[vetler]

Wikipedia defines retirement as follows:

  Retirement is the point where a person stops employment completely

Obviously not what the author of this article did. It seems that the author's goal was to get out of the IT industry. Why? Was he unhappy? Whatever the case, he seems much happier building houses. That's great!

Personally I love software development, and don't really want to do anything else. Sometimes, when the stress gets to me, I find myself imagining doing something else, but it's usually just a phase.

If you want to change your line of work, then by all means do it, but it's not retirement.

[ricardobeat]

Working on your hobbies for just as long as you wish, with plenty of money in the bank, suffices for "retirement" to me. Retirement doesn't mean not working, is your goal in life to become a vegetable? There are easy shortcuts to that.

[vetler]

Not working is actually what people usually do when they retire at old age. "To retire" can mean several things[1], but quitting one line of work to go into another is not one of them.

That he quit his job and got into something else is great, I'm not trying to belittle that, but I'm just annoyed that he seems to consider retirement to be working with something he really wanted to be working with all along. It gives the impression that the goal in life is to retire. Which I don't think it should be. If you want to work on your hobbies, why not find a way to make a living out of it now, rather then when you retire?

[1]: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/retire

[kamaal]

Early retirement has a totally different meaning than retiring at an old age. At old age, you think of covering your medical expenses, sufficient enough money to take of your needs for food,clothing and shelter till your very soon to happen biological death. Besides you don't really have the energy and enthusiasm to enjoy the same things somebody young does.

At an younger age retirement has a different meaning. It means traveling, riding your motor cycle in rallies to far off places. Roaming around the country trying out different sort of food, Playing video games and your favorite instrument during Sunday afternoons.

In order to do all this you need a supply of money that isn't mediocre by measure. In this case, even if you have $900K (I don't know if this is sufficient in the US, I'm from India) that may not be sufficient to live a life of even mediocre decent luxury.

If the idea is to live hand to mouth the rest of ones life, then retiring with $900K at 35 isn't bad idea. Other wise,... One has no option but to get back to work.