Man Retires at 30; He Lives More with Less

The Washington Post has a fascinating interview with a man who retired at the age of 30, not due to extreme wealth but due to living with less. Instead of being unfulfilled, the living-with-less philosophy has made him “ridiculously happy.”

You may find his choices unusual, but I truly admire anyone who is willing to live their life on their own terms. I think if anyone were to observe the lives of most middle-class Americans in a perfectly detached way, they would be shocked by how much wasteful spending there is.

Here’s a sample from the interview:

You describe the typical middle-class life as an “exploding volcano of wastefulness.” Seems like lots of personal finance folks obsess about lattes. Are you just talking about the lattes here?

The latte is just the foamy figurehead of an entire spectrum of sloppy “I deserve it” luxury spending that consumes most of our gross domestic product these days. Among my favorite targets: commuting to an office job in an F-150 pickup truck, anything involving a drive-through, paying $100 per month for the privilege of wasting four hours a night watching cable TV and the whole yoga industry. There are better, and free, ways to meet these needs, but everyone always chooses the expensive ones and then complains that life is hard these days.

Posted by on April 29th, 2013 at 10:39 am


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