If the amount of money you’re saving each month doesn’t hurt, you’re not saving enough.
I’ve told myself this saying every month since I was a first-year analyst working in finance in 1999. The saying came to me one evening at 9 pm while I was still at the office, waiting for a Hong Kong-based research analyst to get back to me with some data for a client. I had already been at the office since 5:30 am. Unfortunately, the analyst never got back to me.
Because the hours were so brutal, working in New York City toughened me up. I knew there was no way I could continue working 70+ hour weeks for decades, so I had to figure out a way to eventually escape. The only solution I could come up with was to save as much as possible and reinvest the proceeds in income-producing assets.
Here’s my story on how my wife and I finally escaped the grind at the age of 34 for good. Today, I’m 41 and she’s 38, and we now have a 16-month-old baby boy who we both take care of full-time because we live entirely off our passive income.
Essentially, I escaped full-time work, for good, at age 34, by following these six steps.
Step 1: I planned ahead
Sooner or later, most people will become miserable doing whatever it is they do for a living. The key is to foresee your misery so that by the time you are actually sick and tired of your job, you’ll already have the financial cushion to make that change.
For me, the biggest upside to working long and stressful hours straight out of college was recognizing very quickly I could not last in such an environment for decades. Therefore, I cut costs to a minimum, saved every other paycheck and 100 percent of each year-end bonus, and invested in as many passive income assets as possible for 13 straight years.
