Posts in category "early-retirement" - page 3


  • How Much Do You Need To Retire At 45

    A few days ago, I read an article where the reader wanted to know how much corpus they need to retire by 45. I thought it was interesting and wanted to use my own calculators to see what numbers I would arrive at. I was surprised at how very close my number was, compared to what the advisor in that article gave. But do remember that for the exact same question different people will give different answers based on their own past experience and their biases. Anytime you take financial advice, do keep that in mind. No one has the perfect right answer. They are just approximations to lead you in the right direction. In the end, you need to figure out what the right advice for you is.

    ...continue reading
  • The Market Scare

    There is a lot of talk about how markets are crumbling all over the world. I have no idea what they are talking about. We barely corrected 10% from the peak if you take Sensex into account. That is a normal drop one would expect from the markets in any given year. I don’t understand what the excitement is all about. A 10% drop is peanuts in my opinion. But more importantly why would one look at the drop from the recent peak? Isn’t investing in equity all about the long term view? What happened then? These very same people don’t seem to be too concerned when the markets were moving up by 20-30% in a short duration. All this confuses me quite a bit.

    ...continue reading
  • A Reader's Dilemma

    From time to time I get emails from readers of my blog asking me for some advice or suggestions regarding their situation. Most of them are not unusual and a general advice does suffice. So usually they are not worthy of a blog post. But every once in a while you get some really interesting questions and that’s exactly what happened a few days ago. A reader wrote to me asking for some advice and I responded. Then I felt like it may be useful advice if there are others in a similar situation. Also I wrote a lot about my own thoughts about why I am unschooling my daughter and what the repercussions could be. So I thought I should copy-paste my response here in my blog. With the reader’s permission I am reproducing our conversation with some information redacted.

    ...continue reading
  • What Was My Savings Rate

    A lot of times while talking to people about my early retirement, I get to the point of someone wanting to know what percent of my income I was saving. Unfortunately I never tracked that metric. So I wanted to find that out myself which is what this post is all about. The information may not be very accurate but it should be a ballpark figure and has sufficient details in it. The reason for inaccuracy is primarily because I don’t want to track down all my investments and income to the minutest detail. That would take too much time. In fact I don’t even remember my salary information and used my ITR (income tax returns) as a guideline. Then I had to go through my CAMS statement to figure out my investments every year. Hope this helps answer the question about my savings rate.

    ...continue reading
  • How Much To Invest To Accumulate 5 Crore By The Age Of 45

    I read an interesting article where someone wanted to know how much they need to invest to accumulate Rs. 5 crores by the age of 45. It would be interesting to see how I would answer that question. I was also wondering if there are enough tools on my blog to be able to answer such questions.

    ...continue reading
  • Three Years Into Early Retirement

    It is now exactly three years into early retirement! I can't believe how time flies. I can now officially say that I have lived through retired life, although three years is still a short time. These years have been quite eventful to say the least. Stock market crash, a new virus that affects the whole world, lockdown for several months, raging bull market while in pandemic. I've seen things in a few years than I have never seen my whole life :).

    ...continue reading
  • Mistakes To Avoid If You Plan To Retire Early

    There is no one straightforward way to reach the goal of early retirement. Although many people have attempted to streamline the process. And that includes me (see my 5 steps to early retirement) :). There are several other small things that you need to take care of before the grand picture emerges. One of them is expenses.

    ...continue reading
  • Comparison With Another FIRE Couple

    You know how I like to compare myself with other FIRE (Financially Independent, Retired Early) individuals. So here is one more of them. I do the comparison because there are very few of them and I just started my journey. So comparing with others helps me understand how they think, behave and spend. That way I can check if I am inline with them or whether I am an outlier. Either of those situations is alright with me, but it is just a fun exercise.

    ...continue reading
  • Thirty Years Into Retirement

    It's been barely three years into my early retirement. So, no I am not talking about myself here. I recently came across this article about a couple who retired 30 years ago. And they were 38 then. What great clarity they must have had of their future to retire in 1991!

    ...continue reading
  • On Goal Setting

    Setting goals is a great motivator to get things done. Without a goal, life goes on without much excitement and nothing to look forward to or work towards. But if you have a goal that is too hard or takes too long to achieve it may actually be demotivating. How do you get out of this situation. Simple, have a long term goal and then have a few smaller, shorter incremental goals.

    ...continue reading