What got you excited about retirement saving?

[Finance Dave]

I'm sure many of us have interesting stories, or something that got our minds focused about saving at a young age to prepare for FIRE...what is yours?

For me, I was an auto mechanic in my early/mid 20's. I did alignments and brakes, and we had a "pit" bay where I could stand under the car and work on things. I was working one day on aligning a car in the winter, lots of snow outside, and I remember adjusting a tie rod end while watching the screen to get the setting just right...and every 2-3 seconds a drop of ICE COLD water would drip from the melting snow down the back of my neck. After about 20 seconds of that....I'd HAD ENOUGH.

That weekend I signed up for Engineering school, started my 401k, and over the next 10 years worked my way into a finance executive job at a Fortune 500 company. I FIRE'd at 51, became a home inspector for a few years while I built my rental business, and now I do some minor handyman work (no more than 200 hours/year) just for fun money.

That cold water dripping down my neck was the trigger for me...I realized I didn't want to be doing this dirty, noisy job when I was 60 years old.

 

[COcheesehead]

A 20th Century Investors brochure. They published a chart of what saving $100 dollars a month would look like in 20/30/40 years if invested in one of their mutual funds. This was 1987. I saw the big pile that was possible at the end all for just saving a $100 a month. Decided I could save a lot more than $100 a month. I did and the rest is history.

 

[Major Tom]

There wasn't one factor or incident that got me interested in saving for early retirement. I have always been comfortable with numbers, and have always thought about how best to use my money. My parents encouraged me to save from a young age, which I did. As a young adult, I broke that habit, and didn't save for about 10 years. The lesson I learned from an early age hadn't been forgotten though and in my late 20's, I began saving again, ramping up the saving rate as I got older.

For me, it was a combination of the frugal examples my parents set, and my psychological make-up (I don't make financial decisions based on emotion*, and am good at delayed gratification) that were responsible for my saving habits.


*Well, except the occasional, "Hey, do you fancy ice cream?" or "Let's stop for coffee!" You have to splurge sometimes!

 

[RetiredAt49]

I grew up on a farm. My dad worked the farm 14-16 hours a day, nearly every day of the year. He died of a heart attack at age 57 living mostly paycheck to paycheck. In middle school I made a plan to earn enough money to get a CS degree (which I did), I worked my butt off, and retired at age 49.

 

[REWahoo]

In my early 30's I had a management position designed by Satan and located in Hell. I reported directly to the VP of Micromanagement and Unreasonable Goals. The only thing that might have made the job worse would have been a lawsuit against me by an employee - which did happen.

My stress level was off the chart. My predecessor was fired for drinking on the job and I fully understood why. I was working 12 hours a day, 6 days a week and not a very good father or husband. I was miserable.

In the middle of all this I got a call from a good friend from high school who was in town attending a meeting and wanted to get together. I hadn't seen him in more than a decade but knew he was doing well financially. I agreed to meet him at local restaurant and that dinner conversation changed my life.

He told me he was on track to retire by age 50 and gave me a quick, back of the envelope (actually it was a napkin) look at how he planned to do it. That was when I first realized I could actually get out of the rat race far earlier than 65. I had never considered the possibility I could retire early and not have to spend the next 30+ years working. That's when saving and investing for ER became a priority for me.

 

[HI Bill]

Circa 1999, I met my "Maui multi-millionaire friends", all of which were retired or semi-retired by age 50. One couple had been a police officer and finance specialist; another had been a medical devices designer and heavy engine mechanic, followed by yellow iron sales guy; one had inherited wealth and had never really worked; the last one worked in commercial real estate. These six folks were my inspiration...if you worked hard, saved, and invested, and made the right choices, you could move to Maui and retire by 50! To make this work, I had to leave Maui, move to CA, then to Oahu, and take on increasing levels of responsibility. It was all worth it in the end!

