Can Extreme Measures Hasten Retirement?
Can You Speed Up Retirement Despite Setbacks?
The Extreme Frugality Movement Stretches A Dollar!
Here’s some depressing news. A quarter of all working Americans plan to wait until they are, at least, eight years old, to stop working.
Where did all of our big dreams go of quitting the day job to travel, work for a non-profit, or pursue some hobby or goal? Well, the economic recession that evaporated our savings accounts and home values may have popped our dream bubbles a bit. Many current workers, especially older ones, just do not have enough money saved in order to have a secure retirement.
Not everybody’s backing down though. Lots of people, from middle class workers to well known writers have just taken another tack to fulfill their dreams of early retirement. These same people are usually middle class, and they have suffered the same setbacks as everybody else. With their backs against the wall, they have decided to fight back by arranging their financial lives in a manner that is both very old fashioned and very extreme!
Extreme Frugality And Early Retirement
When you picture very frugal people do you think of some guy living in a shack, eating the fruits of his own fishing, and burying all his money in a jar by the old oak tree? Yeah, that’s what I first thought of too. But as I explored the topic of extreme frugality, I saw a lot of well educated and talented people staying in their fairly normal homes, but just deciding to shuck consumerism as much as they possibly could.
These people took modest income – close to the US median income – and really stretched them. Some of you may be very interested to see how much money middle class people make.
Anyway, the new frugal class figured out how much money the absolutely needed to survive, how they could produce some things so they could spend less money, and then they figured out how to sock any left over money into a place where it could work for them.
Get a good example of one individual who calls it early retirement extreme. I think his pattern makes it easier to understand the whole concept. He did start out doing this when he was very young, but more and more older workers are beginning to take small steps or big jumps towards this frugal lifestyle in order to plan a different retirement than the one they had originally planned.
Here are some of the steps you may ponder if you think early retirement is a way out of working until you are 80 years old!
- First, look at your living arrangements. Because of the downturn in the real estate market, some people really cannot get out of their current homes. Their current home is the most frugal choice. Others may find that selling a large home they may have thought they needed to raise a family no longer makes sense when kids are grown and off on their own.
- Look at your spending habits. Most of us just spend too much money on impulse buys, and we have a lot of stuff around our homes that we never even use. Can you analyze your spending habits over the last few months to see what you have spent at the grocery store, on the latest gadgets, etc. How much money could you have saved if you just purchased things that you really needed.
- Can you shock yourself into a more frugal life with a zero spending week. This seems drastic, but has helped a lot of families get back on track.
Frugality Is In, But Not New!
You may realize that you will not be inventing something new. Instead, you will be taking on a lifestyle that is more similar to your depression era parents or grandparents.