Retiring At Age 25

May 15, 2008 No comments

My birthday is coming up, it’s actually next Friday on May 23rd and I’ll be turning 20. My long-term goal was to have enough money in the bank to retire by the time I was 25. I’m obviously not going to to retire then because I enjoy what I do, but that’s when I want to have the ultimate safety net.

So to turn this into a post: how do I plan on banking enough money to retire at 25? And first off, how much money are we talking about here?

My number that I want in the bank is a mere $5 million. Taking some very rough estimates, the bare minimum in which I can survive off of is around $40,000/year. It’s most likely higher than that now since I like to live comfortably, but I could easily live off of $40,000/year. If I had $5 million, I’d put 1 away into a savings bank or something like that as my living fund. Assuming the bare minimum, I could live for 25 years off of that money. So where does the other $4 million go? Most of it probably into long-term investments. Things like mutual funds and CD accounts, and then other things like real estate and other business ventures. Hopefully in 10-20 years I could turn that $4 million into $8-10 million (again just guessing here and thinking out loud), and then I could live very comfortably for the rest of my life.

Now how will I get there?

Keep doin’ what I’m doin’. Affiliate marketing simply makes too much money to put on the back burner right now, even if I do spend a lot of time on it. People make $30/hour at their full time jobs 40 hours a week. Affiliate marketers make $300/hour; the average Joe would have to work 400 hours a week to make that much money. Given only 168 hours in a week, it’s completely impossible for them to make half that much even if they spend all day and night at their job with no sleep .
Take some time to expand into other areas and businesses. Like I said, affiliate marketing will continue to be the bulk of my income until it slows down (which I don’t know when it will). But it’s never bad to spread my eggs around, even if it’s only an extra $1,000/week. Money is money, and I can take that money from other projects to pay for living expenses, while banking and/or investing 100% of my affiliate profits.
Help more people. Karma is real, and the more I help people, the more I end up getting in return. I’ll continue to run this blog, as well as go into some other projects that’ll help you guys make money.
Relax. I can’t think of making $5 million as a struggle, or else I’ll overload myself with too many projects and get overwhelmed and non-productive. I need to keep things in perspective, take one project at a time, manage multiple projects effectively and relaxed, and take vacations when I need one.
Engage in offline businesses that I enjoy. There’s nothing wrong with having as many safety nets as possible, and it would actually be fun to do something that I enjoy. In my recent interview at Can’t Get Rich I talked about how I’m becoming a certified personal trainer, and how I want to eventually maybe start up a gym. I also love golfing, so who knows I may take some money and invest it into a golf course. I have no idea what’s going to happen, but I want to end up doing more things that I enjoy.