Well writing that title out was pretty scary. So scary, I had to add the small disclaimer at the end to make myself feel less disillusioned. I didn’t want to, and I kinda hate myself for needing to add it to feel better, but it’s scary admitting you have a lofty goal. And right now retiring at 35 IS a lofty goal, but it’s still a goal and I felt like putting it out there for all to see would somehow make me more accountable to achieving it.
That’s right. I want to retire at 35.
Why 35?
No real reason, I just thought a decade is a realistic amount of time to achieve my goal, while still being a massive challenge. (I wouldn’t be writing this post if my goal was to retire at 65…you wouldn’t be reading this post if it was)
How do I plan to do it?
Before I can go about explaining the details of how I’m going to retire at 35; I need to first define what retirement means to me. I’m not exactly going to be an empty nester who has been locked up in a cubicle for decades waiting to travel the world by living on cruise ships.
I’ll be extremely young, healthy and with A LOT of time on my hands, so the conventional ideas and definitions of retirement aren’t going to apply.
I spend a good amount of time thinking about my ideal retirement life, and it does change from time to time as I gain new knowledge and perspective of the world around me. But, generally speaking; retirement at 35 means not needing to work as a necessity to live. This means I still wish to work, create and run businesses but I’ll be doing it for fun instead of worrying about how I’m going to pay the bills.
I’d like the freedom to experience as much as this world has to offer. That doesn’t mean JUST laying on the beach somewhere sunny with a tropical drink in one hand and a smile permanently plastered on my face. It means, I’d love to explore, expand and challenge my world by constantly experiencing new things. Not read about it on paper, hear someone else do it or watch a video online about it. I want to actually live it even if I end up hating the experience, I just want the freedom and circumstance to give it a go if I want to.
If you’ve been reading a few posts on my blog; you’ll know I’m a die-hard passive income believer. So, it’s not surprising that’s how I’m going to go about achieving my super early retirement.
I’ve wrote a post on the 3 rules of money I follow last month and I’ll be using those rules as the core of my plan. You can read the post here, or just to give you a summary, the 3 rules are:
- Spend within your means
- Have multiple streams of income
- Make your money work for you
More specifically, I’d like to have multiple streams of passive income. That already fulfils the last 2 rules and then simple budgeting will keep to the first rule. But of course, it’s not so simple or there wouldn’t be so many retirement blogs or articles that exist. Obviously the path to retirement is a big mystery for most and everyone is desperate for answers on how the next guy did it.
I’m not going to lie, it’s a bit of a mystery for me too. However, what I do know is the 3 rules of money is a good place to start. I’ll probably provide quarterly progress reports on this since it’s a big goal that’s going to take years to achieve. I don’t think monthly updates would provide much value or insight to you all, but annual updates may miss small details that could provide a lot of value. So I’ve decided to do quarterly progress reports instead.
You should be expecting my first official report to be in March 2018. See you guys then.
