Let’s get straight to the point: If you start with zero dollars today and follow the plan on this page, you can become wealthy enough to retire in as little as 10 years. You won’t need a six-figure salary, and you won’t need to follow some secret “get rich quick” scheme. You’ll just spend less than you earn, invest the difference, and watch your money grow until you don’t really need a job any more.
More importantly, you won’t have to keep your nose to the grindstone and hate your life while doing it. In fact, it should make you feel a little happier and freer every day. We spent all of our 20s executing this plan. Along the way, we found time to take six months off in Hawaii, and another seven months exploring every National Park in the United States. There’s plenty of room for fun.
You could just skim this page, close the tab, and move on with the rest of your day unaffected. Or, you could save this page, use it as a blueprint, and wake up in a decade or so with complete control of your life and some incredible travel stories to boot — just think about it!
The Plan:
Step 1: Level Yourself Up
Step 2: Build a Surplus & Safety Net
Step 3: Create a Wealth Explosion
Step 4: Take a BIG Break — or Two!
Step 5: Accelerate Toward Your Destination
Step 6: Ride Off into the Sunset
Two quick notes before we start:
- This plan is an idea, not a mandate. Your life might look totally different from ours! If something here doesn’t perfectly match your situation, just use it as a learning tool, and feel free to get creative. We’re just trying to challenge you to think a little differently.
- We are not professional financial advisors. We’re just two ordinary people honestly sharing what worked for us — for free. Please read our Disclosures page for more information.
Step 1: Level Yourself Up
Financial Goal: This step is about building skills and turning them into a source of income. The main goal is to get a job. Try your best to make it through this step debt-free. If you already owe money, try to avoid burdening yourself with additional debt from here on out. Don’t worry — we’ll deal with any debt you already have in Step 3.
Timeline: This first step begins before your career takes off, and it’s totally different for everyone. If you’re still in school (or changing careers), start here. But if you already have a solid income, skip straight to Step 2!
There’s no better investment than time spent improving yourself. Learn something new every day. You can achieve that through formal education, like college, but that’s not the only way. The world is full of ways to learn (including a bunch that are free!).
The path we took was pretty traditional: high school, university, jobs. But we also made a point of learning more than we were required to. We developed photography skills that later turned into a side business. When one of our cars broke down, we tried DIY repairs before taking it to a mechanic. We read books on personal finance and slowly accrued all of the knowledge you can now find on this blog.
Not all learning needs to happen in school or relate to your career. You may be surprised where those unexpected bonus skills can take you later in life.
Checklist:
- If you’re in high school, focus on your grades and taking challenging classes. A strong transcript is the most important factor for earning scholarships and admission to good colleges. Even if you don’t go to college, studying will increase your breadth of knowledge, which is helpful in ways that are hard to predict. Maybe try some extracurriculars or groups that’ll expose you to new skills, too.
- If you’re taking college classes, stay focused on schoolwork, but pay attention to your finances too. Student loans can be crippling, and contrary to popular belief, it is possible to avoid student loans altogether!
Recommended reading:
– Can You Cashflow College? My Debt-Free Graduation Journey - Weigh the benefits of grad school. Carefully consider how much the added time and money will cost you, in comparison to how much faster another degree will help you reach your ultimate goals (like getting down to Step 6). Breaking into your field as soon as possible can give you some of the experience you need to earn pay bumps and career advances, so choosing to go to grad school isn’t always a no-brainer.
Recommended reading:
– Making the Most of Your Twenties - If you’re not going to college at all, that’s cool too. Work on developing marketable skills through a training program, trade school, apprenticeship, internship, or job. There isn’t just one prescribed path.
- No matter which educational route you take, learn something new every day. Read books, blogs, and Wikipedia articles. Watch informational YouTube videos. Experiment with your passions. Gain a diverse set of skills, rather than shoehorning yourself into just one thing.
