If we look around, we will see that there are many entrepreneurs who are doing well in their respective business ventures. You will also find so many young entrepreneurs doing well and perhaps an equal number of middle aged and elderly entrepreneurs who have achieved success. But does any one of them want to retire early?
It would be reasonable to assume that these people were all goal oriented. With their foresight, hard work, planning and execution skills, they achieved success. They all might have had targets of 1 million and once it was achieved, pushed the next target to ten million. Most of these workaholic people keep raising their targets progressively. They don’t want to retire early and stop working. They want to keep working until their bones cannot take it anymore
Speaking about retiring early, I am reminded of my friend Henry who started early in life at age 21 as a small time entrepreneur and after building a successful empire for himself. He retired rather early at an age of 40 years. He is now well into his early 60s and seems to be having a real nice time in life.
I often discuss Henry’s early retirement with him on my days off at work. I have repeatedly been asking him if he ever regrets his decision to retire so early in life. And believe me, Henry’s consistent reply has been an emphatic “No”. From the way he carries himself to the way he leads a stylish life, everything indicates that he has been very happy with his decision to retire early after building a huge corpus for himself and his family.
Henry has often shared with me how he had been planning his early retirement right from his days in college. He was not born rich and he had never taken up a job. He had a dream to work big time, earn big money and then live his passion. He always used to say that he would one day know his calling in life.
Henry knew his finances well and often spoke of achieving financial independence early in life. He knew the secret to the compounding of money. He has never paid any investment fees in life. He spends less now but derives as much happiness and joy from his activities as he used to when he was a bit of a spendthrift. Many more joyful years to Henry!