 

[Act2]

I married young, divorced in my late 30’s. No kiddos. Lucky to have a job I truly enjoyed, with good pay and benefits. After the divorce, I took stock of my finances and my single reality and realized my financial security was all on me, and I needed to be sure I could support myself from my own effort for the rest of my life. I began putting money away for retirement (in addition to the pension participation I am lucky to have). In a few years, my investments started to really add up. And seeing that on paper, that got me excited about adding to it. I still like to see that number on paper/screen and to know it’s something I accomplished over the years.

 

[Alan]

At age 38 I started my 4th job at a large company and my 4th DB (final salary) pension plan. None of the pension plans were transferable, and I had no idea what the previous 3 were worth. I expected that this probably wasn’t going to be my last job so I should start independently saving for retirement. Having my own retirement savings felt like a great release.

 

[Pellice]

Parents who prioritized saving and my own good imagination. My parents were children of the Depression and had a horror of not having enough money. They were working class folks and always were careful with money - too conservative, actually - but they were never without savings. I had a savings account before I had a checking account.

I had a pretty good idea from an early age that I would be responsible for my own old age - single, no kids - and acted on that premise with my first job, periodically increasing my withholding percentage. Then, at a point in the early 2000s, my employer had a special individual event with retirement advisers who would do a quick analyisis. She was so full of praise for how much I had saved! I was unbelieving that I was that much better off than others, but it was a great motivator! I think I still have her analysis.

 

[racy]

When I was growing up my farm parents didn't have a lot of money, but my friends' parents did. I wanted to be like them, so I had the motivation to make money. I found the 'how' when I learned about 'the magic of compound interest', time being the major factor. I started investing in a 401k when I started my first job.

 

[Kork13]

I was a junior in college, ~20y/o (2006), and an advisor randomly (it seemed) pulled me & a half-dozen others into his office one evening -- I think it was literally just whoever happened to be in the hallway outside his door at the time. He taught us about basic budgeting, saving money, investments, retirement accounts, compounding, etc. I don't know why then, why us, or why those topics .... but it was life-changing for me. I opened a Roth IRA later that month (on my ~$10k/yr income), and it's been an upward trajectory ever since. I crossed the line into millionaire territory about 13 years later.

Even though I personally butted heads with him more than a few times, I absolutely 100% credit the man with starting me on my financial path. I learned frugality & responsibility from my parents, but he opened my eyes to what that frugality can enable.

 

[bigcmagor]

Two years out of high school, I was working as a cook in a breakfast restaurant and trying to figure out what to do with myself. At the end of a shift, covered in grease splatter, I was doing my least favorite task of cleaning the grill surface with a screen and lots of muscle. Apparently, I was audibly muttering my feelings about the project because the manager came up beside me and asked; What do you think the world owes you?

Not wanting to be a 70 year old cook, I enrolled in college that fall, started as summer help at the business I would end up growing into a multi-state, 400 employee company. Retired for three years, I still own part of it today. I never thanked my former manager for the kick in the pants, but should have.

 

[DrRoy]

I was a natural saver since I was a kid. I would make my halloween candy last until Christmas.

 

[mrfeh]

I don't actually have an impetus. Wife and I just weren't big spenders...I made an above-average salary my entire career, and any money we didn't spend was invested.

 

[Andre1969]

A 20th Century Investors brochure. They published a chart of what saving $100 dollars a month would look like in 20/30/40 years if invested in one of their mutual funds. This was 1987. I saw the big pile that was possible at the end all for just saving a $100 a month. Decided I could save a lot more than $100 a month. I did and the rest is history.

Funny, it was American Century (20th Century today) that was a turning point in my life, too. This was the summer of 1991, and I was 21 years old. My paternal Granddad used to get Fortune or Kiplinger's or some similar money magazine. I remember looking through one of the issues, and it showed a list of top performing mutual funds. At the top was one called 20th Century Ultra. It had returned something like 20%, over whatever 1-year period they were reporting on.

While deep down inside I knew that realistically, 20% a year just wasn't feasible, I ran a calculation, based on investing $1,000 and getting a consistent 20% per year. I think I calculated that would turn that $1K into a million bucks in 39 years.