Recommended reading:
– ∞ Things To Do When You’re Bored (Change Your Defaults) - Don’t force yourself to be unnecessarily independent at a young age. If you have access to help, it’s okay to use it. Living at home a while can save you thousands on rent. The Affordable Care Act allows you to be on your parents’ health insurance plan until you’re 26. Being a part of a family cell phone plan and paying your own share is usually cheaper than having a plan all alone. Stuff like that.
- Avoid debt. If you take out a loan for a new car (please don’t), or rack up a balance on a credit card (seriously, begging you not to), you’ll pay the price for it later, plus interest. But if you already have debt, it’s not the end of the world. Make the payments, and hold on ‘til Step 3!
- Land a full-time income. Aim to make as much money as you can. Whether it’s a job you love or just something you’re doing to pay the bills, you won’t have to stay there forever.
Step 2: Build a Surplus & Safety Net
Financial Goal: Widen the gap between your income and your expenses. Aim to save at least 50% of your pay — the more, the better. Put that money in a savings account, and keep adding to it until you’ve got about 3 months’ expenses as a safety net for the unexpected. For example, if all your monthly bills add up to $2,000, try to save $6,000 before moving on to the next step.
Timeline: This might take some major lifestyle changes at first, but once you hit that 50% savings rate, it’ll only take about 3 months to accumulate 3 full months’ expenses! You can get through this step surprisingly fast.
Saving half your pay might sound impossible without a huge salary, but the key isn’t to land some magic dream job. At around age 23, we began saving 60-75% of our income with jobs that only started at about $38k per year. A super high savings rate depends mostly on your spending, and when you attack the big stuff first — like housing and transportation — you can live very happily on less money than you ever thought possible.
If you’re starting this step with significant debt, those payments might swallow up some of the 50% you’re aiming to save, which may slow you down a little bit. That’s alright. If the debt principal you’re knocking off each month plus the money you’re putting into a savings account add up to more than 50% of your income, you’re doing very well.
Checklist:
- Reduce housing-related expenses. Early on, it’s worth being a little extreme with your biggest expenses. Be open to uprooting your life and moving to a lower cost-of-living area if necessary. We even took on roommates as a married couple. Remember, nothing you do has to be permanent. Go hard now, and ease up later if you need to.
Recommended reading:
– Attacking the Budget Behemoth: Housing Costs - Lessen transportation costs by opting to pay cash for an inexpensive, used vehicle. If you already own a car that’s worth a five-figure sum, think about selling it and downgrading. If you can share a car with someone else in your household, that’s even better. We’ve been able to make one car work between the two of us for years — it’s more doable than you’d think.
Recommended reading:
– “Average” Cars are Money Incinerators - Question every recurring charge. Call and renegotiate with your insurance company, internet service provider, and anyone else you pay on a continual basis. Do some comparison shopping, and cut unnecessary services.
Recommended reading:
– “How Much Insurance Do I Need?” Less Than You’ve Been Told.
– Cut Your Cable and Streaming TV Bills to $0 Forever
– How to Make a Thousand Bucks an Hour - One by one, optimize every other expense in your life. Focus on cutting luxury, waste, and convenience spending, not depriving yourself of things that genuinely make your life better.
Recommended reading:
– Behind the Curtain: Our Household Spending Revealed
– Can Money Buy Happiness?
– You’re Wasting Money If You’re Not Buying This Stuff On eBay
– Hack The Menu at Restaurants and Pay Less
– The Starbucks Predicament - Sign up for a rewards credit card in your own name, and pay it off in full every month, without exception. This isn’t a method to borrow money; it’s a way to get a small rebate on all your purchases.
Recommended reading:
– The Autopilot Guide to Credit Cards - Don’t be afraid to work some side hustles for extra income. Remember all those skills we developed back in Step 1? Put ‘em to use!
Recommended reading:
– We Signed Up for 40 Credit Cards and Made $20,000 Doing It - It’s not really time to start investing yet, but the one exception is that you should immediately participate in your employer-sponsored retirement plan, like a 401(k), if they offer a contribution match. Contribute just enough to claim that full match. Declining would be like turning down a raise.
