It’s the big vs. small debate, complete with data. Which helps you save faster for early retirement: big cities, which tend to be more expensive, or small towns, which may be cheaper but may also have less opportunity and higher costs in some areas. Let’s break it all down, and weigh how your personal tendencies and interests play into it all.
Some recent home organizing brought me to a bit of an archaeological find: a snapshot of my finances almost exactly 10 years ago, before Mark and I got married. I’ll bet they’re not what you expect, but what’s more, they show why it’s so important not to get discouraged if your financial progress feels slow in the beginning, or even for years!
Index investing, early retirement and financial independence in their most commonly discussed forms all rely on one simple principle: They only work if most people don’t do them. (Don’t believe me on indexing? Read on for plenty of evidence.) Let’s dig into this idea, specifically the thought exercise on what a universal aspiration for early retirement would mean for market valuations, and talk about what would make early retirement more accessible to more people.
