A couple in their 40s have revealed how they managed to retire at 40 with just $540,000.
Debbie and Chris Emick now earn money passively through rental properties, working no more than four weeks a year.
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For teacher Debbie, the decision to retire early came when she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease.
“I started to realize that I was working towards a retirement that I may never be able to enjoy,” she said CNBC Do it.
“We just wanted the freedom to make our own choices with our time, and that’s where financial independence came in.”
To achieve financial independence, she and her husband began saving 50 to 60% of their $110,000 annual salary as an IT worker.
With the money they saved, they invested heavily in real estate, purchasing 19 units between 2016 and 2019.
In just three years, its property portfolio was worth $1.1 million, while tenants pay their mortgages with their rent.
Meanwhile, Debbie and Chris have $540,000 in retirement and savings accounts.
Now, they make $4,000 to $6,000 a month from these rental properties and live off that income.
Debbie and Chris live frugally most of the time, but allow themselves a $10,000 travel budget to travel with their two daughters.
Retirement helped Debbie’s health improve dramatically.
While real estate income is not entirely passive, it is much less demanding than Chris’s former career in IT.
“Instead of having a job where I would work 48 weeks a year and have four weeks off, I would say, now, I work probably four weeks a year and have 48 weeks off.”
Debbie added: “We have discovered in our lives that meaning and purpose are important to our emotional and physical health, and part of that is work related.”
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OTHER EARLY RETIREES
Debbie and Chris are part of what is known as the FIRE movement, which stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early.
In most cases, it involves a period of extreme savings and investing to pay for a retirement that comes much sooner than for the average American.
Another couple, Courtney and Steve Addock, were able to retire at age 30 with $870,000.
Before retiring, Steve earned $125,000 as an IT consultant and Courtney earned $110,000 as a systems engineer.
They saved up to 70% of their combined income by moving into an RV and reducing their eating out budget to $50 a month.
On the other side of the coin, see how a woman lives on the beach earning $420 a month on Social Security.
And how another elderly couple lives without saving $1,500 a month.
This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
