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I Retired In My 30s - This Is What I Learned — Transcript · YTtoTranscript

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I Retired In My 30s - This Is What I Learned

Myles Dunphy · 3,321 words · 17 min read · EN-ORIG

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Below is the complete, readable transcript of I Retired In My 30s - This Is What I Learned by Myles Dunphy on YouTube. Read the full text, copy any part you need, or generate a transcript for any video with our free tool.

retiring in your 30s is one of the biggest decisions you could ever make do it well you're free to enjoy the best years of your life on your own terms get it wrong and it could ruin everything your financial stability your health even your identity I tried retiring as a 32-year-old millionaire the idea of

retiring early seemed really simple but the reality was not what I expected so I'm making this video to help you answer these questions first how to retire early and two should you retire early here are the things that I did right as well as the biggest mistakes that I made so you can make sure that retiring early

won't ruin your life there are three main paths you can take to retirement which path you choose will either take you to the early retirement that you always dreamed of or it could lead you to the retirement of your nightmares and I know because I tried them all so which path are you on path one the worst

path there's a simple reason why most people who followed this first path to retirement end up in the Twilight of their lives with failing health and constantly being worried about money the reason is hiding in plain sight but you probably don't know it yet when I finished school and was about to enter

the workforce I had no idea what road I was on nobody even told me there were options I just knew that I wanted freedom and to get Freedom you got to have money so I looked around I saw what other people were doing and I copied that I joined the 9 to5 that was my

first mistake I got a job as an engineer and I pretty quickly realized that I wasn't happy in fact I became very depressed and unhappy with my life in that job and I could see that most of my co-workers weren't much better off most of them were stuck and they kind of knew

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it was like their job was just okay enough to be difficult to leave but not rewarding enough to actually help them move them towards their real goals whether Financial Health or just enjoyment and fun if you've been in the corporate 95 you probably know what I mean but why is this why is it so hard

to either make the system work for you or to leave the system well the answer might surprise you here's a quick lesson on why the modern retirement system is not what you think it is let's jump back 2000 years in 13 BC groups of Roman legion or soldiers are returning home after a campaign they're experienced in

in war they're powerful if they wanted to they could rise up against the Emperor Augustus so he needs a way to prevent this from happening he has an idea why not make them a small but recurring payment just enough to keep them submissive and obedient and so the first pension system is born for the

next few th000 years things go pretty quiet and it's pretty much back to never stop working or work till you die now it's 1889 also one bismar the ultra conservative leader of Germany is trying to consolidate power away from a growing socialist movement his genius idea introduces the first modern pension for workers over 70 but remember bismar is a

military strategist not a socialist all he wants to do is gain maximum power at lowest cost and how to do that the pension is the answer as George Orwell once said until the people become conscious they will never Rebel and for bismar again it works now the patent repeats in the 20th century but now it's

the wealthy industrialists that need a way to keep workers toiling away in a monotonous Factory environment tell me if this sounds familiar at the same time medical breakthroughs mean that that workers are now living longer than ever so between 1900 to 1950 life expectancy shoots up from 47 years to 68 years and

sounds great right well not for the industrialists you see old factory workers are not as productive as young Factory workers so the industrialists need a system to keep those workers submissive and obedient while they're young and useful and then quietly get rid of them when they're not their solution again they turn to the pension

retirement system and once again it works today most people are still stuck in this system history lesson over but you need to know this the whole modern concept of working at 9 to5 and then retiring at 65 from its very historical Foundation it was never designed to allow you to live your best life in fact

it was designed to do the opposite to keep you in the system so that you waste away your best years working to give someone else their freedom so if you're stuck in the 9 to5 even you want out now you know why maybe you can see that your nest egg is growing way too slowly and

you're worried that it'll never be enough to retire well this is why so this was my first big realization and it felt like dodging a bullet the 95 is the worst pathway to retirement and now I knew why so it was time to try another plan and that's when I discovered path Two

