too impossibly far and still meet our housing needs. I always boringly considered a house as a stable place to live and being a hedge on inflation. What did that get me? I’m in our second lifetime house free and clear.
Education
We didn’t have student loan debt to worry about. My wife went to community college to get a secretarial certification and I worked full-time. We paid for her tuition and books as we went. I took night classes and employer promoted remote learning courses when I could.
Later in life we had to make decisions and set limits as to what we could sensibly cover for our kids education. My son was an artistic hands-on guy so he went to a trade school to pursue his interests. Our daughters attended 2 year community college. One did go on to additional education. We paid as we went and nobody was saddled with long-term student debt. Is it just me, does anyone still choose this route anymore?
Frugal Living
The lifestyle we created to control spending and maximize savings is what I call frugal. It’s far from extreme. We never allowed lifestyle inflation to creep in after there was more money coming in over the years. We basically practice purposeful frugality since starting our FIRE journey and we’re constantly making tweaks. Others may disagree with my kind of frugality. I read some more extreme frugal efforts people use to reach employment liberation at super young ages and I am impressed.
What I did was push against our frugal threshold limits so our lives would still be enjoyable and keep our budget sustainable. Hacks here and there, coupons, have the patience to wait for sales, stop wasting money on nonsense, etc. Nothing extreme, just average normal stuff someone can do when they ditch blind consumerism. It does add up to big savings over time. I sure won’t win any frugality contest nor attempt to enter any. The funny thing is, when adding frugality, our lower cost lifestyle becomes a habit and ordinary.
Paying for early retirement
I faithfully followed the aggressive but realistic 10 year early retirement plan created by my CFP when I was 40. No sensational or extreme story here other than I consistently stuck to it. There was also a diminished retirement benefit that I earned and rolled into an IRA along with my 401K. I used a SEPP 72t IRA arrangement to avoid early withdrawal penalty to fund my early retirement. Unremarkably, with my ordinary life and financial status, there was no million dollar portfolio to retire early on.
Health insurance
Oh yes, the golden handcuffs that weren’t real gold. Even though a company merger did its best to destroy a lot of my company’s retirement benefits earned if you survived 30 years there, I left with a grandfathered but non-guaranteed retiree medical benefit. (I have to say that my staying there that long, given all the corporate BS they dished out, is the most remarkable thing in my story.) It allows me to buy into the employee health plan but is a “Use it or Lose it” benefit. It went up to $1,340 a month for 2019 and can be killed any year going forward.
I could save money by going on the ACA. I choose to stay with my retirement health plan as long as it lasts or until we become medicare eligible because the ACA is under constant political threat.
Retire early and often
I’ve had some awesome retirement gigs since my first early retirement that really worked out for me. Far beyond anything I envisioned. They were rewarding on both personal and financial levels until they weren’t and I just retired again. My lifestyle was funded by my SEPP 72t IRA so anything I earned was reinvested and I cleared the modest mortgage balance that I initially retired with.
As for now, I have run through my pursuit-list of paying gigs I wanted to learn and do. I still keep my eyes open and continue exploring all of the new things that pop up in the world of opportunity. I’m happily on the sidelines until the next passion driven interest comes my way. I think it’s a cool attitude to have about early retirement, but I get why others wouldn’t.
As You Can See, A Totally Boring and Ordinary Early Retirement Story
That’s it folks, my only claim to fame is I figured out a way to retire early within my ordinary life limitations and blessings. No big event, major breakthrough, windfall, extreme measures, or financial success secret.
I do read incredible FIRE stories about people who retired in their 30s or 40s. They travel the world, make money online from anywhere they want to, live on a sailboat or in an RV, amass millions of dollars, etc, etc. Their stories are very inspiring and fascinating. I have picked up some great early retirement ideas to use from them. But given what I enjoy and want in life, I’ve filed the more extreme and sensational elements away as unrealistic for me to actually pull off or even really want to do.
All I wanted was to simply ditch the rat race and stay living in my community near my kids and grand kids. A life with the same lifestyle I had always lived, but with more freedom to focus on what I value and enjoy a little more travel. No grand lifestyle changes or unnatural feeling lifestyle downsizing. Just the right early retirement for this ordinary average guy.
Boring? Winning!!
Thanks for the comment. I totally agree with you.
