After 7 years of working in the corporate world, a 28-year-old in New York has saved enough money to retire.
She writes under the name JP Livingston on her blog "The Money Habit" and discusses how she gained financial independence at a very young age. When she was just 12 years old, she got a copy of the personal finance classics "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" which sparked her interest in saving and investing money.
When she realized she could save a lot of money by completing university in three years, she set that goal. " Graduating a year earlier really helped me a lot financially," she told CNBC. " It saved me 1 year of schooling and gave me the income of an extra year, and between the two, we are at $ 150,000 in savings."
After graduation, Livingston started working in an investment firm, where the initial salary was 60 thousand dollars, plus the last bonuses of the year, which went to almost the same amount, ie in total over 100 thousand dollars. In the following years she received several salary increases and by the end of her career, her salary had reached 6 figures.
After 7 years saving more than 70% of her income, she had amassed about $ 2.25 million, 40% of which came from investments and 60% from savings. They were enough for her to quit her job and retire at the age of 28.
Today she lives in New York with her husband, who still works, and their dog. They live on $ 65,000 a year, which enables them to maintain a high percentage of their savings.
Livingston has made a lot of money through her work, but she has also used a range of strategies to save over the years, both saving her expenses and automating her savings, but it was a mental trick that made the most difference great: Think of your purchases as the cost per hour.
"To maintain a high percentage of savings, start looking at your purchases in terms of your time, rather than in dollars," she told CNBC. "Instead of saying that a new iPhone costs $ 800, you may need to do the math to figure out that it would cost you 60 hours a week of work, or a week and a half of your life."
This makes you wonder if it really is worth it as a purchase.
" This is a very good tactic, especially for large purchases," says Livingston. "To buy a house with an extra bedroom or with more expensive painting, it can cost you 50 thousand or 100 thousand dollars. Is it worth it for three extra years of work for you? ”
Imagine the same situation with Albanian costs. To buy a phone for about 90,000 ALL, a person with an average salary needs two months of work./bm/
