Would you retire at 30 and live frugally?
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If you had the money to retire at 30, your savings would be invested and on an average year your earnings would cover your expenses. You would have health insurance, so no worries there. The only catch is that you would have to keep your expenses at 65% of what you spend right now. Would you take it, or would you rather work a few more years for a better lifestyle and financial security?
When I was approaching 30 I was looking forward to kids, and that wouldn’t be sufficient to raise them.
In a couple years though ….. once they are through college so I’m done with those payments and child support, living on 65% of my income would be easy.
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If you had the money to retire at 30, your savings would be invested and on an average year your earnings would cover your expenses. You would have health insurance, so no worries there. The only catch is that you would have to keep your expenses at 65% of what you spend right now. Would you take it, or would you rather work a few more years for a better lifestyle and financial security?
No.
My mortgage and childcare are like 80% of my outgoings. Once the mortgage is gone and kids in school maybe
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I'd try, but my shopping addiction would get me in trouble.
same. keep my ass away from any store
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If you had the money to retire at 30, your savings would be invested and on an average year your earnings would cover your expenses. You would have health insurance, so no worries there. The only catch is that you would have to keep your expenses at 65% of what you spend right now. Would you take it, or would you rather work a few more years for a better lifestyle and financial security?
A 4% withdrawal rate is intended for a 30yr retirement when accounting for inflation, so you'd need to keep your expenses well below that, probably closer to 2%. But more importantly in my opinion this relies on the assumption of a mostly stable market, which over the course of a ~70yr retirement is riskier a bet to take compared to a ~30yr retirement.
Also what would you do on such a tight budget for ~70yr that you wouldn't get bored of?
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Dividends from what ? Tell me company that can't collapse in the next 10 years, you have insides from billionaires who can shit fuck your investments in couple of seconds ?
Buddy, you seem to have a problem around investments because again that's not how this works. You shouldn't be investing in individual stocks unless you like gambling or have insider information (which is supposed illegal but the US is really showing that it's not as of late). You should be invested in broad index funds, like ETFs, which track the entire market (to simplify they own a fraction of every company on the market). The market, over the long run, always goes up so you always win (although again, with the US in very interested in understanding what happens when a country collapsed, from what I read about Germany it was actually surprisingly fine if I'm not mistaken).
You seem to be looking at investing as a way to get rich quickly, a gamble that may pay off. But good investing is slow, consistent growth that guarantees a safe retirement (but also unfortunately does not give us an escape from this capitalist hell hole of permanent work).
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I tell you something about investing. If enough people invest there is thing called TV that they can make announcement and push indexes down by 50% in an hour and let them go back in 10 years so from your 100 bucks you will have 50 bucks and from your 4 dollars you will have 2 dollars per year. That saying you saved your 500 thousands in let's say 10 years now work 5 more years to go back to 500 thousand because you just lost 250k in an hour. You stand no chance when they want slaves. Million is for pussies they fuck everyday.
It seems you've been scorned from treating investing as gambling and I'm sorry to hear that but that's not how this works. Yes, markets can go down and you can lose money but:
- this is a hypothetical which doesn't care about real market considerations
- you can and should average your retirement investing against a conservative figure so in boom years you're underspending and in bust years you're still covered
This is all calculatable. The problem is we're all paying for some jackass's yacht when we should be paying for community rail and affordable housing.
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A 4% withdrawal rate is intended for a 30yr retirement when accounting for inflation, so you'd need to keep your expenses well below that, probably closer to 2%. But more importantly in my opinion this relies on the assumption of a mostly stable market, which over the course of a ~70yr retirement is riskier a bet to take compared to a ~30yr retirement.
Also what would you do on such a tight budget for ~70yr that you wouldn't get bored of?
I would definitely pursue my dream of sitting in pointless TEAMS meetings all day.
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100% I would do that but that's a bit unfair because:
- I make enough money to splurge more than I need to, namely eating out, and I would happily never eat at a restaurant again if it meant I got 40 hours of my week back for the rest of my life.
- I would spend the next 60 years of my life doing all the hobbies I want to do. I have stories I want to write, video games I want to make, furniture I want to craft, themed parties I want to throw, a TTRPG I'm working on, a card game (gods to make a card game before I croak!). Even if I did what I plan to do which is sell all of that at the lowest price I could (including giving as much of it away for free as possible) inevitably some of those things will make me a bit of money. Enough I'd hope to splurge into an international trip every now and then or keep my PC rig rather new.
I just don't expect to stop working in retirement, I just plan to work doing stuff I love instead of stuff that pays well.
So if anyone in the comments is a wealthy person or dying with no heirs feel free to send me enough money to retire. I would love to create things for people for the rest of my life and not worry about anything but if I could afford a thing I don't need and if my hobbies are worthy of other people's time/attention.
It is almost as if all of humanity could survive and provide for each other without psycho billionaires owning the means of production and housing!
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I would definitely pursue my dream of sitting in pointless TEAMS meetings all day.
Absolutely but after a while you'd likely run out of cheap hobbies and need more money than your 2% to fund it. The better way to do it is taking a year or two off in the middle of your career imo.
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It is almost as if all of humanity could survive and provide for each other without psycho billionaires owning the means of production and housing!
Ah, to own a house... Wouldn't that be neat? And imagine if it wasn't a piece of shit produced at the lowest cost possible by overworked and underpaid builders. Hell, imagine a custom house for my particular tastes!
What a world we could live in if we just taxed the rich out of existence and owned a portion of our work place.
