Retire Early – The Simple Guide allows you to pave the way toward your financial independence. In the first part (Chapters 1-3), we’ll look at the basics. In the second part of the book (Chapters 4-7), we’ll investigate the necessary implementation steps with you. So, you can use this book as a guide to organizing your personal finances to become financially independent: you finance your lifestyle from capital market gains on your stocks and end your work career. There will be no need to sell your time to others to finance your lifestyle.
Regain control of your time and life
This book describes how you can regain control of your time and life to do more of the things you love. All this is based on and backed by up-to-date hard facts from financial market data gained from 1871 until today. You don’t need to buy any software, application, or other fancy stuff to make financial independence come true. It only needs you and your willingness to achieve your goal. We’ll show you how and walk you through the process.
After reading this book, you can start to make your way to financial independence. If you look for simple answers to complicated questions, this book is right for you.
Topics and Questions covered
Retire Early – The Simple Guide supports you to:
- Get answers to your pressing questions: how much money do you need to retire, and how long will it take you to get there?
- profit from a step-by-step blueprint to achieve your goal
- get a proven financial approach to stop working early, adapted to your situation
- receive fact-based strategies to make your money last,
- discover a solid foundation of the mechanics that drive your early retirement engine
- understand why the often-used “4% withdrawal rule” is not valid for your early retirement situation
We’ll show you how all of this works together, step-by-step and with simple language, why the method proposed works, and how you can implement it yourself.
Contents Retire Early – The Simple Guide
Chapter 1 – Is it possible to retire early?
In the first chapter, we show that retirement before the standard pension age is possible. We discuss in detail an influential international study – the so-called “Trinity Study”. You learn about the studies’ main results, such as that it is possible to finance your retirement for periods of up to 30 years. Moreover, we introduce and explain the 4% Rule based on the study results. However, the study has also some shortcomings and misconceptions. You will discover these serious issues and limitations and understand why you can’t simply apply the 4% rule to your specific situation.
Chapter 2 – How much money do I need to retire early?
The second chapter deals with your expenses during retirement. You learn how to estimate your future expenses based on your current spending. If you don’t know your current spending, we’ll introduce two simple ways to come up with them. We share with you the expense categories that will change the most in retirement compared to your current situation. Furthermore, we explain the impact of inflation on your purchasing power and how you consider it in your retirement planning. Finally, we introduce a simple formula to calculate your financial independence number. We also discuss by which levers you can reduce this number. The chapter guides you to compute how much money you’ll need to cover your cost of living during retirement.
Chapter 3 – How can you overcome the limits of the 4% rule?
In the third chapter, we address the main limitations of the Trinity Study. We re-run the historical simulations of the Trinity Study with up-to-date financial market data not only for the U.S. but also for Europe and Switzerland. We also address the limitation of limited retirement periods and show how much money you can safely withdraw for 40, 50, or even 60-year retirement periods without running out of money. Thus, we come up with hard data on how long your money will last. Furthermore, we introduce you to the key elements to find your withdrawal rate. You’ll learn about the impact of your individual age on your withdrawal rate. What’s the effect if you’re 30, 40, or 50 years old?
Chapter 4 – How long will it take me to retire early?
With a thorough understanding of the basics, the subsequent chapters guide you toward implementing your plan. Therefore, the fourth Chapter unveils how long it will take you to retire. You’ll learn all about the relevance of your savings. You’ll understand how to calculate your savings rate and its impact on your retirement date. You’ll understand that your savings rate matters more than the level of your income. After reading this chapter, you’ll know how to come up with the number of years before your retirement – your countdown to early retirement.
Chapter 5 – How can I reach my goal faster?
The fifth chapter reveals the two levers to retire earlier and how you can activate them in your favor: expenses and income. We also discuss a healthy balance between enjoying life now and earlier retirement coasting.
Chapter 6 – What do I need to do to make my early retirement happen?
Chapter six deals with the necessary steps to amass the funds for your financial independence. We guide you to computing your current net worth. Furthermore, we share the simple basics of cost-efficient investing with you to grow your net worth. Depending on the level of risk you’re willing to take, we show which returns you can expect from respective sample portfolios based on historical returns for the major markets.
Chapter 7 – How do I set up my financial independence action plan?
Chapter seven guides you through the process to develop your financial independence action plan step by step in a consistent and logical manner. It reconnects to all the chapters to make your journey actionable.
Chapters 8 & 9 – Reflection and Summary
Chapter 8 reflects your insights and helps you stay the course by defining your immediate next steps. In the ninth chapter, you’ll find a summary of the book.
Discover your direct path to financial independence now. Let your money work for your dreams and for your future life without work.
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