- Open a high-yield savings account, and shovel all extra money into it until it contains at least 3 months’ expenses.
Recommended reading:
– Earn More Interest with the Highest-Yield Savings Accounts
Step 3: Create a Wealth Explosion
Financial Goal: Direct your newfound cashflow to rapidly pay off all debt. Once it’s wiped out, start investing all of the surplus until you have somewhere between 2-6 years’ expenses invested (you decide; this is just a ballpark range). For example, if you live on $25k per year, aim to invest somewhere between $50k – $150k before moving on to the next step. You can include all of your investment accounts (even retirement accounts) in this total.
Timeline: It might sound crazy to put away 2-6 YEARS worth of expenses, but remember — if you’re saving half your income, you can bank 1 year of expenses for every 1 year of work. It’ll be a little slower if you start out with a lot of debt, but it’ll be a lot faster if you can invest even more than 50% of your pay!
When you spend less than half of every paycheck, your bank account starts to seem like it’s overflowing all the time. So what’s one to do with all that money? Traditional wisdom would say to pay your bills, save a little bit, and feel free to blow the rest — but this isn’t a traditional financial guide. We’re gonna shovel all of this extra cash straight into paying off debt and filling up investment accounts, creating an explosion of wealth and making you financially invincible in just a few years. For context, we knocked this out from ages 23-25 ourselves, but every person will have their own path. It isn’t a contest.
Checklist:
- Take a few minutes to calculate your net worth, and then make a point of doing it once a month from here on out. This will become your main metric for financial success.
Recommended reading:
– Calculate Your Net Worth: The Only Financial Number That Matters - Destroy your debt by directing all excess income at paying off the highest-interest loans first (making minimum payments on the rest). Work your way down to the lower-interest ones until they’re all gone, except maybe your mortgage (if you have one). Don’t worry about putting more into your savings account right now. Just kill your debt as quickly as possible.
Recommended reading:
– How to Pay Off Debt Faster and Smarter - Optionally, pay off your entire mortgage, if you have one. This isn’t required, and it’s totally reasonable to skip this for now (opting to invest the money instead) if that’s what you prefer. Personally, we continued renting and didn’t buy a house at all until Step 5!
Recommended reading:
– Paying Cash for a House at Age 25 Made Us Poorer - Stop stressing about money. You may have been counting pennies in Step 2, but at this point, you’re debt-free with giant piles of cash coming in at all times. You’re now exempt from micro-budgeting, or even knowing when your bills are due — ever. Keep a few thousand bucks in your checking account, set all your bills to autopay, and watch yourself automatically get richer with each passing paycheck. All you have to do is avoid lifestyle creep — keep those expenses low.
Recommended reading:
– Make Your Obsession With Money Temporary
– Pay Yourself Last: Why You Don’t Need A Budget - Mind your safety net savings account from Step 2. If it gets lower than about 3 months’ expenses, make sure to refill it as soon as possible. You might even consider beefing it up to 6-12 months’ expenses at this point, if that makes you feel more secure.
- Next, invest every spare penny until you have 2-6 years’ expenses invested in total. A simple “set it and forget it” strategy will work fine — you don’t need to be a Wall Street guru to be a successful investor.
Recommended reading:
– How to Invest in Stocks: The Easiest Way is The Best Way
– Investing Is Only As Risky As You Make It
– Inside the Investment Portfolio of 31-Year-Old Retirees
– A Winning Model of the Stock Market
– Picking the Best Brokerage Account — What Really Matters - Some people like to max out tax-advantaged accounts like IRAs, HSAs, and 401(k)s before investing the surplus inside of a taxable brokerage account. This saves you on your tax bill, but it also might make some of your money less accessible when you need it. It’s a personal decision, and you should do the research to decide what’s best for you. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, and you want to keep your life simple, just max out a Roth IRA each year, get the full match in your 401(k) if you have access to one, and throw the rest in an ordinary, taxable brokerage account for now.
