Pondering Retirement With Mr. Money Mustache

I probably think about retirement more than most other 30-year-olds.

I mean, I enjoy my job and the opportunities it affords me, but at the end of the day, I view it as a means to an end, with that end being money which hopefully leads to retirement.

And I don't view retirement as bumming around and doing nothing other than playing golf, but I see it as that point in time where I have the full financial freedom to work where I want to work and when I want to work, in addition, of course, to deciding whether or not I still want to work at all.

I would continue doing a lot of the things I already do outside of the office currently, but without 40+ hours each week allotted to commuting and working, it sure would open up a lot more time and energy in my life.

It's been on the forefront of my mind ever since my friend Simeon first mentioned "Mr. Money Mustache" to me.  I had no idea what/who he was talking about, and then he pointed me to this page and then to this chart:

Then we started discussing budgeting and other matters that are not pertinent to this discussion, but ever since that point, I've been reading through MMM's blog rather religiously for both the entertainment and the financial concepts.

I encourage everyone to check out this website.  I'm under the impression that most people I know fall into one of 2 categories:

1) they are in debt but don't treat it like an emergency

2) they have zero/little debt and are vaguely working towards retirement without really knowing what the end goal looks like or how to get there efficiently

Let's dial it back real quick.  Who the heck is Mr. Money Mustache, and why do I care?  Basically MMM and his wife worked for 9 years and then retired by the age of 30 before they had their first kid.  How?  They saved 65% of their after-tax income every year, and even to this day, their family of three lives off of less than $27K per year.  (According to MMM, you can retire once your collection of investments reaches 25x your annual spending.)

I'll be the first to admit that MMM's tactics are on the extreme side, and saving 65% without it feeling like a tremendous loss in lifestyle is probably impossible for most of us.  However, you'd be surprised at how many "successful" people are actually swimming in debt and/or living paycheck to paycheck.  We should all at least reconsider or rethink some of our saving strategies.

Now some of you may read this and be all like "man, life's not all about money, bro, relax."  But that's precisely the point.  Life isn't all about money, so I don't want to have to work until an arbitrary 65 to finally be "free" from that burden.  

I told my wife a long time ago before we got married that I don't ever want to stress about money because it's something that comes and goes, and oftentimes, the times we have the most are the times we don't really need it.  On the other hand, not worrying about money is not synonymous with YOLO and just spending without abandon.  There has to be some sort of middle ground where you can be a good steward (I really like that word) of the money you earn while still enjoying life AND saving for the future.

Anyway, this is really just a relatively long-winded way of reminding everyone, including myself, to be responsible with your finances.  If you are also interested in the topic of retirement or budgeting or any other related subject, feel free to hit me up.  I love talking about this stuff, and frankly, I don't think people do enough of it.