Fire not that one this one fire stands for financial Independence retire early and while I was stuck in the 95 it seemed like a breath of fresh air the fire movement sounded like it could be my ticket to escape the system and finally achieve the Financial Freedom that I wanted to be able to retire early

or could it be I had to find out now at first fire seemed really convincing the idea sounded simple and everywhere I was looking online I was Finding stories of people who retired in their 30s or 40s thanks to Fire and if they'd achieved Financial Freedom why couldn't I but there was a big catch or two let me

explain how fire actually works first we have to understand the most basic equation that defines how close you are to Financial Freedom It Is wealth equals income minus expenses time time simple your wealth is equal to what you earn minus what you spend spend multiplied by time and to be able to retire early you

just need your wealth to be at or above your retirement number at this point my number was $1 million so how do we get to that number easy looking at the same equation we can either earn more spend less or do it for longer now this is how someone doing fire would approach the

problem and this is how I approached it at first keep working your job cut expenses like crazy save more than 50% of your income do it for long enough retire early live off dividends 4% Rule and keep expenses really low forever now don't get me wrong fire has a lot of benefits there is this feeling that no

matter who you are as long as your patient fire can work for you following fire you won't still be stuck in the rat races 65 and no one wants that but ultimately fire didn't work for me I tried but I failed I I couldn't hack it after 4 years working the same job I

just felt totally suffocated and depressed so trying to retire this way was it was ruining my life in hindsight I'm glad I failed because my path to early retire retirement would have been so much harder if I tried to stick it out so is fire a better road to retirement than the 9 to5 yes but not by

that much why well this same equation holds the answer because you can never cut your expenses to zero you're still stuck in the 9 to5 for a really long time and the biggest problem look at the equation one more time fire assumes your income is constant so unless you're lucky to have a job that pays you a

really high income the time Factor the balancing factor in that equation means that you're still going to be waiting for a really long time until you can retire and what's more you'll never get really wealthy with fire because your freedom is always going to be tied to being really careful about spending about budgeting about minimizing

expenses and that just that doesn't sound like that much fun so what if there was another way one that didn't consider your income as fixed or one that didn't require you to wait so long to finally retire that was the next piece I had to figure out but first I had to quit my job so I did and straight

away I discovered the key to retiring early and easily in the prime years of my life with an over flowing bank account and unlimited Freedom I'm kidding it was a long and painful process actually but in the end I discovered the third and the final Pathway to retirement path three this is by far the best pathway

that you could take to retire early but there are a few big downsides you need to know about so what is path three I started a business and if you're wondering which business would allow someone like me to Achieve Financial Freedom while being only 32 years old I will tell you but first I have to

explain that the how matters a lot more than the what so first I tried a bunch of businesses and side hustles some failed some made me money but there was nothing really moving the needle but I was learning a valuable skill set no matter what to reach the level of financial stability that you'll need to

retire early and well you're going to need high value skills so by trying a bunch of businesses it was a necessary step to build my high value skills and to give credit to my old 95 job I learned some of those skills back then but the problem was that the 95 doesn't reward you properly even if you have

those skills anyway having this skill set was what made me succeed in the first business that did take off for me and that was an Amazon business It All Happened pretty quickly so within the first few months I was already making more than in my old engineering job and with the first 12 months of starting

business I made more in 1 month my old boss made it in a year which is pretty cool after trying the 9 to5 and then fire it was the huge earning potentials of a successful business that in the end made retiring early a realistic possibility for me and by the way Amazon business whatever business it's just one

of many businesses that you could use to retire early you have to look for a business that's scalable something that can be made hands off ideally selling a product you love to customers you like but it's hard to find that combination I will come back to that later but there's one more reason why business is the best

Pathway to retire early it's huge but almost no one is talking about this the beauty of earning a business income is it allows you to optimize your taxes legally minimizing your tax burden can significantly increase your net income which means you can put more money into savings every year and massively shorten the time it takes to become financially

secure remember this equation so finally early retirement and Financial Freedom was now in sight but wait I'm young I'm making lots of money now and the business is pretty hands off so I already had lots of Freedom that that sounds pretty great so if I had all that why I retire to answer this question you

need to know about something called honic adaptation or the honic treadmill and this is how it works first you desire something then you strive until you obtain it then you enjoy it but then you adapt to the new normal and stop enjoying it this leads you to desire more which creates a new desire and the

cycle repeats the honic treadmill explains our natural tendency to just keep moving the goalposts over and over again and it affects all of us especially when it comes to finances and this is a big problem when it comes to early retirement I'd known my retirement number for a long time originally it was

a liquid net worth of $1 million but once I discovered how much money I could make with a business things started to change now to earn enough passive income to live a great life and Next Level Freedom $3 million would be better but then as my business became more successful and I became wealthier my

retirement number continued to grow with it so my goal always seemed to be about three times bigger than where I was at the time was weird right that would be fine except remember I told you I was joking about how the business pathway was easy and stressfree look it's definitely the best of these three

