Congratulations. Inquisitive minds would like to know how you did it? Yes, im sure living below your means had a lot to do with it.
I'd say on a most basic level, we retired early because that was our priority once we got the FIRE bug maybe 10 years ago or so. Among the things we could control, a few concepts were key for us:
1. The less we spent, the more we saved and the less we needed to FI. We viewed this as a powerful form of compounding. We spent what we wanted to spend, but we just factored in the impact of an expenditure. The reverse is equally true (more spent = less saved and more needed to be FI) and would create a huge headwind.
2. Taxes - Capital is taxed much more favorably than wages, so we wanted to convert our earnings from wages to capital. In this sense, we thought of the income tax system as a consumption tax system because to the extent we spent (consumed) our wages, we would continue to face the less favorable tax treatment of wages (ordinary rates + employment taxes).
3. Low cost investing - At this point, the money we don't pay for average or high cost funds covers a substantial portion of our expenses. And sticking with our investment plan during '07-'09 was important.
Did you have any "surprises"? Anything that caught you off-guard? Good or bad.
One thing that was a bit of a surprise was what we spent on our home. It's one thing to surf the internet and say "Hey those look like OK homes for about $x, so we'll assume that as our budget." It's quite another to actually go into some of those homes. Yikes! It wasn't long before we realized we were going to have to spend more. So, in hindsight, we might have actually looked inside some homes before coming up with a budget. We spent an extra $40k to pretty much gut the place, get a new roof and HVAC. Anyhow, we have some buffer (could manage well on a 2% withdraw) and we're happy, so we think it was an OK move.
On the good side, we've been pleasantly surprised how great retirement's been so far. We are feeling very fortunate.
