Retired dad-of-two Mike says ditching Starbucks, new gadgets, and tips abroad could be the secret to saving money and enabling early retirement. He was on a mission to retire at a young age and was able to ditch work in his early 20s
Most of us will work for the majority of our lives, but one man is sharing how it is possible to quit your job at age 24.
Mike Rosehart decided he wanted to retire early when he was a teen – and went on a mission to do just that. He succeeded in building up enough cash to quit work during his early 20s, and think others can do the same.
The dad is able to live a full life – including holidays and more – while saving cash. He is sharing his secrets with the world – and already has three people on the path to following him.
Mike explained in 2019: “The secret to retiring early is: Spend less, earn more and maximise the returns on the difference. The hard part is executing it. Most of us can’t resist the Starbucks, the trip abroad or the new phone. Delayed gratification is the secret.”
Mike admitted that retirement, at 24, did take some getting used to. He added: “It’s a bit jarring at first. You find a way to cope by filling time with hobbies.” Mike managed to amass a colossal £578,132 and retired at the age of 24. He admits that he is super frugal, but still enjoys some luxuries. While he mastered up his plan to retire since being a teenager, his wife took a little more convincing.
Mike said: “It took me over a year to get her on board. Alyse and I have been together since we were 16. I wouldn’t say she’s a crazy spender but she likes her Starbucks. She wanted to have kids young so I explained that if we were able to retire early we could be there for our kids. I told her we just had to cut our spending in half.”
He added: “Every time she bought Starbucks, I said ‘that cost us two more days away from our kids’.” It worked, eventually. In 2019 when Mike shared his story, Alyse and Mike were married with two children – Emma, three at the time, and Arielle, six months. Not having to go to work means they can spend as much time with them as they like.
They even saved money on their wedding. Mike said: “Our wedding cost around £2,890. We found a venue that were offering a deal where you could have the wedding for free as long as you invited enough guests. Initially we wanted 150 guests but to keep costs down we whittled our guest list to just 80 people.
“People give a gift when they come to a wedding and so we actually made a profit on our wedding if you think about it like that. For our honeymoon, I used the points on my credit card to go to Brazil so it didn’t cost anything. We had a friend who hosted us in Brazil so our accommodation was free.”
Mike hit upon the idea of retiring early when he was studying at the Ivey Business School in Ontario, Canada, in 2010. He came across Early Retirement Extreme, a book about becoming financially independent on a median salary by Danish astrophysicist Jacob Lund Fisker. He commented: “I was in my first year at university and I was working on a project about the psychology of happiness. I went deep into a wormhole on the internet and I came across Jacob Lund Fisker.
“He started the spark for me. His thesis was that anyone can retire in five years. I thought, ‘hey, I’m 17, I’m young and eager.’ I realised that what makes you happy is freedom and the ability to do what you want in your life.”
Throughout university, Mike worked full time while also studying full time. He explained: “I grew up really poor with a single mother on the poverty line so I didn’t have family money to rely on. I got scholarships to go to college. I used to work at Tim Hortons, earning slightly above minimum wage. I got a better job the following summer at border services.”
After college, Mike took a £31,950 job in consulting. Alyse, who had graduated a year before, in 2013, took a graphic designer job, making £20,157. He added: “My salary was not exorbitantly high but I took the proceeds from that salary and bought rental properties and reinvested the rent. I was able to convince the bank to lend me 80% of a house price. I got off work at 6pm and I’d bike over to my property and I’d do it up until midnight.
“We lived on slightly less than half of Alyse’s salary. We were saving 100 percent of my salary, every single dollar. I kept reinvesting every profit from rental property. It kept snowballing. We bought 10 properties in three years.”
Property has been a key part of Mike’s plan. Mike bought his first house at 19, a £115,626 cottage with Alyse. He explained: “It was a tiny little cottage, the cheapest house I could find in London [Ontario]. We put down £22,515 – half of that was money we had saved and half of it was our student line of credit.
“We rented every room in it and so it was earning money for us. We had four other roommates. The guy in our basement apartment was paying our mortgage. We graduated debt-free and with money in the bank.”
But to afford that, meant some pretty hefty cut backs. Mike said: “I saved aggressively. In my second year of university, I rented a bedroom for £200 when the market rent would have been £315. It was 7ft by 8.5ft but it was perfect for me. I just needed a place to sleep. Then I got a tiny apartment with my girlfriend for just £346-a-month.
“We even shared the internet with the neighbors and gave them £3-a-month. I cycled everywhere instead of getting a vehicle. I found a bike that someone was giving away on the Craigslist of Canada.”
In February 2017, Mike handed in his notice at his job and Alyse also retired later that year. He sold 11 properties and he knew that he had hit his ‘FIRE number’ – 25 times his yearly living expenses. Mike said: “I knew I needed £368,925 to retire and I had, in equity of my property, just under £578,132. I went into my boss’s office and he told me that my job would be there when I came back in six months time. He thought I was having a quarter-life crisis.”
“One of my passions is looking up properties. I love going and looking at houses and thinking about how we can redesign this. That’s what generates income by accident. I made £34,610 this year without even trying. If you chase your hobbies, you’ll probably make more money.”
In 2019, Mike said his family still live a good life and their monthly outgoings are around £1,750-a-month. He said: “We’re going to Florida at the end of January and we went to Brazil on holiday. I like to find frugal holidays if we can. There was a deal on flights so I got tickets from Canada to Florida for £40 a person.
“We are going to Disney and we’ll see people who spent £5,780 on their holiday but because I look for deals, our holiday will cost around £1,026.”
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