And while yeah, I realized that was a silly calculation to do, I also knew that over time, I'd be investing more than just an initial $1K, and figured that one day, I'd be rich. Or, at least, well-off!

In September of 1991, I invested $1500 with 20th Century, but goofed and put it in their Growth fund instead. However, it still did pretty well, and at some point I put some money into Ultra.

Both of my Granddads were pretty influential in getting me focused on investing, if not necessarily early retirement. My paternal Granddad, for those money magazines, and back when I was in my teens, my maternal Granddad would tell me that I should look into investing into something that could pay off better than CDs and savings accounts. He just wasn't all that financially savvy so he didn't know what that would be, but he helped give me the push to look into it.

As for the idea of retiring early, I don't know what exactly made me focus on it. I think really, just the ideas of being independent, setting my own terms, and not being on an employer's schedules all appealed to me. Also, starting around 2001 or so, it seemed like the work culture really changed, at least in my field, and not for the better. We had a few bad employees come in, and they let them get away with murder. And, the attitude seemed like it spread like a virus, and I just decided I didn't want to potentially deal with a few more decades of this.

The idea of not being dependent on my employer, and being able to tell them to take a hike, began to appeal to me more and more. Things aren't nearly as bad at work nowadays, thankfully. It seems like the most toxic employees have moved to other projects, gotten fired, laid off, retired, or died.

Now though, at the age of 53, I have another factor pushing me to retire early. I'm becoming more aware of my own mortality. My Dad died back in 2017, at the age of 71. Mom just died this past summer, at 74. And my uncle, her brother, just died this past Friday, at 71! On Dad's side, his brother died back in 2020 or 21, at the age of 81 or 82. And the other brother, is around 82-83 now, but has been sick and on oxygen for several years.

With my grandparents' generation, I can think of plenty of them who lived fairly healthy, well into their 80s and 90's, and my paternal Granddad made it to 101 and 11 months. But it seems like my parents' generation is dropping like flies. So stuff like that is making me think more and more, that I should get out now while I can, and still have some good years left to enjoy.

 

[pacergal]

My folks always had a LBYM mind set, and saving was #1, "even if all you could afford was $10/month--put something in savings every paycheck"--Moms quote.
So saving something was a part of my life.

DH and I had jobs with pensions, but you had to either have 30 years in or age 58 to qualify. That seemed a long ways away in our 20's. Luckily, we stuck it out, along with adding to personal savings when work added a 457 plan.

 

[iloveyoga]

I worked at a big insurance company in retirement plan administration. I was a single mom with no $$. Any time they had a savings program at work, I did it. When 401(k) plans started (I remember having to explain to clients what a 401(k) plan was) and my company started one, I signed up. When they told us to part of any raise you got into the 401(k), I did. Later, everyone I worked with did enough to get the match and then later it everyone tried to "max out" their 401(k). So that is mostly how I did it. We were also lucky enough to have a generous defined benefit plan.

 

[Jonesee]

Working construction on a commercial rough-in crew during high school.

Unrelenting heat, getting screamed at all day by the foreman for no reason than to drive the crew faster. Every summer 1 or 2 at least would fall out from heat exhaustion.

I decided right then and there I didn't want to be 40 and humping 2X4s and thumping nails.

It led me to banking and finance. I have the same drive and work ethic I had working on a crew but applied it to a white-collar career. It made me a success.

 

[Midpack]

We’ve always been frugal and were saving and investing all along.

But in 1993, when I was 40, my Megacorp froze all pensions and ended retirement health care (lump sum $204K in 2011). That put our saving and investing into overdrive, I even saved 70% of my pay one particularly good (bonus) year.

In retrospect losing my pension (early enough to adjust plans) was the best thing that could have happened to me. I reached FI at age 51.

Megacorp sold off the division I was part of in 1994, to a private company that paid WAY better than Megacorp! That helped a lot too.

 

[frayne]

I reported directly to the VP of Micromanagement and Unreasonable Goals.

I think that guy worked at my company too!

