What up $avvy people! Today we have a really fun article to share with you. We had a blast taking an early retirement quiz we found on Retire by 40 and we think you will too. At the end of the article, put your answers in the comment section, let’s get a good discussion going.We think it’s really important to talk about retirement and the crucial steps to get there. Since early retirement has been a hot topic recently this is a perfect time to share this. This early retirement quiz is excellent at showing you how serious you are about retiring early.Honestly, who doesn’t have early retirement on their mind?
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Since both of us love what we do for a living, thinking about early retirement is a little strange. I personally would get extremely bored if I was not working and using my creativity. Don’t get me wrong thinking about early retirement is pretty fun though. Just imagine how simple life could be once work and money are no longer an issue.
Our ideal early retirement would be traveling around the U.S. in an RV. We really prioritize traveling in our lives so this would be our number one priority in retirement as well.
Learning how to retire early is about making a choice to take complete control over your finances. How serious are you about early retirement? Continue below to see our answers to the quiz then take it for yourself.
Early Retirement Quiz Directions
Here are the directions for the early retirement quiz: “You need to keep track of your own score for this quiz. The questions are just TRUE/FALSE. You get a point for every TRUE. Then simply put your score in the discussion below.”
1. You know your net worth
Of course! We have been tracking our net worth since we were 20 years old and still in college. When we moved out to attend college we set up a budget and stuck to it. We have been using Personal Capital for years to track our progress on growing our net worth. I am glad this is the first question because it is a very important one to understand if you want to have an early retirement.
2. You have a Roth IRA
Kinda, we will be rolling over our large IRA to a Roth IRA in the very near future. Just like starting our budget in college we also started an investment account on Betterment. We have been using Betterment for years as our “safety net” account. It’s perfect for making your money work for you and still being a liquid asset. Highly suggest you check them out!
3. You have no consumer debt – car, credit card, etc…
So we are proud to say we have never had to borrow money to purchase a vehicle. Cars are a depreciating asset and continue to loose value each and every day. They are the Millennial Money Trap that many young adults fall into. As far as credit cards we have never missed a payment, EVER. We always make sure to pay our bill on time every time, one of the main reasons we both hold credit scores above 800.
We do have two major debts that we are dealing with. The first being Brittany’s student loans. After completing her masters in elementary education, she was able to walk away with less than $35k in student loans. These loans are low-interest loans that we are paying off slowly until NYS helps with loan forgiveness for being a teacher. With the interest rates being so low it would not make sense to pay them off quickly as we are getting a better return investing our money in the market. Same thing goes for our house, we are locked into a 3.5% fixed rate mortgage. We made sure to buy a house well within our means and easy to upkeep.
Some people might not agree with our methodology with our student loan and mortgage debt. There are many ways to handle debt, some better than others. We have personally talked to financial experts and millionaires that have used the same type of methodology with great success.
Related: Demolish Your Student Loan Debt
4. You have a “retire by” date
Yes! We both want to be completely retired by the time we are 50 years old. Life is short we want to be able to enjoy it. Although this is the date we have in mind it is not set in stone.
5. You have a side hustle or two
Call us the side hustle king and queen. I have had a side hustle since as long as I can remember. Whether it was selling lemonade, video games, cell phone boosters or running my online e-commerce business in college I have always been looking for ways to make money on the side. Brittany was also a great side hustler. She taught dance, sold Avon, and looked for yard work growing up.
We now both LOVE our new side hustle, our blog! Starting our blog completely changed our lives. I now have the freedom I have always desired to work for myself from home. If you are interested in starting a blog check out our complete step by step tutorial on how to start a WordPress blog.
Related: 48 Spectacular Side Hustles to Earn Extra Money with Links
6. You have passive income
Yes, blogging is definitely considered a passive income. It takes a TON of work to get it to the point of being a passive income, but it is certainly possible. I did not really think of it as passive income until one night I was playing basketball and when I checked my phone we made over $100 in affiliate sales. I was so excited that we created a website that can make money while doing the things we enjoy most in life.
Related: How to Start a WordPress Blog on Bluehost
7. Your investments are worth more than your house
Unfortunately no. We bought our first house when we were just 23 years old. Now a few years later we have made a good dent into our mortgage, but we have a long way to go. We continue to pump money into our retirement accounts each and every month and try to increase it every year. Starting our investment accounts early in life has really helped us grow them quickly. Time in the market is a great tool.
8. You have a post-retirement plan – volunteer, etc…
Yes. We both love helping others so volunteering is definitely going to be part of our early retirement plan. Like I said before we love to travel so traveling as much as we can will be a big priority. Spending time with family and friends will also be on the list.
9. You save 50% of your household income
Not quite, but are getting closer every year. I can’t remember what book we read, but it was about living off one teacher’s salary. Our goal is to completely live off of Brittany’s salary and any money I make from our blog, freelancing, etc. will be put into retirement or savings. The most important thing to do to achieve this is not let our lifestyle inflate as our income does. Living off a teacher’s salary with a family is going to be difficult, but we are not the savvy couple for no reason.
