How I Retired at 31 by NOT Listening to the Boomers

In order to be successful, the Boomers said we had to:

1) Get a job

2) Buy a house

3) Be a loyal employee

4) Retire with a pension at 65

And because they were older and wiser, while I was a stupid, naive Millennial girl, I thought it might be a good idea to follow their advice.

So I applied their four-step plan and I’m sharing the results with you, so you can see how it turned out.

Ready? Here we go!!!

1) Get a job

“DON’T BE A WRITER. BE AN ENGINEER.”

“But I love writing! And how can I be an engineer when I suck at coding?”

“WRITERS DON’T GET JOBS! ENGINEERS DO.”

“But writing is my dream! I can’t just give up on my dreams.”

“YOUR DREAMS ARE STUPID, YOU ARE STUPID, AND YOUR STUPID MILLENNIAL IDEAS ARE STUPID.”

So I went to get an engineering degree….

…And immediately regretted it.

Why? Because while other people were halfway through the textbook by day two, I struggled with “Hello World”.

And while other people partied and got drunk, I stayed sober, pulling three consecutive all-nighters, just for one exam. (Spoiler alert: they all got A’s. I barely passed.)

And while other people’s inboxes exploded with job offers — from Google, from Apple, from Microsoft — mine exploded with…nothing.

But I eventually got my degree — by the skin of my teeth — but I still got my degree.

And that degree would land me a job…

…eventually.

I gave up my dream, but at least I got a job.

2) Buy a house

“NOW GO BUY A HOUSE.”

“But houses are too expensive! How can I afford to buy a house?”

“SHUT UP. IF YOU DON’T BUY A HOUSE, YOU HAVE TO RENT. AND RENTING IS FOR LOSERS.”

So I looked for a house.

I searched everywhere: Downtown. The sub-burbs. Even the sub-burb’s sub-burbs.

But no matter where I looked, housing was unaffordable.

Semis cost HALF A MILLION dollars in my high-cost metropolitan city. Houses, DOUBLE that. Hell, even a goddamn parking space was somehow $80,000.

The banks tried to shove mortgages down my throat. They tried to convince me to be up to my eyeballs in debt like my friends, who bragged about their houses going up, up, up, while their sanity came down down down.

“Renting is for losers.” They said, looking all smug. But something about the bags under their eyes and the gray streaks in their hair told me otherwise.

3) Be a loyal employee

I stayed with one company and worked really really hard and really really late.

I ditched my friends, my husband, and my family. And when I wasn’t working, I still thought about work. All day. Everyday.

“MILLENNIALS ARE FLIGHTY.”

I took on every project, every assignment, and every support ticket. I worked every minute, every hour, every day. I started texting and answering emails on the subway, in bed, on the can, and even in the bathtub. And when my friends asked me out to dinner or drinks, I said no — every single time. I couldn’t. I was working.

“MILLENNIALS ARE LAZY.”

Sleep two hours a day. Stress. Drink coffee. Stress some more. Find large clumps of hair on the pillow.

Start popping pills.

First, an aspirin. Then a few Ambiens. Then a handful of Aspirin, Ambien, Xanax, and Prozac.

“MILLENNIALS ARE NARCISSISTIC.”

Bolt up in bed at 3 AM.

Watch room spin. Feel blood pounding, pounding, POUNDING. Clutch chest. Can’t breath. Can’t breathe. CAN’T BREATHE. Call an ambulance.

Wake up in the hospital.

Doctor: “You had a panic attack.”

“So I wasn’t dying?”

“No. But, you need to stop stressing out about work and starting thinking about yourself. Can you reduce your work load?”

HA. Fat chance.

Go back to work the next day. Tell no one.

Then realize I’m not the only one going through this.

Turns out my co-worker Alex also had a nervous breakdown he didn’t tell anyone about, and is on the exact same anti-depressants as me.

Turns out my boss Scott was hospitalized with a blood clot in his leg. Doctors say it was stress-induced.

Turns out a few months after my return, my mentor Andy collapses and almost dies at his desk (I am NOT kidding, this ACTUALLY happened.)

The Boomers dream is slowly killing us. All of us.

And that brings me to my best friend, Amanda.

Same company. Same job. Working 60, 70, 80 hours a week. For eight years.

Then her mother dies from a brain aneurysm. Then her uncle dies from pancreatic cancer. Then her grandmother dies from a heart attack.

