Early Retirement

Early retirement – the dream of many, the accomplishment of few. So many people long for early retirement, yet few actually accomplish their goal. What is it that prevents people from obtaining early retirement? If you follow my blog, you will come to find out that I am actively pursuing early retirement. It is not just some loft goal of mine – it is something that I hope to achieve through hard work. More importantly, I hope to retire early not just by a few years, but a few decades. In my early retirement plan, I share how I plan to get there.

Early Retirement May Come Sooner than Expected

My early retirement may come sooner than expected. It was just a few months ago that my employer announced that they will be doing reorganization. My boss assured me that both of our positions were secure because of a contract with another company that is located in the same building as us. (They pay part of my salary in exchange for me doing some services for them). It is always good to be needed – and to have a contract. Phew! I can sleep easy again…

I thought I was safe from any potential cuts until I just found out that the other company that shares the building is going to be going through cuts. While there was a contract in place, there is rumor that the contract (which basically keeps my job secure) may be revised. They may end up cutting the amount they pay my employer as they alter the contract. If this should happen, this would essentially require my employer to pay more money than they are currently paying just to keep my wage at the same rate. This is never a good thing to happen when an employer is facing cuts. In other words, if this happens, it will draw attention to me and essentially force my employer to decide to keep me (and pay more) or get rid of my position which has now become more of a burden.

How to Prepare for Early Retirement

If this series of events actually do happen, it would force me to pick up the pace towards my early retirement. How would I respond to my employer cutting my position? Believe it or not, I would not try to find another job, but instead put more effort into my online business. I have already built up a pretty solid base of financial blogs. Now, it would be time to kick it into high gear. Make my efforts most profitable to fund my early retirement (sooner than expected).

Here are some things I would do if I had more time on my hands:

• Start 1 or 2 more blogs by myself. More blogs = more earning potential in the future.
• Write more content on my current blogs. Doing this would increase my search engine traffic, resulting in higher adsense. I would like to get my total pageviews on 20's Finances to 10k per month (regardless of whether this happens)
• Try to pick up another staff writing job or two (which isn't that hard since I have turned down 5 offers already).

The one good thing is that I have some time. I am not yet at my desired goal of $2500 per month from my online business, but I am getting close. My latest passive income report shows that I am just under half. But, I expect that to nearly double in the next two months as I should have at least one more site that has a PR 3. My third site should get a PR 2, but I am working on building up backlinks as I write this so that it has the chance of a PR 3 at the next update. Early retirement may be forced upon me sooner than I anticipated, but I am determined to make it work.