IKubak, that’s amazing and many congratulations. Can you tell us more of your story?
Since poppy asked and I have plenty of time now...I'll try to keep it short and I'll start from the beginning. I believe certain personality types are more geared toward saving. I have always been a saver, since I was a kid. I'm not saying other personality types can't save, just saying no one ever had to convince me saving was a good thing.
When I got into the working world I continued to save and got lucky and married a beautiful, hard-working saver. This was probably the best financial move I ever made although the financial aspect of it was never a thought. We had a son and once he was born we started saving for his college. He joined the Marines and will get the GI bill when he is done with his active duty in November, so his college is paid for. We gave him the education IRA we started so his Master's degree is fully funded as well. If he doesn't use it, he can use it for his kids. Once he was on the military payroll, we also started his Roth IRA and fully funded it for a year to get him started. Savers gonna save, that's what we do.
We both worked but we took two years off each to raise our son while the other spouse kept working. We moved from the big city to a small(erish) college town when my son finished 2nd grade because we thought it was a better place for him. We didn't have jobs in the college town but I commuted and got a job at the university within a year. We downsized our house (took the proceeds from our city house and paid cash for the next house) and continued to lived modestly. Moving was a great decision in hindsight.
I found the Early Retirement Forum in 2007 and immediately knew there were a lot of financially wise people and information here. I had always saved but without a singular focus. Savers gonna save, right? I had already read some of the great retirement/investing books (Your Money or Your Life, The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need, Random Walk Down Wall Street, etc.) but this forum was a huge help because it applied financial strategies to individual situations. I learned a lot by reading how other people handled their finances and prepared for RE.
Around 2008, I thought we were getting close to where we could retire but I kept telling DW that we needed one more correction while we were putting away a lot of $ to get us over the hump. Well, we got it. 2008-09 was the worst bear market I had ever seen. This forum was a huge help at that time because the media made it sound like we would be hunting and gathering for our next meal but on this forum, everyone was relatively calm. Everyone was staying the course.
We survived the crisis and around 2012 I sat DW down and showed her that we were very close to ER. She liked my presentation so much that she came up with her own plan....she semi-retired (cut back to 2 days a week) to see if it was good and she proclaimed it...very good. So good in fact that she fully retired two years later. I had considered leaving my job as well due to the high stress nature of it but I decided to transfer to a different unit and that worked out very well. I liked the people I worked with and the job in my new dept. but I was still tied to a job and I couldn't travel or have my own schedule. I was going to RE in 2016 but I stayed on for no particular reason, just OMY syndrome. Then I was going to pull the trigger in April of 2017 but a coworker left giving us very short notice so I stayed until my boss could get a replacement hired and trained. I told my team a year before I retired about my plan and formally gave notice in November 2017. I'm 55 so I got a few strange looks from people when my retirement was announced and I got several questions about why and what I was going to be doing. But that's all in the past and today just feels like a weekend. I'm going to Mexico for 5 weeks on Saturday and am looking forward to some warm weather.
In summary, the things that allowed me to ER include marrying the right wife and staying married, reading the right books and having a plan, downsizing the house and living debt free, and finally, finding ER Forum and learning from other people who were trying to do the same thing I was.