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Buddy, you seem to have a problem around investments because again that's not how this works. You shouldn't be investing in individual stocks unless you like gambling or have insider information (which is supposed illegal but the US is really showing that it's not as of late). You should be invested in broad index funds, like ETFs, which track the entire market (to simplify they own a fraction of every company on the market). The market, over the long run, always goes up so you always win (although again, with the US in very interested in understanding what happens when a country collapsed, from what I read about Germany it was actually surprisingly fine if I'm not mistaken).
You seem to be looking at investing as a way to get rich quickly, a gamble that may pay off. But good investing is slow, consistent growth that guarantees a safe retirement (but also unfortunately does not give us an escape from this capitalist hell hole of permanent work).
Every investment is a gamble is you read terms of service, it's hidden behind this fancy word called speculation. Bank guarantee nothing to return. You recommended some financial products that you have no idea how they work. ETFs are just money machines for bankers to get double commission from selling stocks of companies you can't afford to hedge with real stocks and get your dividend and votes. Sometimes even to fuck you up if that's their business strategy. You buy index so you buy nothing of value, moreover you give a knife to banker so he can stab you whenever he wants. That's even more stupid than buying company stocks. Read more kid, I know exactly how this shit works.
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If you had the money to retire at 30, your savings would be invested and on an average year your earnings would cover your expenses. You would have health insurance, so no worries there. The only catch is that you would have to keep your expenses at 65% of what you spend right now. Would you take it, or would you rather work a few more years for a better lifestyle and financial security?
Become younger and get money? Sure.
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If you had the money to retire at 30, your savings would be invested and on an average year your earnings would cover your expenses. You would have health insurance, so no worries there. The only catch is that you would have to keep your expenses at 65% of what you spend right now. Would you take it, or would you rather work a few more years for a better lifestyle and financial security?
lol... You need like 2 million dollars and a paid off house to make it work in the US and that's if you know how to manage money and control spending. AND no critical event happened like major illness etc
aka system is designed that vast majority of people can never ACHIEVE IT.
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It seems you've been scorned from treating investing as gambling and I'm sorry to hear that but that's not how this works. Yes, markets can go down and you can lose money but:
- this is a hypothetical which doesn't care about real market considerations
- you can and should average your retirement investing against a conservative figure so in boom years you're underspending and in bust years you're still covered
This is all calculatable. The problem is we're all paying for some jackass's yacht when we should be paying for community rail and affordable housing.
You're dreaming or selling ? Retirement investment is Ponzi scheme. If you think there will be more and more people every year in your country look up birth rates. You know what is Kondratiev wave ? There is no real market right now, go make something and see how much it's worth and for how much billionaire owned companies are selling it and why they don't pay taxes.
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If you had the money to retire at 30, your savings would be invested and on an average year your earnings would cover your expenses. You would have health insurance, so no worries there. The only catch is that you would have to keep your expenses at 65% of what you spend right now. Would you take it, or would you rather work a few more years for a better lifestyle and financial security?
We couldn't. More than 65% of what we make goes just to cover the bills, so it wouldn't be a possibility. Even if we didn't eat or have a car.
Would be underwater and back at work within a couple of months.
If you mean some version of 65% of our current lifestyle like magically the house shrinks and costs 65% of what it currently does, then maybe? We don't eat out much, don't vacation much, don't go out much already though.
If you mean health costs all covered, and no more retirement contributions and 65% of GROSS earnings, that would actually give me almost the exact same net pay, and wouldn't be a different lifestyle. Those things cost 32% of my earnings and taxes 15%.
So I'm not sure exactly how to think about this but in short - I am more willing to work to have a reasonably good life, than to not work and not have a good life, but have a lot of free time. I do know how to have fun for cheap, have been poor before, but I like life now better than then.
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If you had the money to retire at 30, your savings would be invested and on an average year your earnings would cover your expenses. You would have health insurance, so no worries there. The only catch is that you would have to keep your expenses at 65% of what you spend right now. Would you take it, or would you rather work a few more years for a better lifestyle and financial security?
Depends on if I could afford to own a scrapyard/pick and pull first. As a welder and machinist, thats basically a playground for me. If I ain't working, ill still be making. Otherwise, yes. I don't spend much now as it is, but growing my own weed would probably drop me below 65% by itself.
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You don't need to buy new shoes every time you go for a walk, you know?
Funny enough, the money never seems to be spent on stuff for me.
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This is a highly pessimistic take. 2 million dollars would conservatively yield $80,000 per year. This would place you at the 70th percentile in the USA for individual income.
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If you had the money to retire at 30, your savings would be invested and on an average year your earnings would cover your expenses. You would have health insurance, so no worries there. The only catch is that you would have to keep your expenses at 65% of what you spend right now. Would you take it, or would you rather work a few more years for a better lifestyle and financial security?
Lol, that's called being homeless
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I guess I have a different understanding of frugal. For me, you can be rich and yet frugal, only spending money on the needs and occasional wants. Some people don't even show that they're net worth increased. I forgot the name of the person, but he worked as a janitor throughout his life. When he passed away, to his family's utter surprise, he left $8 million from his investment account to his family. The guy could have cashed in the investment profits and lived lavishly but he didn't.
In this hypothetical circumstance described by OP, you don't have $80m on which to live frugally travelling the world pursuing your interest in photography.
For most people, living on 65% of their current earnings would mean a serious curtailment of their current activities. A subsistence if you will.
Besides which, most hobbies aren't really satisfying in a way that can nourish the soul, certainly not the ones you can do at home for little or no cost anyway.