Retiring While You're Still Young (taking the short cut)
Mar 14, 2026Read time - 4 minutes / Disclosure
Leaving 9-5 life early means:
- Doing more of what you want.
- Doing less of what you don't want.
Unfortunately, the average retirement is only 10 to 15 years.
The Reasons
Most people are told they can't access:
- Their pension.
- Their social security.
- Their money in a retirement account.
...until they hit their 60s.
So they plan to work a 9-5 job for 40 years.
And plan to have a 10 to 15 year retirement.
It's the common path.
It's the path most people take.
But today, many people continue to question if it's the right path.
We work 8 hours a day to enjoy 5 hours in the evening.
— Lindsay (@lindsaybitcoin) June 8, 2024
We work 5 days a week to enjoy 2 days on the weekend.
We work 48 weeks a year to enjoy 4 weeks of PTO.
We work 45 years to enjoy 10 years in retirement.
Idk about you but I just simply can’t accept that for my life.
In my 20s, I couldn't imagine working a 9-5 job my entire life.
Most of the people I talked to on that path didn't seem very happy.
They had to:
- Ask for time off.
- Got a 2% or 3% annual raise.
- Seemed busy and stressed out most of the time.
- Often spent more time working then with their family.
But how exactly does someone leave 9-5 life early..
When pensions, social security, and retirement account money is designed for people in their 60s?
After I started working in finance.
I learned how most people do it.
"Your income can grow only to the extent that you do."
— T. Harv Eker
The New Way
Most people are playing the old retirement game.
A game that often looks like this:
1. Investing in a retirement account.
2. Planning to access the money and social security at retirement age.
This is the game I played too in the beginning.
But I eventually learned there's another option.
And that option usually looks like this:
1. Investing in a retirement account.
2. Planning to access the money and social security at retirement age.
PLUS:
3. Investing in a brokerage account.
4. Planning to access the brokerage account money before retirement age.
The Short Cut
Here's the 5 steps I followed after learning about a brokerage account to plan my early escape from 9-5 life.
Hope it's useful.
Let's dive in.
1. Open A Brokerage Account
Many people invest in a retirement account.
To help cover their costs during retirement age.
But not many people invest in a brokerage account.
To help cover their costs before retirement age.
Vanguard, Fidelity, and Schwab are popular places to open a brokerage account.
Most accounts can be opened online in just 5 minutes.
Brokerage accounts have many investing options and invested money can be used anytime regardless of your age.
2. Pick The Investments
Instead of spending hours trying to pick different investments in my brokerage account.
(and hoping I picked right)
After opening the account, I just picked one investment.
The Vanguard S&P500 ETF (VOO).
The share price of the fund right now is:
Stock Analysis (dot com)
But the cool thing about investing nowadays...
Most companies don't require people to buy a whole share of stock.
Starting with a smaller amount works too, even just $1 to own a small part of the 500 largest companies in America (that's what the The Vanguard S&P500 Fund is made up of).
Here's a few of the largest companies in America that's part of the fund:
If you haven't bought stock before.
After opening an investment account.
Give this a try:
→ The 7 Steps to Buy Stock (for beginners)
The price of S&P500 Funds have been going up 10% a year on average since the 1990s as the top 500 companies in America continue to grow.
3. Turn On Auto Invest
Auto invest helps make investing easy.
When I first opened my brokerage account, I noticed there was an auto invest option.
Turning it on takes 2 steps.
Step 1:
Have part of each of my paychecks go directly into the new brokerage account automatically.
Or..
Have money from my checking account go directly into my new brokerage account each month automatically.
After picking and setting up one of these options..
Step 2:
Turn on the auto invest option inside the new brokerage account.
For example:
After setting up my brokerage account, in the beginning $200 transferred once a month from my checking account to my brokerage account automatically.
Example
And once a month that $200 was auto invested into The Vanguard S&P500 ETF without me having to do anything.
Over time, as I made more money and figured out ways to save more money.. I was able to increase that amount.
Transferring money automatically to a brokerage account each month and investing that money automatically each month helps make investing easy.
4. Know The Math
Planning to leave 9-5 life early means knowing your numbers.
The first thing I needed to know was:
How much are my monthly bills?
The tool I use 30 minutes a month to keep track of my money is The Cash Flow Guide:
Example
If you need a way to track your money, try this:
→ access my cash flow guide free here
After knowing my monthly bills.
Then I could ask myself questions like:
How big do I want to grow my brokerage account?
How long will that money last if I no longer work a 9-5 job?
Knowing how much your monthly bills are helps you figure out how much money to invest in a brokerage account if you want to leave 9-5 life early.
5. Save More, Make More
I spent a wild amount of time thinking about ways to save more and make more money.
So I could:
Invest more money in my brokerage account.
Have less monthly bills to pay.
Here's a cheat sheet of 20 different ways to save and invest more money:
→ access my investor cheat sheet free here
Saving more and making more money helps you grow your investments faster to create a freer life sooner.
The bottom line
Looking back over my investing journey.
From the very first day, not knowing anything.
Up until today..
The one thing that excited me the most.
That motivated me to push hard.
To keep goin'..
Wasn't starting a retirement account.
Or getting a loan to buy my first home.
Or learning how to own rental properties.
The one thing that motivated me the most was..
Investing inside a brokerage account.
Why?
Because money invested inside a brokerage account can be used anytime.
After opening one.
I often found myself thinking..
"If I quit my job today, I could use the money in this brokerage account to pay my bills and I'd be just fine for 2 months."
And as I invested more money and time passed it became 5 months.
Than 9 months.
Than 1 year.
Than 3 years.
Than 6+ years.
And then I started thinking..
If I quit my 9-5 job and just worked part time for myself doing something I love.
Invested money in the brokerage account would last even longer.
Realizing this eventually gave me the courage to quit my 9-5 job back in 2020.
If you want to leave 9-5 life early as well.
To follow your passions.
To have more free time.
To do your own thing.
And maybe you're not feeling very excited about having just a retirement account.
A retirement account + a brokerage account may excite you a bit more. It sure did for me.
And got me thinking more about how I could create a freer life in my 30s, 40s, and 50s instead of waiting to access my retirement account and social security in my 60s.
That's all for today.
See you next Saturday.