Pathways to retirement but it was long and painful as well and towards the end like my heart wasn't in it I wanted to have more time to just focus on parts of my personal life that I've been neglecting so I didn't want that retirement number to keep getting bigger and always being just ahead of me it it

started to feel like I was like I was chasing the same carrot that I'd left behind in the 95 and I remembered how much i' hated that I'd felt trapped by it and that same feeling started to come creeping in again so I learned that if you're not careful you can lose sight of

the goals that you set for yourself and for your early retirement and end up trapped in another rat race even when you're wealthy and you're making lots of money like I'd been trapped in it but I decided it was time to get out I was done moving the goalposts so at 32 years

old I decided to retire and that's where my problems really began do you know the three biggest fears that people have about retirement the first is financial instability it's not feeling secure in your retirement Nest Egg second health problems that stop you from fully enjoying your retirement third is identity feeling lost and lonely after

leaving your work behind so whether you retire early or normally these nightmare situations can play out all too often and unfortunately I'm speaking from experience so this is what actually happened when I retired early versus what I expected would happen first finances expectation I'll be wealthier and way Freer than most guys my age I'll

kick back I'll relax and I'll live off passive income no stress reality almost immediately after I retire the financial markets start to Tumble I was heavily invested at the time and I took a really big hit immediately it feels terrible and much worse when you don't have the security of an active income so when

you're taking a loss you just you you don't know when it'll stop or how far down it'll go but there is a simple lesson here which it might sound obvious but here's why it isn't if you follow the fastest path to retiring early which is starting a business you get disproportionately rewarded for being

aggressive in other words business is about being aggressive and taking risk to get rich but investing for retirement is about being cautious to stay Rich so investing and business require completely different mindsets so be extra careful with your money after retiring take the time to learn investing slowly if you're not careful you'll lose a lot like I did second

Health expectation after retiring I'll have time to hit the gym and I'll get ripped reality I hit the gym and I immediately herniate a disc in my spine I'm in severe pain and almost bedridden for months and then a couple of other illnesses seem to just come out of nowhere I actually I had this itchy skin

infection on my hands that it it wouldn't go away for for years doctors didn't know what to do with it they kept misdiagnosing it and for a long time this Honestly made me really self-conscious and anxious to go out in public it was horrible speaking of anxiety I started to get anxiety attacks

that i' never had before I've never felt more anxious in my life and I'd regularly feel low and depressed as well and some of this is probably related to the financial insecurity problems that I was having but I think a lot also came from Identity expectation I'll be free to be whoever I want to be reality without my

work and business to Define me it became kind of hard to know who I actually was I felt lost and directionless after I retired I realized that I spent so much time focused on making money so that I could get to the goal of Financial Freedom that I'd actually lost touch with a lot of my old hobbies and the

things that actually made me me I'd forgotten what to actually do with the freedom and not to mention I hadn't realized how much my work had defined my relationships how I structured my time and even my feeling of selfworth when you retire you suddenly leave all that behind from one day to the next it felt

like a void had suddenly opened up and just sucked me inside there is a lesson to be learned here don't get so focused on getting to early retirement that you forget about what comes next you've got to have something to retire to and for you I would say now is the time to start

thinking about what that would be funnily enough for me I actually think it's work so the problem that I had wasn't that work was the obstacle to achieving freedom and retiring was the the vehicle to get there it was just that I never learned how to find work that I enjoyed or to enjoy the work that

I was doing so that's the hack whether before you retire or after you have to find something that you love to work on then enjoy the best years of your life and never stop working I want to share a quick little secret with you when I first decided to make this video I

thought the key takeaway was going to be pretty cautionary like if you want to retire early don't make the mistakes that I did but as I went back through the story of how I got to be here I realized I probably wouldn't change a thing trying to retire early had to ruin my life to make it better so should you

retire early absolutely but if you do want to retire early there's one thing you have to get right and that is your investment strategy there's one huge mistake I made that caused me to lose a big chunk of my portfolio after I retired click on this video to see what that mistake was and how to avoid it

I'll see you there