Want Early Retirement Solutions? What You Really Need Are Ideas

FIRE is a growing phenomenon. Who wouldn’t want to set a course for financial independence and early retirement? Anyone interested in pulling off this extraordinary feat can do research and get all kinds of early retirement advice, opinions, and success stories. Based on posted negative comments I’ve read when doing my own research, not all of it is seen as helpful. Perhaps many hopeful FIRE Walkers are just taking the wrong research approach. Here’s a thought, forget about looking for early retirement solutions. What you really need are early retirement ideas that you can use and inspire your own solutions.  

Want Early Retirement Solutions? What You Really Need Are Ideas

Photo by Juan Marin on Unsplash

The Frustration of Looking For Early Retirement Solutions Instead Of Ideas

FIRE comes in all kinds of flavors and not all of them are going to exactly match your financial or income situation, your early retirement wants, or even what you value in your lifestyle. With the flavors of FIRE running from Frugal Lean FIRE to Fat FIRE, it’s no wonder that looking for early retirement solutions instead of useful ideas that fit well for you can be frustrating.

Here’s the deal. There is no one size fits all early retirement solution to be found. It’s all  just guidance based on other’s early retirement success. Most of it orbits time-tested financial common sense. Use what is aligned with your unique values, beliefs, desires, and abilities. Discard from memory or skip over anything that won’t work for you. Then put in the effort to formulate your unique early retirement ideas.

Taking Early Retirement Ideas and Making Your Own Plan

My early retirement isn’t necessarily what you might consider how you view early retirement. But parts of it might be. When I was reading books about early retirement and then later what was found online as information was pouring out, I found a lot of things that just didn’t apply to me. When that was the case I moved on and just took what was better aligned with my unique situation and wants. I was constantly surprised by little gems that would totally work for me or something obvious I had overlooked. But first it’s important to understand a few things before going in.

Know what you want –

Early retirement is more than not having an alarm clock, saying good riddance to commuter hell, or never having to report to a job with work, coworkers, or boss we despise. That darker stuff defines what we don’t want and won’t allow as part of our early retired life going forward. We need to know what we want to have. How else would we be able to know if we come across a good idea or not?

Part of what I wanted in early retirement was employment liberation where I never would need to work. But I was OK with working for pay when on my terms for as long as it remained on my terms. My talking about retiring early and often isn’t everyone’s idea of early retirement. Just as some other’s early retirement success stories and lifestyle, where they live, how they live, etc. doesn’t appeal to me. But there are always ideas that can be taken that will be a great fit to use.

Come to grips with your unique situation and life –

As the saying goes, reality bites! Once we know what we want it comes down to whether we have a chance in hell of pulling it off. I loved reading about the 30-year-old retiree who amassed a $1M+ portfolio and lives frugally off of the income. Or young people who retired early and travel the world. It’s fascinating reading but my reality is different. I didn’t earn enough or could live frugally enough to match their financial accomplishments at that young age. My life’s dedication and direction where I wanted to stay close to family also created reality based parameters that I wanted to stay in. Their examples didn’t offer me an early retirement solution, but there’s always ideas that could be used within my unique reality based situation. I then maximized those ideas for my income, frugal lifestyle, where I lived, how I wanted to live, etc.

How far are you willing to go to get it –

I would do anything to lose some weight except diet and exercise. Well, good luck with that. There’s no easier way to achieve results.  The same kind of logic goes for early retirement. The rules of the universe will always apply. We have to save and invest a large portion of our income to retire early. What kinds of lifestyle changes are we really willing to do to make this happen? Is extreme frugality on the table? Starting a side hustle or going for a promotion to bring in extra income? Moving to a lower cost home, city, state, or country? These are all parts of people’s early retirement success stories from which ideas that apply to us can be born.

I could see that we had room to decrease our lifestyle cost without jeopardizing our happiness. There was also room for more financial discipline to boost our savings rate and refine our early retirement strategy. Figuring out what we are willing to commit to and turning ideas taken from other’s early retirement stories is the right recipe for success.

Not all early retirement research is going to be useful to us –

Instead of getting frustrated looking for early retirement solutions and venting in a comment or on a forum, just take the best ideas that apply based on what we know about our unique wants and parameters. Research and read about a broad range of early retirement success stories because you never know what you might find. Forget about any N/A stuff seen and just move on. Then develop your own solutions and/or seek solution help from a trusted professional financial planner.

2 thoughts on “Want Early Retirement Solutions? What You Really Need Are Ideas

  1. Good perspective Tommy. I’ve done something similar where I read a lot of FIRE blogs, stories, articles, and comments then use those ideas to form and improve my own FIRE strategy. There are definitely some good ideas and inspiration to be found. I may not totally want to live like Mr. Money Moustache, but he does have some good perspectives to draw on. I’m not against doing some work (and I still do), but I wont put up with bad work situations like I used to. Come up with a FIRE plan, then fine-tune and improve it as you go and you will get there.

    1. Thanks for the comment Arrgo. I just think that even the most level-headed of FIRE Walkers can get caught up in an almost FIRE partisan mindset. I agree completely about other’s stories, like MMM, which inspired ideas to create many unique solutions/strategies for myself.
      Tommy

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