BTW TEACHERS ROCK!
10. You have backup plans
Na backup plans are for people who fail…..totally kidding! Of course, we have a backup plan. If our blog does not pan out like we plan I plan on starting a goat grass cutting business….kidding again, sorry I can’t help myself. In all honesty, if our blog does not work out I will most likely start another one. I have completely fallen in love with blogging and digital marketing. It’s so much fun to run a business on your own terms and create more than you consume in life. I feel like I am adding value to the world (hopefully).
I am also a NYS certified Home Inspector and Correctional Officer so I have plenty of options if things don’t work out. For Brittany, she is pretty set being a teacher in NYS! If things ever turned upside down for her we could always move out of state and she would get hired very quickly with her NYS experience and education.
Related: How To Deal With A Financial Crisis
Bonus early retirement quiz point – You cut your own hair
Yes! When I was working in law enforcement I use to cut my own hair twice a month. Trust me it was not the best look around. I tried getting Brittany to help but that didn’t happen hahaha.
Early Retirement Quiz Scoring:
- 0-5: Skeptic. Do you believe in early retirement? Perhaps it’s not a goal of yours?
- 6-7: Novice. You’re on your way to early retirement!
- 8-9: Committed. You’ll get to early retirement soon.
- 10+: Driven. Early retirement is definitely on your mind, or you may even already be retired!
We scored 8 points on our early retirement quiz. We had a few questions that we could have given ourselves a half of a point, but we did not want to make it complicated. Obviously, we have some things we are working on improving in order to retire early. It’s nice to know that we are on the right path and have the right mindset to allow us to achieve our early retirement goal.
Now it’s your turn! Go back through and take the quiz and post your answers in the comment section below. If your score is not where you want it to be good, now you are aware and can make the proper changes in your life. Controlling your financial future comes down to awareness and taking action.
What was your early retirement quiz score?
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Saving 50% of income is REALLY aggressive. Someone who can motivate enough to do that can definitely achieve early retirement. For some people though saving 20-30% and working a little longer might be more reasonable. These are all great points to consider for motivated people though!
Totally agree 50% is VERY tough to do. Having duel incomes can help immensely.
I definitely have some work to do on my early retirement path. This is definitely motivating me to save more and figure out ways to retire early.
Everyone has to start somewhere. Being aware and making an effort for change is a great start. We are in the same boat!
7.5.
No passive income yet (unless you count the $2.18 I’ve made in ads on the blog, haven’t really tried to monetize it at all though!) and we are “only” saving about 40% of our income right now. That’s slated to move up over time as our income grows – hopefully a job change in the next month or so will be a ~$15k increase to our income.
The .5 comes with the Roth. I have one, but haven’t added any money to it in a very long time 🙁 Starting this year, I intend to max out one for me and one for Kristin.
Overall I feel good about retiring in about 20 years. As our income grows, I’m hoping this window shrinks. I’d gladly do some less-intensive consulting 2-3 days a week to help with cash flow, if necessary. I do like what I do, I just dislike a lot of things about it at the same time lol
Consulting seems like a great gig in retirement. 7.5 is an awesome start! Thanks for stopping by again Dave =)
We scored a 6 but that will quickly move up to a 7 – 8 once we start bringing in passive income and upping our savings a bit more.
Passive income is so under rated! Thanks for stopping by and taking the quiz.
Great post – we are figuring all of this out right now! I scored 6, so definitely room for improvement. Working on the passive income situation now. 🙂
Awesome stuff! Passive income is awesome.
5. Used to be 6, but I’ve since dropped the side hustle (it was a second job, and while lots of fun since I was a park ranger, I have a toddler and the time was just not worth it at this stage). Finding ways to bump us up to that 50% saving will be a MUCH bigger impact on our finances than the very irregular side hustle.
Sometimes saving more can be easier to do than making extra income.
How did you like being a park ranger? Just got back from a week of camping in the ADKs.
Great article! I learned about early retirement from Mr. Money Mustache and love the idea! we have run into some bumps but hoping to bet back on track soon! Thanks for a great post!
Good stuff! Mr. Money Mustache has an awesome blog!
I lack the firm and hard numbers to really get a score on this quiz but I love tools like this that open up the discussion to ask How Are We Doing? in certain areas. So many people just don’t talk about money at all…..
This article totally caught my eye, great work. I have always been a great budgeter my husband needs a bit more practice 😉 I am so inspired by the new FIRE movement that all these 20-30 somethings are getting into. We are working on our blogging side hustle to bring in a bit more income so we can begin to stash away money to join the early retirement community. We definitely have a “retire by” date in our head. I think its important that people are able to think outside of the box to realize that with a bit of dedicated upfront work they can live the life of their dreams—FREEDOM!
Absolutely!