As a young 24 year old a few years out of the service I got hired by Standard Oil of Ohio at one of their refinery/chemical plants in Ohio. The job was shift work but challenging and I saw people retiring in their fifties with seven figures. That was all the incentive I needed to put my shoulder to the grindstone, get some engineering studies behind me and got on the management hamster wheel. Walked away at 54 years of age with seven figures and never looked back. That was eighteen years ago.

 

[Kings over Queens]

I don't recall a pivotal moment. Like many I was industrious as a kid, and a saver. I liked saving. Back then we had passbook savings accounts and I remember having to get a new book because I had made so many deposits.

Started working at 17 and learned quickly about the stock market, retirement funds, ira's. Bought my first IRA at around 20 (I think), started funding a 401k when I bought the family business in my 30's, and loved tracking the progress to my first $100,000.

I don't know that I ever had the intention of FIRE when I started saving, that part, the FIRE part, hit me like a ton of bricks during covid.

 

[wearefinishedworking]

When my Father retired, we were 2 busy parents in our 40s trying to raise 3 children while earning pretty decent salaries. Dad sat me down to show me how he did it. The key point he made was that he had reduced expenses so much over his last 10 years of working that what he needed to live a happy life made it very easy to make the numbers work (paid off house and cars, no debt, updated all appliances, etc). He then showed me the amount of money he needed to pull per year (on top of SS and a very small pension) and how much he had saved.

It was like a lightbulb went on and I knew it was possible. This motivated us to kick our savings into high gear and get the house and cars paid off. I can still see his yellow legal pad and the numbers he was showing me. He lived a good life for almost 20 years after he retired.

 

[athena53]

Two things lit a fire under me. In 1985, Dad was "demoted" from his position running the district of a major steel company. After he got tired sitting in a cube with little to do he and Mom moved to Myrtle Beach where he tried working as a stockbroker since he'd been investing since he was in his 30s. He quickly became disillusioned at being told what products to push, but they'd paid cash for the house and lived modesty off SS and savings and played a lot of golf. They're both gone now and I was pleasantly surprised at what was left for my siblings and me.

The other: two coworkers were discussing another actuary they knew who was promoted to a position he didn't want. They told him he had no choice. He'd been saving and investing for years so he quit. That was 1994 and he was 44 years old according to his LinkedIn profile. He and his wife are in Vero Beach and look pretty happy in the picture!

So- I realized that you needed to accumulate a pile of "you can take this job and shove it" money. In 2006 my company was acquired and many people fled in panic. Knowing I had enough resources if I were unemployed for 6-12 months I decided to see how it worked out. It worked out very well and it was good to have the resources to take that risk.

Finally, at age 61, when politics got toxic working for another employer, I was out the door.

 

[thod]

I do not think there was a specific moment. I was a natural saver, pretty much always had a job. Co-op during college. But given all that, I think the real engine that got significant wealth to eventually happen was after we got married.

My wife is an engineer and wanted to get her PE, which meant that she needed to work for 5 years first. I knew we eventually would have children, but not for those 5 years at least. During those 5 years I decided I wanted my wife to have a choice to keep working or stop when we eventually had children. Therefore, I assumed that meant that we had to get used to living off of just my salary alone.

The net result was 5 years of basically saving 40-50% of our income. We never lived off of the 2 incomes ever, so there really was no 'sacrifice.'

Of course, that meant 5 years of steady investing half our incomes. The pattern continued even after children as my income had of course increased also during that time.

 

[Dash man]

A bad first marriage and divorce left me in $45k of debt in my mid thirties. I knew what I needed to do and cut back on living expenses as much as I could and still have a Raleigh my son who lived 2,000 miles away. I had an opportunity to take a nine month assignment at work that would pay me per diem on top of my salary, so I jumped on it. It helped me pay down my debt (also thanks to Dave Ramsey) and met my now DW. She had a frugal mindset among other wonderful qualities. After marrying her we were able to do some serious saving and investing, leading to where we are today. The management where my temporary assignment was liked me and offered me a promotion and nice raise, so I didn’t have to quit my job to marry her. She then got some rapid promotions up to VP, allowing us to invest some nice sums.