I came across a rather catchy title on a Yahoo! Finance article today, and I thought it’d be worth mentioning. The title? “Meet The 29-year-old Retiree.” Now, like most people, I was immediately met with a dose of skepticism. Retire? Now? In this economy? At 29? Are you Crazy? My line of thinking proceeded like that as I read the rest of the piece.
I thought it was a rather inspiring story and yes, quite short on details. The young lady in the piece essentially learned to save early, starting at the age of 16, saved all her way through college, and after graduation saved half of her income. Now, she lives on her own by utilizing her husband’s health benefits, taking out two percent of her savings each year, and has her blog as well as being a writer for About.com. That she picked up on saving early on and was lucky that her recently purchased condo appreciated so fast does have a tinge of luck to it, but a lot of people were presented with that same opportunity and squandered it.
Of course, reading over the comments, I was shocked at the amount of vitriol being thrown around:
“So when I get laid off in a month and I live off my savings – I can just say that I’m retired too? Interesting concept, but what other stay at home mom considers herself retired????”
“My wife stays at home with our child. I guess she’s retired? Who knew. I’ll let her know tonight how lucky she is to be retired.”
“Uhhh she is a stay at home mom with jobs, now while the hubby works; i.e. NOT RETIREMENT. Wait till she gets to be 60 and the money she has stashed away is worth 70% of what it is now, due to inflation. Hilarious!!”
“Ah! new career path : BLOGER Do they have a PH. D program in Bloging…”
Wow. This plays into a number of things of course. First, if you give people an anonymous way of expressing their opinion to an audience, they’ll be more than happy to act like a complete jerk since hey, no one will ever know the difference. I’m sure jealousy plays into that too, since most consumers are dragging themselves through a debt quagmire and barely making ends meet, so to hear a story of someone retiring (I’d call it semi-retired, but the definition of retirement has been so far skewed, who knows what to call it) because they made good frugal decisions and a bit of luck is a threat to how they’ve lived their life. That’s all well and good, and I admit that the article is sparse on details (like how much she relies on her husband’s income, or how much she managed to save that she lives on), but that’s no reason to openly assault this person. As far as I’m concerned if she makes it work and she’s happy, then good for her!