25 IS THE NEW 65: How To "Retire" Outrageously Early And Do Whatever The Heck You Want

Book Review- 25 Is The New 65 by Travis Hornsby

I recently stumbled across Travis Hornsby's book 25 Is The New 65: How To "Retire" Outrageously Early And Do Whatever The Heck You Want while it was free on Amazon for a 3-day promotion when it was launched.  This book is about how Travis (aka TMONEY on his blog) was able to get through college with a respectable amount of savings and lived a very frugal lifestyle while working full-time a few years.  Travis clearly did not enjoy his time working in the corporate world and decided to get out and go a different way.  Living a frugal lifestyle allowed Travis to save and invest enough after working only a few years to "retire" at a very early age.

In this case, "retirement" does not mean never working again, but instead means working part-time or working on things that he enjoys and wants to do to continue to make some money.  Also, this sort of retirement will require living a very frugal lifestyle, living on about $16,000 per year.

This is clearly not the path for everyone.  There is a trade-off between having time to do whatever you want and having money to experience things that cost money.  I am fortunate that I have a career that is interesting, so I don't see working as a form or torture.  Of course, I would like to retire someday, but for me I don't mind the lifestyle of having a professional career and making lots of money for awhile.

This book does have some good examples of how you can live frugally to minimize expenses and boost your savings and investment contributions.  I liked his examples of "typical" spending by young people out of college and how this could lead to working for a very long time to pay off debt.

Many people do not learn to control spending until later in life, this book provides an example of what is possible with extreme financial discipline early in life.  If you are dealing with debt, this book can provide some motivation to cut expenses, boost savings, and get rid of that debt to find your path to freedom.

I enjoyed the exercise of thinking about how frugal I want to be and what trade-offs I am willing to make to have time available to pursue my interests.

Penny Pincher Journal

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