<story><title>How to Retire in Your 30s with $1M in the Bank</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/style/fire-financial-independence-retire-early.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vilmosi</author><text>&amp;gt; The secret to having more money is not to earn more, it&amp;#x27;s to spend less.&lt;p&gt;I honestly thought it was the complete opposite? The whole &amp;quot;being poor is expensive&amp;quot; thing? That buying expensive shoes is economically better longer term vs buying cheap shoes?</text></item><item><author>grecy</author><text>In first world countries it&amp;#x27;s not difficult at all given two conditions.&lt;p&gt;1. You have a good job (probably - but not necessarily - a professional job)&lt;p&gt;2. You are willing to spend less money than other people.&lt;p&gt;And in fact, point 2 is way more important than point 1.&lt;p&gt;The secret to having more money is not to earn more, it&amp;#x27;s to spend less.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m 36 and I have quit and done what I wanted twice in my life now - once for 2 years I drove AK-Argentina, now I&amp;#x27;m well over 2 years driving around Africa. Before both jaunts I earned a mere fraction of what Bay area salaries appear to be. Before Argentina my salary was $48k CAD.&lt;p&gt;The trick is simply to spend less. Don&amp;#x27;t upgrade your phone (or don&amp;#x27;t even have one), don&amp;#x27;t eat out. Walk or ride to work, no TV, no Netflix, etc. etc.  Pretty soon you&amp;#x27;ll find you have way more money than you actually need, and you can choose to work either part time, or not work at all for a while.&lt;p&gt;If you were willing to put in 10-15 years of this frugal life, you&amp;#x27;d have enough money to never work again, easily.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Because everyone always asks how I do it, I wrote a book about how I do this with my life: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;theroadchoseme.com&amp;#x2F;work-less-to-live-your-dreams&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;theroadchoseme.com&amp;#x2F;work-less-to-live-your-dreams&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>shoo</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re both right, but you&amp;#x27;re both speaking casually so it&amp;#x27;s hard to understand precisely what you&amp;#x27;re saying. Here&amp;#x27;s my take on it:&lt;p&gt;At least from a perspective of early retirement, if you can change your lifestyle so you can &lt;i&gt;sustainably&lt;/i&gt; spend less, then (i) while you are working, you can save more money, due to lower expenses, and (ii) provided you are willing to continue living frugally after retirement, you don&amp;#x27;t need to build up as much capital to fund retirements from investment returns, as your post-retirement expenses are also lower. I think the second factor makes a bigger impact than the former one.&lt;p&gt;The point you make is also a good one: people with more wealth and resources are in a better position to make longer-term investments, which can help them save or make even more money in the long run.&lt;p&gt;The two heuristics &amp;quot;spend less&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;earn more&amp;quot; aren&amp;#x27;t always in conflict, you can often find opportunities that strictly improve one without damaging the other one.</text></comment>
<story><title>How to Retire in Your 30s with $1M in the Bank</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/style/fire-financial-independence-retire-early.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vilmosi</author><text>&amp;gt; The secret to having more money is not to earn more, it&amp;#x27;s to spend less.&lt;p&gt;I honestly thought it was the complete opposite? The whole &amp;quot;being poor is expensive&amp;quot; thing? That buying expensive shoes is economically better longer term vs buying cheap shoes?</text></item><item><author>grecy</author><text>In first world countries it&amp;#x27;s not difficult at all given two conditions.&lt;p&gt;1. You have a good job (probably - but not necessarily - a professional job)&lt;p&gt;2. You are willing to spend less money than other people.&lt;p&gt;And in fact, point 2 is way more important than point 1.&lt;p&gt;The secret to having more money is not to earn more, it&amp;#x27;s to spend less.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m 36 and I have quit and done what I wanted twice in my life now - once for 2 years I drove AK-Argentina, now I&amp;#x27;m well over 2 years driving around Africa. Before both jaunts I earned a mere fraction of what Bay area salaries appear to be. Before Argentina my salary was $48k CAD.&lt;p&gt;The trick is simply to spend less. Don&amp;#x27;t upgrade your phone (or don&amp;#x27;t even have one), don&amp;#x27;t eat out. Walk or ride to work, no TV, no Netflix, etc. etc.  Pretty soon you&amp;#x27;ll find you have way more money than you actually need, and you can choose to work either part time, or not work at all for a while.&lt;p&gt;If you were willing to put in 10-15 years of this frugal life, you&amp;#x27;d have enough money to never work again, easily.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Because everyone always asks how I do it, I wrote a book about how I do this with my life: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;theroadchoseme.com&amp;#x2F;work-less-to-live-your-dreams&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;theroadchoseme.com&amp;#x2F;work-less-to-live-your-dreams&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>muzz</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not the GP, but spending less is not the same as being poor. The former is about having options, the latter is lack of options. Poor people have to buy the cheaper shoes because that&amp;#x27;s all they have enough money for (compared to a wealthier person who made the decision based on average cost over time, even if the initial outlay was more).</text></comment>