For most people every bad meeting night stuck working late or disappointing
raise triggers the thought of a job for your life i think it's fair to say that
many people if they had the choice would not choose to spend eight or more hours
five days a week at the job they are currently in however
most will simply due to the fact that they have no other choice well there's
actually another choice and it's a choice to retire early and never work
again and that's what i'm about to explain how to do
right now if you've been in the workforce for any amount of time then at
some point you've had one of those days where you thought to yourself there's no
way i can do this for the next 40 years in fact you may be part of the 68 of
employees who are not fully satisfied with their jobs and have this thought on
the daily needless to say not enjoying your work especially given how many
hours you spend on the clock is far from ideal it's for this reason that more and
more people these days are devising strategies to escape the working world
early by retiring however i believe that to make any plan work understanding
what's waiting for you at the finish line is absolutely essential as such
what is waiting for you upon your last day of work good question first there's
time autonomy being able to spend your time however you want is one of the
ultimate luxuries in life that free time gives you the opportunity to spend more
time with your kids focus on your health or simply expand your mind by reading
more books basically as long as you're doing something you enjoy then you're
using that time well next retiring early is going to almost undoubtedly improve
your level of stress for instance have you ever taken the time to contrast how
you feel on weekends versus the work day i don't know about you but whenever i'm
off the clock i feel a major sense of relief knowing that there's no chance
someone will email or call me with a pressing work emergency and that i can
literally do anything that i want at any time however for the 40 working hours of
the week i am in a constant state of anxiety can you guess which of these two
situations i and many other people would prefer as their day-to-day norm i think
the answer is obvious then there are things you'll be leaving behind as you
retire such as the office drama that will never seem to end the
disappointment stepping from embarrassingly low raises and having to
deal with colleagues you dream of never working with again if you have a call
you simply cannot stand make sure that you generally tap that like button below
because they'll be out of your life before you know it i promise now if you
already know you want to retire early then all these benefits are really just
reminders of what's waiting around the corner but for most people all they
really need is a plan and as such i want to share with you the retirement path
that 99 of people will find themselves taking and then two alternatives that i
know you will ultimately find much more enticing so let's follow the journey of
an average person in the united states who goes to college graduates and gets a
job and starts saving for retirement right away so for this new grad they're
likely going to start their career making around 40 000 a year after living
expenses and repaying part of the student debt this person will contribute
roughly ten percent of their after tax income for the next 20 years until their
student loans are finally paid off at this point they then increase their
annual retirement contribution to 15 a year over the years our new grad will
soon become an old grad and assets will continue to collect average raises of 5
annually with their income maxing out at 90 000 a year at age 50. assuming a
favorable seven percent annual rate of return after investing for just over 40
years our hard-working friend would have just over 1.1 million dollars safe now
before you go running off to the party store to celebrate this newly minted
millionaire one thing you need to consider is whether that's even gonna be
something to celebrate four decades from now you see one misconception that most
people hold when planning for retirement is that whatever the value their money
is today is what it will be worth in the future for instance having one million
dollars today is quite a bit of money however the value of money doesn't
remain the same over time this is why you used to be able to buy a loaf of
bread for 50 cents 40 years ago whereas now a loaf can easily run you two
dollars or more so this is all to say that inflation is real and it's eating
away at your wealth more and more by the day so this begs the question by
following the retirement path i just laid out how much can you reasonably
expect to have in real dollars once all said and done well if we use that 1.1
million dollar example i just shared with you you would end up with just over
300 000 to your name for more than 40 years of work in fact i had to do a
double take when i learned just how crippling inflation could be on
achieving early retirement and i came to realize this when i read the book the
millionaire fastlane by mj demarco not only did this book teach me this very
critical financial lesson but it also taught me how to speed up my path to
financial freedom and take back my time and ultimately my autonomy honestly if
you haven't read this book today you're seriously missing out so fortunately the
first 100 people who follow the link in the description can get a free audiobook
copy of the millionaire fastlane today from this video sponsor audible but make
sure you click the link below very fast because those hundred copies they're
gonna go quick now the general rule of thumb is that upon return you should be
able to live off eighty percent of the money you were earlier on in life due to
a lack of dependence to care for along with not having a mortgage so let's do
the math to see if that three hundred thousand dollar in estate will grant us
the retirement we've been working so hard to achieve in the united states the
average consumer spends sixty thousand dollars here annually withdrawing from
your nest egg at a conservative four percent a year would give you twelve
thousand dollars for a deficit of forty eight thousand dollars even with the
