My recipe for early retirement (at age 46): part one

One of my regular and lovely readers, D, asked for my ‘recipe for early retirement’.  I’m always happy to share, so I had a think about it and here’s what I came up with.

I met my husband until I was 32 and he was 31.  Right from the start we lived a thrifty life together, and for me that is the key to being able to do whatever you want in life, including retiring early.  Firstly we were thrifty from necessity – when we started our business we didn’t pay ourselves much at all, but once we started earning more we saw that we could get a house deposit together if we continued on that way instead of having a more expensive lifestyle.  Once we’d bought a house, we realised we could pay it off early if we continued on our thrifty path, and so it went on.

We did everything to make the most of our income whilst we saved – cooked our own meals, hardly went out, enjoyed our own entertainment at home with carpet picnics, box-sets and making our home a comfortable place to be (being at home instead of going out all the time was not a hardship because we are both happy homebodies).  We wore our clothes out (as in ‘worn out’), made do and mended and basically lived an old-fashioned non-spending way of life.

It wasn’t sucky though; we loved it, because we had our eyes on the prize.  Firstly in buying a house, then in paying it off.  After that we wanted to live our dream lifestyle, and no debt or dumb spending is worth giving that up.

Basically we are thrifty, minimalist and happy with the simple things.  I used to love reading inspiration on all these topics through books and blogs to keep me motivated, but I don’t need that now.  Living the life is even better than reading about it.

My book Financially Chic goes into everything we did to get to the point where we are today – which is living our dream life in a beautiful home in the countryside with no financial stress.  I would not be here right now if we still had a big ‘normal’ mortgage to pay off.

So if there is a recipe for early retirement, it goes like this:

One. Work out what your dream life looks like

As yourself how you’d love to live if money was no object.  Where would you live?  What would your lifestyle look like?

To get your other half on board, be the dreamer for both of you – say to them ‘Imagine if…’.  Get them excited too, that you could both live your dream life.  Then, have conversations with them often about your shared vision.

For us, it started at the beginning of 2015.  Our shop lease was up for renewal at the end of the following year which was almost two years away at that time.  We started asking ourselves if we wanted to continue down the same path by renewing our lease.

We’d already had twelve years working together 7-days-a-week in retail and we decided we wanted to do something different.  We also wanted to live in a less populated, slower moving area.  From this we made the decision to sell our business and move to the provincial area where I grew up.

Two. Put your money towards your dream rather than frittering it on stuff

Really, save everything in any way you can and put that money all onto debt or in a savings account for a house deposit if you have paid off all your debt.  To reiterate, pay off debt as fast as you can – get rid of it!  It truly is your money or your life.

When you putter along buying whatever catches your eye, you are tying yourself to a job you don’t like, paying off debt for dumb purchases.  I know because I’ve done that.  If you are worried about keeping up with the Joneses, don’t be (they’re probably in more debt than anyone else).

We could still have moved where we are having a huge mortgage, but it wouldn’t have been as stress-free financially and we would have had to get jobs straight away.  Being debt-free allowed us the luxury of having some time off before and after we moved.

When you have no debt you have so many more choices in life, and you don’t have to stay in a job just to pay the bills.  You have other choices.

Plus it allows me the freedom to be a writer without having in the back of my mind that we have to pay a big mortgage.  Worry and stress is not good for creative thinking!

Part 2 coming up

Join me next week for part 2 of this post (it was way too long for just one post!)  And in the meantime, I want to let you in on an early secret.  I am putting together information on this very subject.  It’s an in-depth step-by-step training on how I have written and self-published my own books.

Many of you have written to and messaged me about what I’ve done and how you can do the same.  I know that writing a book is something that a lot of dream of doing, and I want to tell you that it can be done.  It’s not that hard but you need to get your mindset right, plus know the how-to.  I’ll share exactly how I have created my own successful home-based career.

I have set up a separate email newsletter list which will just be about writing your own books and being an author online.  Join it here and you won’t miss out on anything.

Please let me know if you have any questions about this post (or would like me to expand on a specific point) in the comments section below, and I’ll be happy to answer. 

Otherwise, I’ll see you next week for part 2!

Fiona