My Mom has been going through old emails to paint a picture of all the places we’ve traveled together. During her investigation she stumbled across an absolutely hilarious email I sent her 5 years ago. It was a response to an email she sent me with a link to an article about the different ways to retire early. Let’s see what my response was 5 years ago:
Subject: Re: Retirement
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I signed up for some blog or something on retirement. It has different articles that I thought you might find interesting – especially the one about retiring early like at 35. It talks about saving 75% of your income and fixing things instead of buying them, riding a bike instead of having a car, making your food, finding other ways to rent where you live (house sit etc). http://moneyover55.about.com/od/howmuchtoretire/tp/How-To-Retire-Early-Rich-Or-With-No-Or-Little-Money.htm?nl=1
What a difference 5 years makes. To provide a little more perspective: at the time I sent this email I was making $35,000 and supporting myself and my boyfriend in Manhattan. We were completely broke. The thought of saving 75% of my salary when our rent alone was taking about 75% seemed impossible to me. I was also unemployed during this time. I had quit my first, toxic job without a back up. I found the days I spent looking for jobs and basically waiting for my boyfriend and roommate to get home unfulfilling. Everyone I knew had a job and was busy during the most beautiful times of the week. I thought the solution was to not retire because I would be bored with people at work – though I do like my semi-joking idea about making retiree friends I can hang out with. My young self couldn’t have known that I’ve now done that through the wonders of the internet – mostly Twitter.
Anyway, almost 2 years exactly after I sent this email I created my plan to retire early. I was sick of it. 2 weeks of vacation, rarely seeing my family and all my mental energy going to creating ads to sell people shit they don’t need. Here I am 3 years after that: less than 4 years from retirement at 31….a fair amount earlier than 35 MWAHAHAHA!!!
It’s crazy how perspectives can change so quickly. I now make 3x what I was 5 years ago so saving 75%+ is much easier. I still do eat out a lot though keto and getting better at cooking has decreased that a lot this year. I didn’t need to move to the middle of nowhere to decrease my spending and it didn’t take much to increase my income and savings rate. Life is a funny thing.