I Retired Young
What I do, and what it costs
I retired young, and so far it's been great.
I was 47 years old, had fallen out of love with my job, so I quit. That was a scary decision - I didn't know how much it would cost to live or what I would do with my extra free time.
Because I struggled to find answers to these questions, I decided to blog about my journey to financial freedom and my early retirement experience. I hope it may help others in a similar situation.
My posts set out my monthly costs, the decisions and choices that helped me achieve financial freedom and early retirement, and some of what my retired early life looks like - what I do during my old working hours. There's probably some other nonsense thrown in as well, so apologies for that!
At the end of the day, I'm just a pretty average guy. That's good news, because I figure that if I can do it, then probably you can too, if that's your dream.
6 Dec 2019
Anyone who believes California is the land of eternal sun…think again! It’s one of those things that I intellectually know but have trouble putting that knowledge into practice.
Before getting to that, here’s what I have in mind for my two weeks in California, based ar...
28 Nov 2019
Towards the end of the week, Rebecca finished her vacation and headed back home and back to work. Her plan was to relax for a few days for a little calm before normal life resumes.
The relaxing would be in the town of Guatapé, so first we had to get there from Salento....
21 Nov 2019
I can’t say that I’m not relieved to move away from the heat and the humidity of Colombia’s Caribbean coast. It’s certainly a beautiful part of the world, but it’s a hot and humid part of the world too. In comparison, Medellin, with it’s pleasant year round temperature...
15 Nov 2019
I believe the journey to financial independence is best when it's a balanced one – focus too much on saving money and you may miss out on things along the way, but spend every penny or cent and you'll never reach your financial independence goal. Somewhere in the middl...
9 Nov 2019
I've struggled to find time to write my October costs and targets post - it must be a sign that early retirement is going well when you struggle to fit everything in to the days.
Targets
Ten months through the year, I'm now trying to hold onto the targets that I've got g...
8 Nov 2019
We’ve had a busy week (a quick reminder that “we” is me and my daughter, who has joined me for the next month of my travels).
We’d already self-explored Cartagena Old Town but decided to have a do-over on Monday, this time with a guide to ensure we would see the right p...
28 Oct 2019
Despite being mostly on my own, I’ve still enjoyed this week. Not doing much, plenty of time in coffee shops, sometimes a lazy week is exactly what we need.
I’ve deliberately left Medellin unexplored until I return to the city next month with my daughter, Rebecca. It wi...
22 Oct 2019
There’s less to say about our travels this week, we decided on some lazy days before Sally returns home and I head to Colombia. So we booked more luxurious accommodation with a plan to do nothing but relax. For Monday through Wednesday, we did exactly that.
We walked on...
20 Oct 2019
That’s three weeks in Costa Rica done (and four weeks since we left home). We’ve been to the Caribbean coast (South to Puerta Viecha and then North to Tortuguera), inland to La Fortuna and Monteverde and this week we arrived on the Pacific coast.
We chose Costa Rica mai...
13 Oct 2019
We planned to base ourselves in Tortuguero for our second week in Costa Rica. Six or seven days on the northern Caribbean coast sounded like a good idea right up until the guy at the tour office almost fell over laughing at us. Two days and one night would be enough he...