Alain Guillot

Life, Leadership, and Money Matters

161 How to retire at age 35

His blogger’s name is Liquid Independence, he’s the first anonymous person I have ever interviewed and he runs the investment blog Freedom 35 Blog. Today he will tell us how to retire early. He managed to retire at age 35.

He has been saving and investing for 12 years and now, August 2020, he has finally reached financial independence! This means his passive income generated from his investment portfolio is enough to pay for all his current and future living expenses

Road to retire at age 35
Net Worth: Assets – Liabilities = $1,069,000

Altogether he has about $800,000 of liquid financial assets generating $30,380 of passive income. This represents a 3.8% annual rate of return in cash. The typical Canadian requires $756,000 to retire on, according to the Financial Post.

It’s very odd, many of his personal finance lessons, or mentality, he learned it from playing video games.

He started his career as a graphic designer earning about $35,000. Throughout the years his salary has increased to about $70, 000.

Liquid was inspired to learn about personal finance after reading the book: Stop Working, Here’s How You Can! : Using The Strategy Of Canada’s Youngest Retiree – Jan. 1 2005, by Derek Foster.

Liquid decided to start an anonymous blog because the wanted to share his Financial Independence pursuit, but he didn’t want his friends and co-workers to find out. The concept is called stealth wealth. From the beginning, his goal was to retire at 35.

What is Stealth wealth?

Stealth wealth is the practice of hiding your wealth from people in your social circles, this includes family, friends, and colleagues. The fact is that people will judge you for your money. If you have too much money above everybody else, you may create envy or at the very least discomfort. In addition, people may always ask you for loans or expect you to help with their financial struggles. You could also become the victim of extortion or theft.

Financial Independence is within the reach of every Canadian if they go for it

We have access to financial opportunities and easy to access education. If a person is born in poverty, that’s bad luck, but if they stay poor, (for the most part) that’s on them. There are many free resources all over the internet, all we have to do is to reach out and grab them.

Free courses online. Wonderful source of education to retire

Cursera offers 1,603 Free courses offered by 200 top level universities (such as Harvard and Yale) and companies . You can easily get a four year degree recognized by major employers such as Google and Apple.

There is a misunderstanding of risk

Many investments are not as risky as they are portrayed to be. What makes those investments risky is that we are in-familiarized with how they work. Once a person understand the mechanics of a particular investment, then it’s not as risky any more.

Related Posts

  1. 160 How to Balance Your Career and Personal Finances. Roger Ma
  2. 159 Do you want Financial Independence? Melanie Allen is here to help
  3. 158 Jeffrey Madoff, How to Make a Living with Your Ideas