What did I do right to retire early?

I retired early. It was quite intentional. In this article I want to tell you about a few things I did right. 

My Background

Let’s quickly review my work history, just to help better understand my perspective.

• My first job was working in strawberry fields for about a month every summer. I was in my early-mid teens.
• During my last couple years of high school, I worked half-time at a Ben Franklin Store. Remember the old Five-and-Dime stores? I was there stocking shelves, pushing brooms, receiving freight deliveries, doing inventory, running errands for the boss, and whatever they needed me to do.
• Then right out of high school I enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and stayed for 20 years, retiring from that career one month after my 38th birthday.
• After that, I ran a couple of small businesses, worked for a few non-profits, a fortune 200 company, and a tech startup. This went on for another 24 years before I called it quits.

All told, I had been exchanging my time for money for around 46 years. That’s just a little short of 100,000 hours of my life. 

Don’t let anyone tell you differently, a career can be a lot of things, but at it’s core it’s nothing more than bartering with the most precious and limited gift you’ve been given: the time you have here on earth. 

Exchanging our time for money is to some degree giving someone else the right to control what we do with your life. It’s putting a price tag on our existence. But the reality is that in today’s world, we have to do that for some period of time. 

But how far do we take this? What is enough? How many hours of our life do we surrender in our pursuit of the life we really want? Retiring early for me was easily in the top 5 best decisions of my life. 

Things I Did Right

There are many ways to retire early. Today we’ll just talk about some of the things I did to get here. Five of them are financial and one is not. And there’s more, but maybe for another day.

I worked a job that had a pension. I earned a pension for serving 20 years in the U.S. military, and now I get a check every month. It’s not enough for most people to live on, but it’s almost half of what I’ve determined I need in retirement. 

It’s hard to find a job in today’s market that has a pension program. The U.S. military doesn’t even have the same retirement pension program that I had 25 years ago. Alternatively, what is most common today is 401K retirement plans. And if your employer has matching contributions, it’s a no-brainer to at least match what your employer contributes. 

All that is a good start, but my pension is only one of my income sources in retirement. 

I created multiple sources of income in retirement. I have four. My pension, social security, investments, and a few selective, enjoyable side hustles. 

It’s important to diversify your net worth and income streams. I won’t go into all that in this article. But if you don’t know what I’m talking about, start a conversation with a certified financial planner. That person can assess your situation and make recommendations. 

Why multiple income streams? Because it dilutes risk, increases confidence, and lowers financial stress. 

I started investing early. Most of us know that compounded interest is our friend. Starting as early as possible will multiply your returns by the time you retire. No matter how small, invest something every payday. Every time you get a raise, increase your investments. This is the best opportunity to set yourself up financially to retire early. 

The Who? What? Where? questions, if you’re not skilled at managing investments, are best answered by a professional. I shopped for a financial adviser who was certified, came with a good amount of experience, and offered a reasonable commission. He balances my accounts, watches the market for me, and advises me on decisions I need to make. This person should also be someone you can deeply trust. If you aren’t sure, start small with that person and give them a chance to earn your trust. 

We became debt-free 10 years before retiring. We had worked on it for years before then, including our mortgage. In hindsight, getting out of debt sooner would have been even better. 

I know there are a couple schools of thought debt and wealth. And there’s people who will run you through a bunch of numbers to show you how debt is the path to wealth. I’m not one of those people, but for reasons other than financial. 

For me, the most powerful element of being debt-free is that I don’t owe anyone anything. Debt enslaves us to the debtor. Whoever we owe, controls us in some, or maybe many, ways. And, God forbid, if anything happens to you while you’re deep in debt, you will leave that mess to your loved ones. 

So, it’s no debt for me. I love my freedom more than I love my things or even my bank accounts. Although, I found a way to have both freedom and healthy account balances with no debt.

I planned for it. I had a loose plan for many years. The dates shifted from time to time, but I knew that I would retire early. 

A big part of making that happen was to set up a budget so we knew where all our money was going. My wife and I saved and invested until the numbers showed we could comfortably retire. 

What’s the old saying? If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Be intentional. Set your path toward a destination and measure each step along the way. 

One very important tool we used was Boldin. Boldin is a retirement planning tool that gave us the confidence we needed to make one of the biggest decisions of our lives. Our financial advisor uses a similar tool, but I wanted to cross check what he was coming up with to get a second opinion. After all, it’s a huge decision. We compared his results with ours from Boldin. They were very similar. It assured us that we were doing all the right things. And it’s only $12/month after a 14 day free trial. Click on the banner down below to try it out. You won’t regret it. 

I retired TO something. Many people retire FROM our jobs/careers. Maybe they got fed up and just threw in the towel with no real plan about what will fill the rest of their lives. It’s a big change. 

Have you ever heard of “retirement mortality phenomenon”? This is where there is a statistical increase in death rates shortly after retirement. There are several contributing factors to this, but they can all be overcome by being intentional, by creating and carrying out a plan for all the years beyond your professional career. 

Don’t just run away from something you don’t want any more – run toward something that you do want, that you’re looking forward to doing the rest of your life. I’m more physically active now. I do a lot of hiking and backpacking. I do woodworking and gardening. I love to cook. We have chickens that I care for every day. Plus I get to do more family activities without the burning thought of work always on my mind. It’s been such a relief without a spec of regret!

There are many ways to retire early, but what I've outlined here worked for me. And as I've surveyed others who retired early, I realized the things I did right are no secret' they are quite common. And so you can be assured some version of this will work for you too. 

I hope this helped and I with you the very best in your journey to retirement!