Recommended reading:
– Roth IRA: How These Accounts Work and How To Get Started
– The Best Order of Operations for Saving for Retirement
– How Much is TOO MUCH in your 401(k)? - While you focus on all this money stuff, don’t forget to look up once in a while, and enjoy the world around you. Having fun along the way doesn’t have to come at the expense of your savings goals. Some of the best things in life are free, like family, friendship, and the great outdoors.
Recommended reading:
– “Do It While You’re Young”
– The Perpetual Staycation: Be a Tourist in Your Own Town
– Our Graduation Road Trip Took Us 17,000 Miles in 45 Days
Step 4: Take a BIG Break — or Two!
Financial Goal: Life isn’t all about saving money as fast as you possibly can. Take some time off, and do something BIG — something you’ve always dreamed of. Financially speaking, you could skip this step if you wanted to — but we promise it’s worth doing. Money-wise, the goal for your sabbatical(s) should just be to get through without any overall drop in net worth. Try to come home with at least as much money as when you set out. We’ll show you how.
Timeline: You can mix Step 4 with Step 5 over the next few years, and you can do this as many times as you like, going back to work and gaining wealth between each extended vacation. In fact, that’s exactly how we spent our late 20s!
Now that you’re debt-free with multiple years of living expenses invested, take a second to realize something: You could go years without a paycheck if you really wanted to. You don’t want to do that, because it would undo all the progress you’ve made. But being in this financial position gives you a lot of leverage — you don’t actually need your employer to pay your immediate bills any more.
It’s a good thing, too, because at this point in the journey, you might be getting a little burned out. It’s time to take a break — and I don’t mean a one-week vacation. While we’ve taken plenty of small trips, the way we’ve really taken breaks from work is to travel for months at a time.
Instead of spending down our investment portfolios, we used our strong financial position to give us the confidence to negotiate with our employers. We told them (politely, with months of notice) that we’d be stepping away for a while to travel, but that we’d be happy to continue a small portion of our duties on a part-time basis from the road.
Whether they said yes or no, we always knew we’d be okay financially. But the amazing thing we found out repeatedly is that most bosses don’t want to see their good employees leave. They’re willing to negotiate when their only other choice is losing you. And even if that weren’t the case, we developed side hustles outside of work, using all the skills we gained back in Step 1 and continued to foster. A combination of these things is how we funded all our big breaks.
We took a sabbatical like this at age 25 — to live in Hawaii for 6 months — and again around age 28 — to visit every National Park in the United States. Neither one caused our net worth to drop at all. They basically amounted to just pressing the pause button on saving money, and the experiences changed our lives forever.
This step isn’t financially necessary. But for us, it was emotionally necessary. Not only did it give our lives a change of pace, but it also gave us a taste of what freedom from the workplace is like. We got to wholeheartedly pursue artistic and academic passions. And we learned firsthand exactly what we’d been saving for.
Checklist:
- Dream up a plan. Figure out an idea for a long-term sabbatical that’s unique to you and can be done affordably. It doesn’t have to be travel-related, but we found that physically distancing ourselves from home kept us motivated to do more and grow more. One way to keep costs down is to move somewhere exotic long enough to lease an apartment there, allowing you to live like a local instead of a tourist. Another option is to live on the road, like in an RV or camper.
Recommended reading:
– How to Take Months Off Work and Travel for $36 per Day
– How We Took a 6-Month Hawaii Honeymoon for $0
– How Two Twenty-Somethings Visited Every National Park
– Our 65-Day Canadian National Parks Road Trip (& Its Cost)
– We Took a 3-Month Vacation and Came Home $26,000 Richer
– Dirt Cheap Travel with a Nissan NV200 Camper Van
– Why One-Week Vacations Suck - Figure out your worst-case scenario. How will you fund your adventure if your employer is unwilling to compromise on remote work? What side hustles have you developed along the way? What other opportunities to make money on the road exist? Will they be enough to cover your basic expenses? You’ll have more leverage in your negotiations if you can confidently tell your boss that you’re leaving, rather than asking permission.