Tommy
I like that you’ve retired early and congrats! Your lifestyle is so outdated though! You can’t move up in the ranks like that as easy nowadays. When I left school I had $150,000 in school loans. I’m an engineer and in my 7 years of working in the feild I’ve switched jobs twice and working to switch again soon. Buying a house isn’t as easy. I live in California and am saving $60,000 just for down payment. I guarantee your first home cost about that oil total. I have no desire to have children but even if I did I can’t afford the right lifestyle for them. The 70’s and 80’s were a completely different time then today. You were blessed with being able to stay at the same job for years, that doesn’t happen anymore. Your wif had a secretarial degree, what the heck is that? Peanuts now a days. Most of your retirement was luck and the era you were handed.
Thanks for commenting Dino. I agree things are different today with their own set of challenges and you are in a mental trap I was in when younger, that it was easier for people before. Let me explain my wife’s secretarial certificate, it allowed her access to a low paying job above entry level office clerk in the pre computer age, a step up from her grocery cashier position. Our first starter home of 980 sqr feet was a new build on the less desirable side of Salt Lake City and was 400% of our combined pre tax annual income and 8% mortgage interest rate. I am originally from California and visit family yearly then and now and we could not have afforded a house there back then in what you think was the easier days either. I don’t consider my job movement as being quick. In my case it took 17 years to work in low paying customer service and then what was called a semi-skilled technician position along with attending night school using work provided tuition aid and paying as I went to finally make engineer. All along working second jobs to make ends meet supporting a spouse and 3 kids. 17 years is a long time to wait before being able to put your education, skills, and talents to use to better oneself financially and professionally. To keep my job I was forced to decide on interstate relocation somewhere I really didn’t care to move to. We sold our home and it’s nearly same sized house replacement in the new job location far more expensive. Yes, there are differences and different challenges today. With the way corporations decide between work measurements and politics I was lucky to survive more layoffs than I can count and lucky to have made financial decisions that worked out. In the end I owe a lot of it to either being bull headed or having superhuman patience to stick to a slow crawling plan. Nothing worth having is easy and there were plenty of people alongside me who seemed to have an easier go of things than I did which caused me great frustration. I see what my millenial daughters struggle with and recognize the differences but I also see improvements today. I wish you luck, strategic patience, and good judgement on any FIRE decisions you make.
Tommy
It wasn’t luck at all. It’s called diligence, prudence, and frugality. And it’s certainly harder for Leisure Freak to retire early with three kids than it would be for you without any.
Thanks for the play by play. 16k annually, does that cover both of you? Is it a pretty solid health plan? I think your strategy will pan out in the long run. Have a good Wednesday!
Thanks for the comment Max. Yes, the plan is decent by today’s standards, not as good as it was when I retired in 2009 when it just had co-pays, that and I pay 3X more for the premium now. It is for both of us with a deductible that has to be met before getting to the 80/20 payment and then a yearly max out of packet amount.
Tommy
Great achievement Tommy and my situation has been similar. No magic just automatic contributions for many years, many without even a very calculated plan like I do now. Some level of frugality, rejecting all the marketing and consumerism sold to us by the rich corporations, learning to do things yourself, etc have all been positive forces that have helped me as well. Plus I like your retire early and often concept. Earning some extra money over the years definitely helps also.
Thanks for the comment Arrgo. It certainly has been an adventure but nothing extreme in how it came about. I think that you hit the top ingredient in this non-extreme FIRE recipe – “rejecting all the marketing and consumerism sold to us by the rich corporations”.
Tommy
Tommy great story! I have been reading many of the FIRE stories and most are not that inspiring, yours is what I would say is great. May I ask where do you live and do you travel much?
Steve
Thanks for the comment Steve and I’m glad to hear you enjoyed my ordinary story. We travel as much as we like which normally falls in the 20 to 30 days a year range. We live in Castle Rock Colorado. I feel I lucked out in picking this community when we made the move.
Tommy
I guess this is a testimonial that what you say on leisure freak is all true. I was thinking that you have been my unpaid financial advisor since we became friends way back in the 90s. In all those casual conversations I learned a lot. I also unlearned all that BS that Corporate America tells you to keep you enslaved to their service. IF I had not listened to you I would not have retired at 49 and now 10 years on I am so glad I did. We had some lean years that we had to stick to our budget but that was better than slowly dying in a soul sucking job. We never went hungry, or had to scramble to pay an emergency bill. I also wish I had acted on some of your investment speculations 20 years ago my budget would have been less lean. Like dumping the company stock, I knew you were right but I was reluctant to act, and it cost me.
Thanks for the comment Ralph. Your story is just as common as mine is. We have a shared FIRE journey. I have also made some mistakes along the way and I regret drinking the corp koolaid for far too long. Your early retirement beat mine age-wise by a couple of years. Doing it at age 49 as you did says you did a lot exceptionally right.
