Way back in 1988, the year I graduated from high school, a CPA wrote a great book about how he retired at the age of 35. The cool part is this guy is still retired today, decades later.
This book was hard to find, but it certainly was worth it. I’ve read it several times, and I always seem to get more out of older books than I do from to new books.
One of his suggestions to help with early retirement is to move to a lower priced area in order to reduce your living expenses. This makes a lot of sense because you’ll need less monthly income allowing you to retire years early.
This is easy to see, but I continue to be baffled by people who email me from higher priced areas. Here’s the typical email I’ll get…
“Rob, your idea is great but it just won’t work where I live. The prices are way too high. The rents are too low and there’s no way to make any positive cashflow buying real estate here.”
They’re 100% correct about investing where they’re currently living.
However, they could make a great deal of cashflow if they were to invest in lower priced areas. In fact, many of these people could probably retire this year simply by following this author’s suggestion. Sell your expensive home and use your equity to buy a home in a lower priced area for cash. You’ll have no mortgage payment. Your taxes and utilities expenses will be significantly lower too. You’ll have less stress and will be able to enjoy each day as you wish.
For years I hated living in Cleveland, Ohio. The winters are cold and gray. I desperately wanted to move out of Ohio.
Today, I’m so thankful that I live in Ohio. The cost of living is incredibly cheap here. I can make very attractive monthly income buying lower priced real estate. And thankfully, we don’t have to deal with massive wild fires, droughts, hurricanes or earth quakes. Plus, the traffic here isn’t very bad and those who go to work several times a week aren’t stuck sitting in traffic for an hour or two. F#$k that.
The best part is that I can head somewhere warm and sunny during the winters, which is what my plan is when my youngest daughter graduates from high school in a few years.
The point I’m trying to make is that you may be able to retire many years early by setting up a home base in a lower priced area. An area with less traffic and a slower pace of life. Picture “Main Street” in Disney’s Magic Kingdom. That kind of place.
You can use the lower priced area as your home base while traveling any time you want to wherever you want. You’ll be able to leverage the lower priced area into your ideal lifestyle.
It’s kind of funny to me now. People who live in California will ask me how I still live in Cleveland while I’m wondering how they still live in California? I’d much rather live in Cleveland and visit California whenever I want.
I guess it’s different strokes for different folks.
The main idea to extract from this little diddy is that you may be able to retire decades early simply by moving to a lower priced area. I realize this isn’t as easy as it sounds, but it’s certainly doable. Who knows it could be really fun and enjoyable too.
If you’d like to dig into more strategies for designing your ideal lifestyle, become a Cashflownaire here:
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I’ve detailed this author’s plan for retiring early in my October Cashflownaire Newsletter, which will be released in a few weeks. If you’d like to dig into his strategy, become a Cashflownaire now and I’ll send you the September Newsletter immediately to give you a head start!