All in the course of one year.

And when she comes back from her grandmother’s funeral, what happens?

She finds a pink slip on her desk. A God. Damned. Pink. Slip.

“Your services are no longer needed. Sorry. Budget Cuts.”

Despite the fact that she just lost half her family. Despite the fact that she still managed to get her project in. And despite the fact that the company made $2 Billion dollars that year. Didn’t matter. Get the Hell out.

“MILLENNIALS ARE ENTITLED.”

…Entitled?

ENTITLED?!

You know what? They’re right.

I AM entitled.

I’m entitled to a job that’s safe. I’m entitled to a job that’s secure. I’m entitled to ALL the things the Boomers promised me, because I sold out my dreams for THIS.

And that’s when I turned my back on them. All of them.

I went back to pursue the dream I gave up all those years ago. I went back to writing.

For five years, my life became:

Work hateful job. Write. Pass out.

Work hateful job. Write. Pass out.

My 60-hour workweek becomes 100. I now have two jobs.

My Boomer parents SCREAM at me to buy a house. I ignore them. Instead, I build an investment portfolio with that down payment money, built up of assets that PAY me, instead of an insatiable house monster that devours all my pay-checks.

Work hateful job. Write. Pass out.

Work hateful job. Write. Pass out.

And then something strange happens.

The portfolio income starts replacing more and more of my pay-check. And on top of that, my laser-like focus on achieving my dream makes my expenses drop by half. Because for every expense that came up, I asked the question “Does this help me achieve my dream?”

If so, spend. If not, don’t.

New laptop? Sure.

Writing classes? Why not.

New car? No.

Going clubbing and dropping $150 on bottle service? HELL NO.

This, of course, freed more of my pay-check to put towards my investments. Which, of course, caused the passive income to go up even faster.

The tiny seed I had planted was now a full-grown tree. And when that tree dropped seeds, those seeds grew into more trees.

Soon, I had an entire forest. An entire forest of money.

So with every passing day, I needed my job less and less.

One day I woke up and realized I hadn’t had a panic attack in six months. My Xanax prescription ran out and I just forgot to refill it. I didn’t need it anymore. My stress was gone.

And people noticed.

“Why are you so happy all the time?” they asked, thoroughly creeped out.

FYI, you know your job is bad when people are creeped out by your happiness.

It was right around here that my writing got good enough to get a literary agent, who then turned around and sold the book to Scholastic, the biggest children’s publisher in the world.

I am now a published author. Something I had dreamed about since I was 8.

And when that day came, I logged into my investment account and realized the passive income from my investments matched my living expenses.

So after being a loyal employee for nine years, I handed in my resignation.

It was the best day of my life.

4) Retire at 31!

The Boomers were wrong. I did everything they told me to do, and I was not successful.

I tried a career I didn’t belong in. Didn’t work.

I tried to buy a house I didn’t want. Didn’t work.

I tried to stay loyal to a company who wanted to lay me off while making $2 Billion dollars a year. Didn’t work.

So what did work?

Instead of buying a house, RENT.

Instead of paying off a mortgage, INVEST.

Instead of giving all your time to a job you hate, BUILD YOUR DREAMS.

Because in the end, the size of your pay-check, the value of your house, the size of your pension, NONE of that matters.

What matters is that you are FREE.

You are living your dreams and you are FREE.

5) Bring as many people with you as possible.

Oh there’s no step 5?

Well, too bad. I added my own.

Okay, so this is the REAL reason why I wrote this article. Once I found out what life could be like, instead of what we’ve been told life should be like, I wanted to bring as many people with me as possible. I wanted people to know that what I did is reproducible by anyone.

I’m not a genius. I didn’t inherit any money or win the lottery. I simply stopped doing what the Boomers told us to do and did the exact opposite.

And it worked.

And if it worked for me, it will work for you too.

Let’s prove to the Boomers that we are NOT lazy, we are NOT narcissistic, and we are NOT entitled.

In fact, we are the most educated, the most tech savvy, the most socially conscious generation in history.

And we are going to prove them wrong.

P.S Thanks for reading this far! If you liked this article, I’d love it if you could recommend it (by clicking the ❤ button) so other people can see it!

FIRECracker writes at www.millennial-revolution.com, a blog dedicated to helping people achieve Financial Independence and ditch the 9 to 5.