Why do I want to retire early?

The first thought that comes to my mind when I think of retirement is "early".  How do I retire early, and get out of this rat race?  I have been in the corporate world for several years now, and lately I find myself increasing dis-illusioned by the whole corporate atmosphere.  There has got to be more to life than dragging oneself to work everyday, doing ones best to claw your way up the corporate ladder, put in the mind boggling long hours and late night meetings, soak up the pressure of increasingly tight deadlines, and worry oneself about meeting mindless targets quarter after quarter, and sometimes day after day.  When I started my career, I never dreamt that there would come a day when I would feel like this.  Today I know that I am burnt-out, and I want out.  I figured the best way to keep myself honest to my goal, is to first acknowledge how I feel, and share my feelings out here.  Going forward, I intend to chart out a course of exit, and blog my journey to early retirement in this journal.  Lets hope this story has a happy ending.

An Analogy to Help Deal with Market Volatility

A financial planner whom I respect, Michael Zhuang of Washington DC, had a great analogy regarding market volatility in a recent post to his blog:

Imagine your house has a ticker symbol, and it scrolls along the bottom of CNBC together with other ticker symbols. The price of your house, like a stock price, is set by a bunch of people you’ve never met making apparently random bets based on a combination of intuition, general economic statistics, output of an automatic-trading program, and, a couple of times a year, the real price achieved by one of your neighbors actually selling a house.

Minute by minute, the price of your home would gyrate wildly. If you are a nervous type, you might lie awake at night wondering if its value would cover your mortgage in the morning.

Of course, no one frantically checks their home value every day, wondering if he should sell.  But if we had minute-by-minute reporting of real estate values, your house would be every bit as volatile as your stocks.

Granted, your house is not just an investment, it is your home which has more than financial value.  But the same principle applies if the real estate in question was a rental duplex or an office building.  Thinking of your investment balances as something to update on a year by year - or even over multiple year - basis, like your real estate, will help keep your emotions on par with your plan.