Recommended reading:
– You Spent How Much?! Our Cost To See Every National Park - Gather up the courage, and try to strike a deal with your employer. Remember, since you’re an expert at keeping your living expenses low, and you’re not trying to bank additional money during this time, you’ll only need part-time work to keep from tapping your savings. Even if you have a job that can’t be done remotely, there’s probably some part of it (like anything you do on a computer) that could be done from the road a few hours per week. If you enjoy your job, offer to come back full-time after your trip as part of the deal.
Recommended reading:
– Your Job Should Be Disposable (Even If You Love It)
– Tips for Working Remotely (From a Couple of Digital Nomads) - In preparation for your adventure, declutter your life, and sell or donate stuff you don’t need any more. The less you own, the less your moving and storage costs will be. You might be able to raise a little extra cash this way, too!
Recommended reading:
– How to Sell Stuff Online and Stop Bleeding Money
– Own Less; Travel More - If you own one, rent out your house while you’re gone. It makes no sense to let an asset that big sit around without producing any income for you.
- Pull the trigger, and go on your trip! Being away from home, you’ll gain a whole new perspective on life. Hopefully, you’ll also come back rejuvenated and more ready than ever to save money again.
- While you’re out there, make some friends. The most lasting effects of your trip might be the people you meet along the way.
Recommended reading:
– The Power of Being Nice - While you work on Step 5, feel free to repeat Step 4 as needed. It’s okay to bounce between the two every few years. This will feel like a once-in-a-lifetime trip, but it doesn’t have to be.
@tripofalifestyle Most people don’t start with six-figure jobs, so the only way to get that first $250k in the bank is to be happy living on less. #money #frugality #📈 ♬ original sound – Trip Of A Lifestyle
Step 5: Accelerate Toward Your Destination
Financial Goal: Increase your savings rate beyond 50%, and accumulate somewhere between 15-25 years’ expenses in investments. For example, if you live on $25k per year, aim to have somewhere between $375k – $625k invested before moving on to the final step (early retirement). Yes, seriously. You got this.
Timeline: At a 50% savings rate, each year of work allows you to invest one year’s expenses. But at this point, your investments should begin to compound and grow on their own more rapidly, and you’ve probably increased your income from work by now, allowing you to save more. Aggressively, this step can be completed in just a few years. Executed more slowly, it can take a decade or more. Either way, it’ll leave you far ahead of the typical path!
You’re at an advanced level of financial nirvana at this point. It’s time to solidify your goals. If you want the returns from your investment portfolio to be able to sustain your lifestyle forever — never having to work again — you’ll need at least 25 years’ expenses invested by the end of this step. But if you’re cool with just tapering off into a part-time semi-retirement for a while, you may feel comfortable with as little as 15 years’ expenses invested.
This is the biggest, most daunting step, but once you get past it, life is never the same again. By the time you complete Step 5, money will no longer be a major concern in your life, and you’ll be free to direct your full attention at whatever is most important to you — forever.
We personally worked through Step 5 between the ages of 25 and 29. We were able to get it done really fast because of three things: 1) Our adventures from Step 4 caused us to job hop, which landed us higher salaries. 2) Instead of expanding our lifestyle, we kept our living expenses the same even after we started making more money, causing our savings rate to skyrocket. 3) With a little luck, the stock market continually rose for most of this time, which gave us a slight upward lift and made the process even faster.
Checklist:
- Set a goal. Decide whether you’re aiming for full retirement, with at least 25 years’ expenses invested — or semi-retirement, with at least 15 years’ expenses invested and a little part-time work after that.
Recommended reading:
– Financial Independence 101: Never Have to Work Again
– What is Coast FIRE?
– We Saved a Quarter-Million Dollars by 26 (and Had Fun Doing It!) - Reconsider your job. If you’ve been working at the same place your entire career, how do you know that you’re making as much money as possible? The only way to find out is to shop around, and see what else is out there. Having competing job offers in your back pocket or a blossoming side business of your own can also give you the confidence you need to negotiate higher pay from the job you already have.
