A while ago we established a concept, that it doesn’t take you necessarily heaps of money to retire early in your lifetime. If you don’t have high demands, are happy to live a simple but fulfilled life in a low-cost-of-living country, plan ahead and have some savings which will provide you with passive income in the form of interest, rent, dividends it might be even possible that you can retire already in your 30s.
You can read many tips and tricks on this site on how to plan ahead and retire early to enjoy what life really has to offer. So if you seriously plan to retire early, is there a chance that you can totally f*ck it up? But of course!
Just follow these surefire strategies to make sure, that you will have to work until the end of your days, or at least until you are too old or weak to fulfill your dreams:
- Consume, consume, consume – that’s the most common way people make sure, that they will be forever stuck in their misery. After all – most modern capitalist societies in our world are modeled based on the spending trap. You are held to buy your whole life things you don’t really need. But Advertising, media like TV, magazines and Hollywood, envy and peer pressure will keep you busy ‘keeping up with the Joneses’. Wait – make that ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians’ – they even make white-trash TV shows about it! People love it and have new idols to follow. Need a new Home-Gym to shed off those pounds, a multi-8.1-BlueRay-HD-LCD-Plasma-HiFi Theater, your 20th pair of branded jeans, 150th edition of Manolo Blanik shoes, the latest iPhone every 6 months, 2-for-1 electronic kitchen gadgets, happy-hour 5 Dollar Grande-Latte-Moccacino-Deluxe Starstruck Coffees? Welcome to the club! The ‘Pursuit of Happiness’ got mixed up long ago with Consumerism in the western world. The fatter the better, the more luxurious and expensive the happier. Doesn’t Britney sing “Gimme more” all the time; she must know something for sure? Oh well!
- Don’t worry about tomorrow – you can’t change it anyway. You have troubles living for today already. Your money is running through your fingers. You need 2 or 3 jobs keeping up with your needs and expenditures. So no need to plan ahead. It will cause you even more headache. You will have less time working. Yeah, there are rumors that compound interest can make you a Millionaire by the time you are 40 years old by simply saving a few hundred dollars a month. Investing in stocks, funds or rented-out real estate will make you lose your money in the long run. What goes up has to come down, right? Investing in different currencies? Doesn’t the mighty Dollar rule the world? But then – mathematics was always your weak point. And those number crunchers surely missed a thing or two. Better wait to win the lottery or discover that rich uncle of yours in Kazahkstan, who died recently and inherited you a nice fortune. Planning ahead is like visiting a fortune teller. God will ensure my future better instead.
- Buy a new Car every 2-3 years – what’s wrong with your old one? Ahhh – the neighbor has the latest Hondabishi-Dodge-SUV with 15 cylinders, 600 HP-engine and 50-inch-4×4-wheels? Understandable. That can’t stand. He shall not pass! Block his entrance with an even more overpowered vehicle, make it a mini-bus or luxury trailer, even though you live in a 2-person household and your grocery store is just 3 blocks away. It’s never to late to buy a better set of wheels. Maybe one day we have to flee our home and we better are mobile and well-motorized. Public transport is for wankers and bums and you will get robbed there anyway. If not robbed it will lower your self-confidence and ego and will set you on the same level like that security guard or Mexican Maid of yours. A big car will show who has the bigger balls and the more often you will visit that guy at the gas station – the more he will stand there in awe and respect you for what huge rolling fortress you can show off as yours.
![Credit Card Debt]( "Credit Card Debt")
Amass Debt with your Credit Card(s) – and pay back at most the minimum rate. It’s the best way to lose sight on what you spent already and how much you owe to the credit card company. To make matters more interesting – increase your credit limit whenever they offer you the chance to do so. That way you are even more flexible in spending more money. The best thing is that at the end of your salary there is still a lot of month left to not think about how you ever will be able to pay back that debt. What you don’t have nobody can take away from you. Is debt bad? Not necessarily. There is good and bad debt. Good debt will provide a return on your investment sooner than later. Although Credit Card debt is definitely an investment – it is unfortunately not one for your but for your bank or Credit Card Co. It’s you who will pay with an arm and a leg. They just don’t tell you, but you will find out in the end.
- Buy your own house on a 20-30 year mortgage – after all, you want small pay-back rates and long-term security. So make it a big house, 10.000 sqft at least. You are only living with your partner in it, but one can never know how big your family will be one day. You want to live forever in your own place. And with an own house you are forever secured. Of course you will have to invest again over time for maintenance, extensions, extra security, paint jobs and the electricity bills will eat you alive. But you could always go back and live in your house when things go wrong. Don’t forget to equip it with a bomb shelter, in case Iran is invading your home turf or the next hurricane will strike. The attached garage should have enough space for 2-3 more cars and to store all that stuff you bought, but doesn’t fit in your house anymore.
- Get married without a prenup – it’s real love this time, isn’t it? And it will last forever. For sure. Check out international divorce rates here and think for yourself, if there is a realistic chance that it couldn’t affect YOU. In most modern countries it doesn’t matter if you are a man or a woman. It will most likely reduce your wealth, if you were the high earner in your household. Go Directly back to Start. No need to pass jail. So much about future plans. But then, your partner will surely be offended when you propose such a step and all in all it’s not politically correct. So better don’t touch that subject or you may be divorced before you even get married.
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- Accept your fate as a cubicle drone – I know you do that already. Your cubicle is your only small place where you can feel protected, equipped with a reason and purpose in life. You have to do at least something. How can people live without steady work anyway? Aren’t they bored all day? For sure they are. Just sometimes the Monday Morning Blues makes you wonder, if your cubicle is really the end of the rope. But then – what can you do anyway? Isn’t life supposed to consist of hard work and boring overtime? Someone has to pay all those taxes and care for the wellbeing of the community, right? There you go. Life is so easy when you accept the rules of your peers which are made to apply to all of us. Without exemption. Who are you anyway to cut through the ties and concrete manifestations of human society. You are not Sparta! Heretics should be persecuted and burned alive. Brave thinking. Keep up the good work!
- Accept the world out there as dangerous – that’s what CNN, Fox News and BBC are telling us everyday, right? War in old Eastern Europe. Arabs in Dubai who are striving for oil-based world domination. And the yellow plague in Asia ready to outsource all our jobs so you will soon be unemployed? How come Dubai, Singapore or Hong Kong pay higher salaries than the US and have the lowest unemployment rates worldwide? They have lower taxes as well. How unfair. There is even an increasing number of Europeans, Australians and Americans who work a few years there and earn more money during that time than in a whole decade back in their home country. That’s treason! Let’s make a law that nobody is allowed to work in a country with higher salaries than ours! Don’t let them go there – it will be our own downfall in the end. Globalization should only work one way, somehow we must be able to ensure that for all of us.
![Who moved my cheese?]( "Who moved my cheese?")
See Change as a threat – the world out there is for sure bad and dangerous. How good that you arranged everything so neatly that it will last for the next 100 years. You love your current job, your boss is likable and the economy is powering ahead. For sure you could earn more money in a shorter time someplace else, but then it would mean moving to a different city, region, maybe even country. Your company is planning to downsize? Those bastards! Indians outsource your job in manufacturing? Invade! Maybe you didn’t realize that they ‘Moved your Cheese’ already long ago, that you are running in the hamster wheel just to catch up with inflation, globalization and your neighbors. It will never be enough. And how about that boss of yours? Did he tell you about his golden parachute under his desk? Do you have one as well? Don’t worry. There will be others who lose more than you in rainy days.
So much about some strategies that almost always will work for you, if you are planning for lifelong work. Which ones would you add? Help us all by making use of the comment form below. 
