Any thoughts? I figure if I get hitched I'll just go back to the workforce as I wouldn't be able to live on just $25k anymore.
I'm just thinking why not take advantage of my youth now? I have enough money to make some sort of risk I think.
Opinions?
Yeah, you may have already considered the below issues but you haven't really addressed them in your post. It's possible that you're missing a few basic steps.
Overall, have you considered calling this a "career change" instead of "ER"? The four interests you mention can all lead to fulfilling (and quite lucrative) income streams if you have the time to devote to them. Maybe the problem you're trying to solve is "different career", perhaps "less career", not "no career". Instead of going ER cold turkey your plan may be much more achievable if you set a target of enough part-time work to bring in $10K/year.
Now about those finances:
First off, why are you carrying $10K of debt? If it's a low-interest student loan then it may make sense, but only if everything else in your portfolio (including bonds & cash) is earning more than the debt is costing you. In your position, without any guaranteed income from a pension or an annuity, anything over 2% interest is probably a drag on your portfolio. Admittedly a small drag, but if you haven't considered this effect then it's tough to tell what other bigger factors may have been overlooked.
Second, have you run your numbers through FIRECalc? Keep in mind that FIRECalc doesn't have enough history to guarantee you a solid success forecast for a 60-year ER, but if FIRECalc has a problem with your portfolio and your expenses then you'll know you're not going to make it. FIRECalc may not be able tell that you'll always succeed, but it will clearly tell you where you're gonna fail.
Third, have you run Monte Carlo calculators to test the effect of a variability of returns on your portfolio? Sure, you might get 7.5%/year, but that doesn't account for volatility. The risk you take to get 7.5% includes a huge slug of volatility that could crash your assets below recovery in one year. Or try a couple years of double-digit inflation. You can read about what Volcker had to do with that in the late 1970s/80s.
Fourth, assuming FIRECalc and Monte Carlo don't [-]puke all over your portfolio[/-] have a problem then you need to read Otar about "red zone" retirements and whether it's worth annuitizing a bare-bones level of income-- say $15K/year. I can't tell whether it's a good idea or not but you're already riding the razor's edge of ER capitalization-- without a safety net.
Fifth, what are you doing for health insurance? A high-deductible policy and an HSA might work for you if you're not already doing so. You'd also want to be very confident that your family genes don't have a history of anything that would be interpreted as a pre-existing condition. Again, a comprehensive and thoughtful ER plan would have probably mentioned something about this issue in your first post to this thread. You may be way ahead of me here but if you haven't fully considered this then the rest of your plan may be full of Swiss-cheese holes.
You're essentially following the paths of Greaney & Greenspun, although both started out with a much higher asset level (and perhaps a somewhat older age) than you're contemplating. You might want to review their websites (RetireEarlyHomePage.com and
Philip Greenspun's home page). I think Phil continues to bring in part-time income from his photography interests.
Finally, you might want to run your numbers by Jacob Lund Fisker at EarlyRetirementExtreme.com. I say this because you might actually be able to pull it off with the right kind of dividend income. But if you want Jacob and the others on that forum to take you seriously then you're going to have to address the debt.
Your comment about "age bias" is interesting. While you're gazing longingly at the older workers with higher pay, they're looking at you and wishing they had a higher probability of greater continuity of employment. There are a number of national networking organizations intended specifically to help those over 40 find a job, any job, after being laid off. So perhaps the human capital works out about the same-- your years of steady work at lower pay contrasted with an older worker's higher pay but greater likelihood of "interruptions". Sometimes that greener grass is just a leaky cesspool.
It's worth considering how you'll feel at age 45, having found a life partner and perhaps contemplating starting a family, about those years of not building the savings/portfolio to enable you to move to a new stage of life. Because if you have nearly two decades of "self-employment" on your resume in your mid-40s, I'd speculate that your prospects as a paid employee will only be minimum wage. Entrepreneurial efforts will have a near-zero chance of attracting startup capital, and you won't have the savings to fund your own startup expenses. It's worth considering how many hours/week at $7.25/hour you'd need to guarantee enough income to support a family.
But if I got this advice at your age from someone of my age then I'd ignore most of it. Not because it's bad advice or coming from a suspect source-- but because I was blissfully ignorant.
