Want to Retire Early? Now You Can!

Retire early, get financial freedom and travel the world!- It’s the common cubicle dream. But there are in fact many ways a person can make this a reality. Joining the FIRE movement which stands for ‘financially independent, retire early’ is not that hard provided you make the right financial moves while working a 9-5 job. FIRE has defined early retirement as not just leaving work but as gaining the financial freedom to pursue your passion projects and follow your dreams.

Retiring early, however, takes a lot of work and therefore many people find it challenging to achieve this. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to work in a certain high-salaried job or industry to retire early, anyone who has the long-term goal of retiring early can make it happen. With strong resolve and the right strategies, you can turn your dream into a reality. The key steps to early retirement are discussed below:

Track your expenses and make the necessary changes to your budget:

One of the most important things to do in order to meet all your financial goals, be it early retirement or buying a new home, is to analyze your current spending.

No matter how you look at it, you need to make changes to your current spending in order to achieve your dream of retiring early. This could even mean drastically reducing your spending. There are a slew of apps today that can help you track your expenses such as LearnVest or Penny. Most people with the goal of retiring early, aim to spend less than 50% of their income and put the rest into savings.

There are many ways you can work towards increasing your savings. If you are in debt, work towards aggressively paying off the loans so that any income you make in the future can be put directly towards savings. In addition to this, you can also cut back on unnecessary expenses such as that excessive coffee or those frequent restaurant dinners. You can also try and increase your income through side gigs or freelancing opportunities. If your goal is to retire early, frugal living should be your motto.

Make your money work for you:

In other words, invest aggressively! The longer the amount of time, you allow your money to grow, the greater the rewards. Hence, it only makes sense that you start investing at the start of your career. Early retirement essentially means that you have a shorter amount of time to save money but a longer amount of time that the money has to last you so make investment your best friend.

Design your portfolio in a way that will generate long-term returns. While stocks can be a risky investment, in the long-term they produce very high returns. If you look at the historic analysis of the Indian stock market, taking into consideration its various downturns, the market barometer NIFTY 50 has averaged a little higher than 10.84% annually since inception. This means if you put a majority of your savings into an index fund, there is a good chance you’ll receive an annual return of 10.5%.

Many people assume you should look for low-risk investments options when investing for the retirement fund. But this is an inaccurate assumption. Investing in low-cost investment funds is recommended when you are near the retirement age, as you need to move some of your money into more liquid investments so that you don’t have to worry about the investments selling options when you need it.

Calculate how much money you need for retirement:

Planning for the future is the most important strategy when it comes to retirement. That is you need to estimate what your retirement spending will look like. To do this, you should analyze your current spending and look at what expenses will go up, down, added, subtracted or eliminated completely.

A few things to consider are your health insurance and rent. Many companies offer health insurance as part of the employment package, but for retirement, you need to make sure to factor in this expense. Another large expense is your monthly rent. If you hope to own a home before retirement, this should not be a problem but if you plan to rent, you need to make sure to include this in your retirement expense.

Start saving as early as possible:

The earlier you start saving money, the more you would have accumulated when you decide to retire. Hence, if you start putting money away from the start of your career, there is a higher chance you can exit the workforce earlier. There is a rule of 25 that states that you need to have 25 times your planned annual spending when you retire. That is if you plan to spend $35,000 during the first year of retirement, you need to have a total of $875,000 when you retire.

The second rule of saving is the 4% rule which states that you can take out 4% of your invested savings during your first year of retirement and continue to draw out that same amount adjusted for inflation for the following years. This strategy was developed in the 1990s and was based on historical market conditions.

While neither of these strategies is fool-proof, they are considered reasonable when it comes to saving. Moreover, it is imperative to remain conservative with your savings when it comes to retirement.

Conclusion

The FIRE (financially independent, retire early) dream may seem a distant reality for many but with a little planning and smart financial moves, it can become a reality. But it also helps to rethink what early retirement means, it’s not always fancy cruises and dinners. For some, it could mean spending more time with your grandchildren or significant others.

Whatever it may be, as long as it is important to you to live by your own schedule and not that of the employers, you should diligently work towards getting out of the workforce early using the strategies listed above. Remember to start saving early because running out of money means running back to work.