The 4 Paths to Early Retirement (finding freedom sooner)
Sep 05, 2026Read time - 4 minutes / Disclosure
Leaving 9-5 life early can:
- Lower your stress.
- Improve your health.
- Give you more freedom.
Unfortunately, most people think working 9-5 until age 62 is the only option.
The Social Dilemma
Many people are told at the beginning of their career they can't access:
- Their pension.
- Their social security.
- The money inside their retirement account.
..until they reach their 60s.
So they plan to work a 9-5 job for 40 years.
It's the common thing.
It's the thing I planned to do.
But as time passed, I discovered there's many ways to leave 9-5 life sooner.
"Retirement is not an age. It's a financial number."
— Dave Ramsey
Like most people, I was excited to get my first 9-5 job.
Making money, meeting people and learning new things was exciting.
Navigating the world as a young person was thrilling.
And in my 20s everything felt like a new adventure.
But after getting settled with:
- A job.
- A car.
- An apartment.
The years began to fly by.
And I began to wonder...
Is this it?
A Life Stuck On Repeat
Getting a promotion or getting a new job made things exciting again.
For a while.
But as time passed, I'd always find myself wondering the same thing...
Is this it?
Eventually I realized, I no longer liked being told:
- When to show up.
- What to work on.
- When to take a lunch.
- When to go on vacation.
Things that never bothered me before.
But as I got older, I realized I wanted more freedom.
Freedom to:
- Wake up whenever.
- Take lunch whenever.
- Work on things I enjoyed.
- Go on a hike at 3pm on a random Tuesday.
And working 9-5 didn't allow me to do these things.
It felt like I was living the same day over and over again on repeat.
It was hard to imaging doing that for 20 or 30 more years.
The 4 Paths to Early Retirement
After working in banking for 10 years and watching hundreds of people retire.
It changed the way I thought about retirement.
Many people found ways to leave 9-5 life much sooner than their 60s.
And many of them used one of these 4 strategies.
Let's dive in.
1. Lean Retirement
Adopt a minimalist lifestyle.
People who chose to retire early using lean retirement:
- Cut their expenses to the minimum.
- Save and invest until their investments cover their low monthly expenses.
Someone who does this may view how many investments they need to leave 9-5 life like this:
A lean retirement often means the less your monthly expenses are, the less money you need to save and invest to leave a 9-5 job.
2. Fat Retirement
Adopt an above-average lifestyle.
People who chose to retire early using fat retirement:
- Have a higher-spending lifestyle.
- Save and invest until their investments cover their higher monthly expenses.
Someone who does this may view how many investments they need to leave 9-5 life like this:
A fat retirement often means the more your monthly expenses are, the more money you need to save and invest to leave a 9-5 job.
3. Coast Retirement
Adopt a save-early mindset.
People who chose to retire early using coast retirement:
- Focus hard on saving and investing early in their career.
- Have the benefit of time to grow their investments.
Life hack:
— JOHN HENRY (@thejohnhenry) September 12, 2025
Investing more in the 20s & 30s to
escape 9-5 life early and create
your ideal life.
A coast retirement often means doubling down on investing early, which may give you the option to work less or change careers without investing anymore money.
4. Barista Retirement
Adopt a partial-retirement mindset.
People who choose to retire early using barista retirement:
- Focus hard on saving and investing to build up a lot of investments.
- Leave 9-5 life early and just work part-time while living off their investments and their part-time income.
Some people who do this choose to work for a company part-time to get healthcare benefits.
And others choose to work part-time for themself using skills they learned in their 9-5 job.
A barista retirement often means leaving 9-5 life early while living off investments and living off part-time income to create a freer life.
The bottom line
Planning to leave a 9-5 job earlier than normal can be exciting.
And scary.
Turning in my 2-week notice to leave my fulltime finance job in 2020 at age 39 scared the heck out of me.
But my goal wasn't to retire and never work again.
It was to "retire the 9-5 life" and just work part-time for myself.
To travel more, to see family more, to have more free time.
Most of the people I've come across who choose one of these paths to leave 9-5 life early focus on these 4 things:
1. Getting their money right: they spend at least 30 minutes a month working to improve their finances.
2. Investing in a retirement account: they invest 15% of each paycheck into their retirement account.
3. Investing outside a retirement account: they toss any extra money they find into investments outside their retirement account.
For example:
- Opening and investing using a brokerage account which is also called a general investing account. Money inside this type of account can be accessed at anytime without a penalty at any age.
Most retirement accounts are designed to be accessed at retirement age which is age 59 1/2.
A brokerage account is the exception.
Someone who wants to leave 9-5 life early typically needs to have investments they can access before retirement age and investments they can access after retirement age.
4. Deciding what's next: they decide what they're going to do with their time after leaving 9-5 life.
The truth is.
Most people think leaving 9-5 life early means sipping margaritas on the beach.
And never working again.
That's what I thought at first.
But I eventually realized after working in banking it doesn't always work that way.
Many people miss having a purpose after leaving 9-5 life.
And hobbies oftentimes don't fill that void.
So, many people simply work part-time.
And being willing to work part-time after building up a lot of investments can make leaving 9-5 life early a lot easier.
If you're on one of these 4 paths to have more free time and to build a freer life. I'm rooting for you.
That's all for today.
See you next Saturday.
