For sure no. I don’t want to live frugally for the long term. I played that game in college and I’m not excited to go back.

If living on 65% of my current income was possible.

If I had that little I would be homeless, not retired.

But by 30 most people have already contributed way more than they will ever consume by existing peacefully.

We “retired” when my wife was 30 and I was 33. That was nine years ago.

As Australians, healthcare is free, so that wasn’t a concern. (That being said, we also take out yearly travel insurance policies, which are surprisingly cheap compared to regular private insurance.)

That, not having kids (but we’ve met people who did a similar thing BECAUSE they wanted to spent time with kids), and living very frugally was what made it possible, and continues to make it possible. When we were working, after having paid off our small apartment, we could live on less than 20% of our combined income by being very tight.

The more you save, the more you can invest, and the less you’ll need invested to sustain yourself. It’s a positive feedback loop, and after three years of trying to be as frugal as possible, tracing every dollar, it became second nature.

After building our investments, our cost of living has gone up, but not by much. When you’re building your portfolio, being extra stingy pays off greatly. We have been slow traveling non-stop for the last nine years, because the cost of living is cheaper in (almost) every other country, even when you consider paying for short-term rentals. Next year we’ll hit 100 countries visited.

We’ve also done extra university courses, languages courses, and have a ton of hobbies. Even without work, there’s not enough time in the day if you have an active mind.

65 percent of jack shit is not enough to live on my guy.

I don’t think I could keep my expenses at 65% of what I spend now because I already spend as little as I can since I’m trying to save up for an early retirement. I’d love to retire as early as possible.

Become younger and get money? Sure.

I would have retired at 16 if I could.

I don’t think you would keep up with inflation

Fuck yeah. Nothing’s more tiresome and stultifying than the whole work routine. That’s time you’re never getting back.

The whole idea of retiring at 65 after you’ve been squeezed like an orange that’s been sent twice into the press, just to “enjoy” your failing body, failing senses, failing brain in your twilight years is absurd.

If you can retire at 30, hell yes do it.

If I could retire right now at 38, and kept my expenses at 100% of what they are right now, I’d still be choosing which bill can wait a week and a half past the due date to make sure we can all eat.

65% and we start drawing straws for who gets eaten this week.

Instead of hypotheticals, am Auatralian. I (m) retired at 35 and divorced/moved at 45 and lived frugally in a mud brick cabin, off grid (solar and septic) on a dirt road in the bush, for a decade with my new (f) partner, she worked part time 2 days a week, grew lots of our own food, rode our MTBs on fire roads and trails, hiked, kayaked, swam in the river (we could cycle to) on hot days etc etc. Never thought we were missing anything, quite the opposite.

My small untouched share investments compounded hugely. As well as that, I only took 1/2 the dividends to live on, the outer half were reinvested as well,

A series of unfortunate events (aka mega bushfire) saw us buy an apartment in the city near the beach to get our heads stright just before covid lockdown, lived car free there etc , sold that 2 years ago and made a ridiculous profit, bought a place in a small rural village in the back of bumfuck for way less. No flood risk, no bushfire risk and it gets decent rainfall.

Now I have more money then I know what to do with…by that I don’t mean I am a billionaire, I mean living frugally becomes a habit so my shares and income have grown and grown. I now donate 25% of my investmwnt income to charities, 25% is reinvested.and I.use the other 1/2 to live on.

My parter works 4 days a week for 6 months of the year, then has 6 months off completely. She wants her.own independent income etc

My only regret was not being brave enough about retiring earlier. I missed those years of freedom and wing get them.back. Am now 60.

I am older than 30, but am literally facing this decision right now. I have chosen the latter: work for more years for better lifestyle and financial security. My job isn’t too bad, so I don’t have a huge push to walk away.

I’m planning to scale back my career in a few years, but most likely part-time or seasonal work rather than full-on retirement.

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.

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.

Yes.