Tommy
Not having kids enabled us to do it as soon as we did. That is where we differ from the majority. But as you know my wife did not work outside the home after about age 30. If we had kids she would have been working full time as well and our taxes would have been lower so that money would have gone to raising kids.
Hey Ralph, it shows that we all have different circumstances to maneuver through to get to FIRE. There is no one path but instead figuring out and choosing the right one that fits out unique life situation.
Tommy
Very cool! How much money did you guys retire with and how much passive income does it generate then and now? Knowing the numbers will really help put things in perspective given there’s such a wide range of figures. Thanks!
We had kids much later, and I found that the goal post for passive income keeps moving after each kid. But as they say, have kids and the money will come!
Sam
Thanks for the comment Sam. I agree that children change the goal posts as those little blessings add cost to the equation. I had far less than the $1mm common goal when I retired early. I began with $665,000 in a Sepp 72t IRA to fund my lifestyle budget with some additional IRA and ROTH money outside of that. Although the specific 72t IRA ended 9 years later below what it began with our overall portfolio grew even with the years of distributions. Passive income is just part of the overall income and bucket strategy supporting what was a firm budget of $40K in 2010 to now where it is a relaxed $60K. It all comes down to where and how you live. I live in a desired and moderate Cost of Living area with a median household income of $121K or so for reference.
Tommy
This is a great story Tommy. Thanks a million for sharing. My story is very similarly boring and I did most of the same things as you. I have a stay-at-home-wife, raised two kids, worked my way through night school to get a degree, climbed the corporate ladder into middle-management and invested diligently in my 401K and Roth IRA.
I have to laugh my butt off at people like Dino who think us older folks had it made, but it’s impossible for them to do the same thing. Good financial planning is never outdated. Neither is listening to the people who have accomplished their goals.
I wanted to go out at 55, like my Dad, but it wasn’t feasible at my cost structure here in sunny So. Cal. Plus, I have a great job, work from home 4 days a week and am making six figures. I’ve rescheduled my FIRE date to age 60 and I’m 56 now. Working the extra five years will bring in an extra half mil, about half of which I’ll save.
Thanks for the comment Bret. You are absolutely right when you say good financial planning is never outdated. It cares not about one’s age or generation. It sounds like you are in a good spot. If the job is still enjoyable it’s always a great option to stay and reap the rewards while continuing towards the bigger life goal. You’ll know when the time is right.
Tommy
Great story. Glad to read non Silicone Valley kids and their F.I.R.E. story. My personal goal is work towards not needing a corporate job and get to the point where i can work at a library for minimum wage or a series of temp jobs where as soon as the BS comes or I get sick of it, I can move on. I’ve got a $250 mortgage on a 2×2 townhouse, zero debt, no kids. I want to bail on the corporate world by 50.
Thanks for the comment tremayne. Your plan is exactly what I have done/doing. I can say embracing the concept of retirement is the absence of needing to work, not the absence of work is extremely liberating. Being financially free to work on your terms is such a better way to live. It’s worth everything it takes to get there.
Tommy
Very interesting and inspiring. My husband is our primary breadwinner with a six figure salary and we have a lot in retirement accounts. I started writing books in the last year and we are making a surprising amount from them. The one thing hindering my husband retiring at 51 is health insurance and the seven kids still at home. Yep we had 9 children total. We have lived a frugal but happy life. But we really need good health insurance for the horde and it will be very pricey.
Thanks for the comment Laraba. You both were certainly blessed with children. You’re right, getting the healthcare insurance covered is a major part of retiring early. I had a retirement health plan available to me after 30 years of service. It was $476 in 2010 and now is $1470 a month with less coverage. The ACA is there but takes managing yearly taxable income to stay below the income thresholds. Something to structure accounts to do before retiring.
Tommy
Thanks for sharing your experience. I have recently started to learn more about mortgage. I have come across a website Terry Nance, Reverse Mortgage Lenders in California.
Im amazed by your story – its not about the the destination but the travel so to speak that you have gone thru that inspires me reading this article. I was on same boat as what you have gone thru and could imagine the load lifted on your shoulder when you give up the 24/7/365 job to have your life back. That takes courage and wisdom.
Thanks for the comment Cjm. Yeppers, ditching the rat race for freedom does take courage and wisdom. But I must add that it couldn’t happen without having a well thought out and executed plan.
Tommy
Thanks for sharing quality information, worth reading.
I have read multiple articles on your website and found them very helpful.