The 15 year plan to retire early that i got from a 90 year old man who never retired.
Early retirement is built under the foundation of great systems
This post has two parts (This is part I)
Read part II Here
Although i love working and staying busy, i enjoy the idea of not doing what i do just so i can pay bills.
I would love to do what i do on my own terms. Give focus to projects that i am passionate about or even decide to work whenever i want. In other words, i suppose you can call this retirement of some sort. Traditionally, retirement is regarded as a phase of life when one has done so much and in most cases they have reached old age. I have always felt that this kind of retirement is not for me. I know, some people are okay with it, more power to you. There is also those who would love to retire the traditional job early but the financial constraints prevents them from doing so. Yes, retiring early requires some sort of planning beforehand. You can’t just wake up one day and say “well, i am retiring” while you have nothing in the banks to sustain your life after leaving the job.
I recently met a 90 year old man who has not retired yet. And frankly, i don’t think if he will retire any time soon. He has no issue with finances, he does what he love-owning a small second hand shop that he operates with his grandson. One of the the best advice i got from him was on building a system if you truly wish to retire.
Why people retire at older ages?
But first, let’s ask why so many people stay stuck working decades longer than they actually need to. Most people remain tied to decades of work, not because financial independence is beyond reach, but because those first years of building wealth feel discouraging. At the start, every dollar relies entirely on your effort, your labor, your discipline, your sacrifice, and the results look almost invisible. That imbalance between effort and outcome convinces many that the system doesn’t work when in reality it’s still gaining momentum.
A deadly assumption…
A great many people have the assumption that early retirement is only for the wealthy or the unusually lucky. If you grew up believing that only wealthy people or lottery winners could quit working early, it feels natural to dismiss the idea altogether. Then once you start saving and the numbers barely move, it seems to confirm that belief. In reality, the early phase feels slow because you are still the engine. There’s no momentum yet. So, progress runs on your contributions alone.
The reality within the numbers
Let me give you some numbers so you see what i mean. Suppose someone earning a modest paycheck saves $300 every month. After 10 years, that’s about $36,000 before growth. Substantial amount, yes. But when stacked against a retirement horizon of 30 or 40 years away, it feels almost meaningless. Compared to the traditional story of saving slowly until 65, this money looks like a drop in the ocean.
I suppose, there is a sense of stagnation that drives people to stop even though they’re closer than they think. The best way to understand this stage is with the snowball image, pushing one uphill. Each step requires strain, sweat, and focus. The weight drags on you. Growth looks tiny and nothing about it feels worth the struggle. Add to that the noise of daily life, friends spending freely, family questioning why you’d bother, markets rising and falling, and the frustration deepens. Markets can be volatile early on, which is precisely why patience matters. The process feels harder, not because it’s broken, but because it’s doing the groundwork that every system needs before compounding takes over.
What you should expect in your first years
Here is the reality of how slow the initial process is. Say you start investing $500 a month towards your goal of retiring at age 50. You consistently contribute $500 every month, and after 3 years you will likely have around $20,000 (this is $18,000 of your contribution and $2000 gain in growth). Obviously, this is very slow growth and in a grand scheme of things it does not take you that far. This is how compounding works. At certain point of your investment there is a snowball effect that leapfrogs your investment to exponential growth. There is two things you can do here: 1. Do not give up investing, 2. Find a way to trigger the snowball effect as quickly as possible. These two are smart moves to retiring early with enough money invested to take you through retirement.
Follow up with part II for a breakdown of these steps:
Read part II Here