From Student to Retiree

What if I told you that you are currently being duped into your college degree? The contemporary wisdom in life is that if you go to colllege and get a degree, it will lead to securing a steady job. Having a job with a decent income is often the measurement of success in the U.S. middle class. Success will lead to happiness and fullfillment. Last but not least, all of these things will allow you to have a financially secure retirement, as long as you save for most of your working career (which tends to be 40+ years). Is it really worth all of that effort to be stuck
working for the rest of your life? What if it was possible to skip that 40 year working part altogether?

Why Would Anyone Want The American Dream?

I used to be a sucker for the American dream. The American Dream, as far as I have learned is as follows: obtain a college education, get married, secure a good-paying job, purchase a home, have kids (maybe even get a pet), take annual vacations, work until your are around 65 (maybe a little earlier or later), then retire and do everything that life didn’t allow you to do while trying to accomplish all of what was already mentioned. I don’t know about you, but I am tired just thinking about
achieving all of those things.

Does anyone other than me see anything in that list that isn’t appealing at all? Isn’t the American Dream (in its fantasy form) supposed to be amazing? If that is the case, why would anyone want to work half their life away in a cubicle just to pay for all of the other things? If someone offered a home, spouse, and 1 week vacation each year in exchange for 40 hours spent in a prison cell each week, would you take it? Am I the only one that sees a resemblance between a cubicle and prison cell?

What If You Didn’t Have to Work Your Entire Life to Retire?

It was just a couple months ago that I came to this realization. I am currently in graduate school and working full-time to pay for school. My wife and I love to travel, but between our limited days of paid time off and other family/school commitments, we are limited to one week of traveling each year.

I used to buy into the idea of working my entire life in order to have complete freedom when I was older, until I realized a few problems with this plan. Who can guarantee that I will be alive that long? What would happen if I died before I reached this state of retirement? Would it all go to waste? Let’s be generous and say that I did live to traditional retirement age; what is to say that I will still be healthy enough to travel like I would like to? When I realized that I was waiting 40 years to live my life, I decided to take things into my own hands.

Is it Possible to Go from Student to Retiree?

In deciding that I want to live life to the fullest now, I started working on an early retirement plan. While I go into further detail on my blog, I will give you the highlights. Instead of being stuck in a traditional 9-to-5 job, I wanted to work to create passive income streams that would allow me to retire. Since I decided that I didn’t want to wait my entire life, I set a goal of retiring in 2-3 years. Part of my plan includes creating an online business that will replace my income from my day job. This, if you haven’t already guessed, includes blogging. I also don’t want to just be stuck in another job, so I am limiting myself to working 3 days in this ”retirement” plan. I don’t mind working 3 days a week to sustain this because I don’t just want to sit around all day. You may be thinking, “Working 3 days a week isn’t retirement!” To answer that, you are absolutely right (in a way), but you have to remember that I don’t like the traditional understanding of retirement. Retirement doesn’t have to mean sitting around all the time.

As I have started to make some decent money from my blogs, I am realizing the potential of transitioning sooner rather than later. My goal for 2012 is to earn at least $30,000 from my online ideas. I think they have potential to bring in more than that, but I am trying to remain realistic. If I can achieve this success, I may be able to quit my day job and speed up my retirement plan before I graduate with my Masters in December. If I were to do that, I would effectively move from being a student to a retiree.

So here is your chance to tell me what you think. Do you think it is possible? Are you trading certain things for time in a cubicle?

This was a guest post from Corey at Passive Income to Retire, where he tracks his progress towards his goal of retiring at age 27.