average social security benefits of roughly twenty thousand dollars a year
you're still far from being able to retire so as such retirement for most
people is going to be greeting people at walmart as a daydream of a beach in
mexico rather than actually being on one fortunately that's not gonna be you
greeting people at walmart and you know why it's because by then walmart will
have robots doing that job and you'll be in the back just changing their
batteries just kidding but crummy jokes aside which you should probably
subscribe for more of this won't be you because you're going to be deploying one
of the two approaches that i'm about to share with you so the first approach
you'll take to retire early is to amass enough of an estate to live off for the
rest of your life this is basically the same as the example i just shared
however as you can see the amount you'll need to retire is probably a lot more
than you think so the question is how do you actually amass enough to pull this
off before you're sold that you need glasses for your glasses so most people
take the wrong approach to expediting this path to early retirement by simply
cutting down their expenses this approach is generally seen in the
financial independence retire earlier fire community and while there is
meridian living frugally on route to early retirement is probably not going
to move the needle as much as you think for instance if you started at 22 and
wanted to retire at 50 you would need to invest two thousand dollars a month to
make this happen however could you make an extra one or two thousand dollars a
month for most this may seem to be challenging but it's not if you really
think about it earning an extra thousand dollars a month for most people would
simply mean taking on a bit of part-time work or closing one extra client a month
i know either situation is pulling you further away from having a proper
work-life balance but that balance will surely be reset once you no longer have
to work now while this approach to retirement has long been relied upon
there are two distinct issues that must be pointed out first personally you may
not be earning enough to invest two thousand dollars a month in fact the
median individual income in the united states in 2021 was just under 45 000 a
year so unless you're investing over 50 percent of your after-tax income every
month then chances are we're trying at 50 using this previously stated timeline
it's not going to work out now the other issue is what if you didn't have the
luxury of starting your retirement journey in your early 20s as you
probably suspect this will require you to invest even more money every month
but let me illustrate what this would look like with an example if you only
started investing at 30 and wanted to retire at 50 with 2 million saved you
would need to invest 4 000 a month which as you just saw is about as much as most
people earn before tax now don't get me wrong i am not one to set limits on
people's potential however i think we can both agree that investing this
amount of money per month is simply out of the realm of possibilities for most
people therefore if you presently are rich with time needed to retire early
then you need to take a different approach this approach if you ask me can
be deployed at any age and can have you achieving a retired state within the
next three to five years how do you pull this off let me explain so when you look
at retirement as a concept it simply means no longer trading your time for
money and that's what this next approach is going to allow you to achieve the
method i recommend most people take to escape the 9 to 5 world and never trade
time for money again is to leverage the power of the internet and live off a
passive online business i know for most people who are older the concept of
relying solely on internet income may seem a little far-fetched however your
alternative is working for the next 40 years only to have to price match items
at walmart they're not price matching no more
um and i'm like well into your 90s so bear with me the
first step in building an online business that will support your dream of
retiring early is to research which business models interest you the most as
someone who's built multiple online businesses i can tell you firsthand that
it's going to be nearly impossible to succeed when you're first starting out
if you don't enjoy what you're doing some options you have when it comes to
online businesses include content creation e-commerce and the like this
main factor besides your level of interest is whether the business can be
automated which of course things like blogs and drop shipping stores can be
next you need to find the time to actually start building this business
unless you have the money to pay someone right from the start you'll have to
initially do most of the work yourself this is what i had to do for many years
until my youtube channel betterment boss started to take off and the same will be
true for whatever online business endeavor you decide to take on within
the first one to two years of work you should get to a point where the business
is now generating a few thousand dollars a month and while this is not enough to
live off of it is proof that what you're doing is working so at this point i
recommend continuing to work while you reinvest every last dollar you make back
into the business doing so will expedite its growth and get you to early
retirement quicker within these three to five year range your online business
will likely be doing two things first it will be generating more income than your
job is likely paying you which is great because it makes quitting that much
easier second it's now allowing you to live the life of early retirement
without having to have millions of dollars stashed away given you are
living off the profits it makes every month now the final step in this process
is to add the element of safety into your early retirement plan by continuing
to live frugally and investing your disposable income into more traditional
assets in fact adopting a frugal lifestyle has literally changed my
financial life forever and if you want to know why then click over to this next
video and let's get started