| It may be tough for people to give advice, because I think your options are going to vary a lot, depending on where you live. The first thing I'd recommend, though, is that you keep track of all your expenses, if you aren't doing this already. This gives you the starting point for deciding how much money you really need to make in order to live the way that you want. Please keep in mind that expenses can increase as you age: for example, health insurance premiums can skyrocket depending on where you live, and things like hearing aids, expensive dental work, and so on, may not be covered by insurance. You may not want to worry about this stuff now, or maybe you'll get lucky. Anyway, if you track your expenses now, at least you'll have a handle on what you need for the immediate future, barring unforeseen emergencies. A few years back, my goal was very similar to yours. I started tracking every single expense to figure out how much money I actually needed to survive per year. As someone else mentioned, you can amass a pile of money and live off the income stream from that, provided you trust the "4% rule" or one of its variants. Take a look at these blogs: http://www.retireearlyhomepage.com/ - guy who worked till about 40 and retired, living off income from his savings http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/blog/ - guy who worked and made a chunk of money, continues to work on his own fun projects that make an income stream http://earlyretirementextreme.com/ - guy who lived a really lean lifestyle with just a small income stream (iirc 4 h/w doing jobs off craigslist) (but then he went to work for a hedge fund, iirc). Anyway, seems like you want to check out the last link first. You may also want to read "Your Money or Your Life" by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin. Someone else mentioned Timothy Ferriss' "Four Hour Work Week". I agree that it can be helpful, but I think he makes it sound easier than it actually is to set up a small lifestyle business. So I'd suggest reading it for inspiration more than anything else. Also it's a bit outdated. I think maybe what you're asking is this: you don't want a FT job because you don't really need all the money you'd make from a FT job. You'd rather have much more free time, and screw the FT job. If this is what you're asking, definitely check out the retire early extreme guy. I'm sure you're aware that you might change over time and may suddenly discover a passion for sports cars, a spouse, travel, or whatever. So, if you can squirrel away any extra money, it won't hurt. Just keep that in mind, it can happen. |