- Avoid lifestyle inflation. When you do score a higher salary, it will be tempting to buy a brand new car or a bigger house instead of ratcheting up your savings rate. But ultimately, no material possessions will make you happier than freedom can.
Recommended reading:
– How To Make Totally Unnecessary Purchases - This can be a great time to buy a modest home or start a family, since you’ve got some awesome adventures under your belt and a stable financial base to build a life on. Of course, these are extremely personal decisions that only you can make for yourself. You may have already done both long before this point, or you may never have plans to do either one — that’s totally up to you.
Recommended reading:
– How to Really View Your Home as an Investment - Keep investing. All extra cash should continue to be directed squarely at your investment accounts, until you have 15-25 years’ expenses invested.
Step 6: Ride Off into the Sunset
Financial Goal: Think less about money. If you’ve arrived here with 25+ years’ expenses invested, chances are good that you can go the rest of your life without much need to work at all. If you have less, plan to dial back your hours, adding to the pile at a leisurely pace and letting compound interest do most of the work for you.
Timeline: This is the last step. And it’s arguably the best one, which is why you get to enjoy it for the rest of your life!
At this point, you’re either completely financially independent, meaning that the returns on your investment portfolio alone can support you for the rest of your life, or you’re pretty damn close and just ready to slow down and enjoy what you’ve been working toward.
We arrived here at age 29 with a little less than the full 25 years’ expenses invested. We were enjoying full-time work less and less, so it made sense to downshift into a semi-retired lifestyle where a few easy freelance gigs gave us more income than we needed to sustain our super-low expenses. That meant that we’d coast into full financial independence automatically over the next couple years at a pace we just weren’t concerned about any more, while being able to do things we love, like traveling more and hanging out with friends and family. No matter where you are when you get here, life should feel pretty great.
And remember, the Social Security Administration says that “Full Retirement Age” is 67, so whether you arrive at age 29, 35, or 50 — give yourself some credit. You crushed society’s expectations, and you bought back decades of your life.
Checklist:
- If you find yourself crashing onto the shores of financial independence with no interest in retiring, remember that nobody says you have to retire early. You can keep working if you want to, armed with the knowledge that you can change jobs or quit altogether, any time you want.
- If you’re in the semi-retirement phase, realize that you can dramatically cut back on your work hours. You don’t need a super high savings rate any more. Try to keep only the parts of your job or businesses that are worth the most per hour, so that a minimal number of hours can still yield a sizable income. Alternatively, just keep the parts you legitimately enjoy doing. As long as the pay covers your bills (or a little more), your investments will just keep growing in the background until you’re totally financially independent — automatically!
Recommended reading:
– Part-Time Work Pays More Than Full-Time Work
– Resetting Expectations on Our Aimless Southeast Road Trip - If you’re fully retiring, understand the math and the risks behind trying to draw down a portfolio without ever depleting it. There’s nothing to be afraid of, but you should go in well-educated, with your eyes wide open.
Recommended reading:
– How to Retire Forever on a Fixed Chunk of Money
– The 4% Rule, Withdrawal Rates, and How Much Can I Spend Anyway?
– If Retiring at 30 is Scary, then Retiring at 60 is Terrifying
– How to Access Retirement Funds Early - Make sure you have a long-term plan for healthcare costs. While unlikely, a catastrophic medical diagnosis can wreck your early retirement plans if you haven’t insured against that possibility.
Recommended reading:
– How To Get Health Insurance Without A Job - You now have the luxury of endless free time much sooner in life than anyone would normally expect. Eventually, your investments will probably grow so much that you’ll have a lot more money than you really need, too. Consider using a good chunk of that extra time and money to help other people.
Recommended reading:
– We’re Giving All Our Affiliate Profits to Charity — Here’s Why
– The Life You Can Save - Share your knowledge. You’ve achieved something most people never could have imagined was possible. Don’t keep it to yourself! An easy start is to click one of the social media sharing buttons at the bottom of this page.