continuation
Fred Ecks and Ann Haebig
Work always seemed a bit overrated to Fred Ecks, 41.
Ecks got his first full-time job at 21 after graduating from
California Polytechnic State University with a degree in computer
science. Eight months later, he headed back to school to get a
master's degree.
"I missed the freedom," Ecks said, "and the opportunity to learn
something new every day."
He lasted about a year at his next full-time job before returning
to school for a doctorate. At one point, he tried to figure out how
much he would need to save to live on the interest of his
investments, given the 8% or so that short-term government bonds
could earn back then. The sum -- $121,000 -- seemed impossibly huge
at the time.
"We saved $35 a month by hanging the laundry instead of using the
dryer," Janine said. "We didn't use our air conditioner more than
six or seven days of the year," an accomplishment in sunny Southern
California.
"We went to 'U pick it' farms. I'd go with the kids and we'd pick
fruit . . . and can them and make preserves," Janine said. "And I
used a price book. That saved us $3,000 to $5,000 every
year."
(A price book, for frugality newbies, is a notebook where you track
the prices of commonly purchased items at local stores over time so
you can spot the true bargains and stock up.)
As Brad's income rose, the family resisted the urge to ratchet up
its spending and instead focused on building its net worth.
"It would take me 10 years to save that much. I'd be 34," he
remembered thinking. That seemed impossibly old, "so I gave
up."
Ecks eventually settled in to full-time work, got married and
bought a house in Boulder, Colo. He had a mortgage, credit card
debt "and lots of toys," Ecks remembered. And he was getting "tired
of being tired all of the time."
He was at a coffee shop when he heard a radio program about the
book, "Your Money or Your Life" (the same book that helped
transform the Bolons' lives). He went next door to a bookstore and
bought the tome, which he "devoured" over the next weekend. He
became "a man with a mission" to save enough money so that he could
say goodbye forever to paid work.
That was in 1994, when he was 28. Seven years later, at age 35, he
achieved his goal, although he said it's only recently that he's
felt comfortable saying he's retired.
Living in a van
There were some bumps along the way. His wife didn't share his
sense of mission, and they parted ways. He accepted a job at Sun
Microsystems and moved back to California, living in his van in the
company's parking lot for six months while he continued making
payments on the Colorado house.
Eventually the home sold, and Ecks moved into the first of a series
of shared apartments and rented rooms. In the notoriously high-cost
Silicon Valley, he never paid more than $600 a month for shelter.
When a friend totaled his van, he paid cash for a used Geo Metro to
replace it. He ate out infrequently, cooked cheap meals at home and
shopped for clothes and household goods at thrift stores.
The Sun Microsystems job paid well and had benefits, although Ecks
never cracked the $100,000 annual pay mark. Still, he saved 50% of
his gross income while still pursuing his passions, including
learning to sail and traveling. He visited Mexico and Guatemala on
a Green Tortoise bus and drove to Alaska, among other
destinations.
He wanted more meaning in his work, though, so in 1999 he took a
computer job with Greenpeace at the environmental organization's
world headquarters in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Although his pay was
less than one-third of what he'd been making at Sun, his cost of
living was lower as well, and he still managed to save 25% of his
income.
After a year or so, he was ready to come home. He convinced
Greenpeace to let him work half time in San Francisco. He then
bought the "world's smallest condo" -- a 307-square-foot space,
about the size of a decent hotel room -- in downtown San Francisco
shortly after Sept. 11, 2001. He paid the $127,250 purchase price
with a check.
By the end of that year, he was ready to say goodbye to paid work.
He told Greenpeace to stop paying him even though he continued
working four hours a day as a volunteer. He now had the ability to
take off when he wanted, which he soon did by sailing to Mexico
with a friend.
He'd also met a woman who shared his passion for simple living and
financial independence. Ann Haebig, now 38, said she's "always been
frugal"
"Even in college I had in mind the idea of saving 'enough' and
eventually quitting," said Haebig, who works as a database
architect. "I didn't know how to make that goal real in any
concrete way until I found 'Your Money or Your Life' in 1999 or
2000. I started charting my progress in earnest then."
Setting sail
Eventually, Ecks sold the condo for $235,000, and the couple rented
a house for a while before buying an old houseboat for $3,100. They
had it towed to a marina in south San Francisco where Ecks could
also moor his 30-year-old, 27-foot sailboat. Berth rent and a
live-aboard fee set the couple back $600 a month.
Ecks figures his total monthly expenses run about $1,500, which is
actually less than his investments earn. Ann works half time at
CompuMentor and expects to be retired entirely within seven
years.
Interestingly, Ann's passion for her goal of early retirement isn't
as strong since she stepped down from full-time work to part-time
employment a few years ago.
"I used to be a dot-commer working too many hours at a job I just
didn't care about. Now I'm working half-time at a nonprofit and
still saving money, while spending my freed-up time on projects I
really care about," Ann said. "If I have to keep working longer
because my salary's decreased, that's OK with me. The journey's
pleasant enough now that I'm not racing to save that magic number
of dollars like I once was."
Ecks is concerned enough about the eroding power of inflation that
he keeps half of his portfolio in stock-market investments (the
other half is in Treasury bonds). But his experience, and that of
many others who have embraced simple living, is that expenses
actually go down over time as they get better at trimming
costs.
In any case, Ecks said, the couple feels wealthy where it counts:
in time and freedom.
"It's not what you have," he said. "It's how little you
need."
In my next column, I'll introduce you to three more couples who
have taken somewhat different paths to early retirement. In the
meantime, here's what you can take away from these two
stories:
What matters more than what you make is what you save (although a
bigger income and rising home equity can get you to your goal
sooner).
The decisions you make on the big expenses in your life -- where
you live, what you drive, how much energy you burn -- have a
profound impact on how much you can save.
That said, no expense is too small to review if your goal is to get
out of work early. Trimming expenses not only allows you to save
more, but means you can live on less in retirement, thus speeding
you to your goal.
Columns by Liz Pulliam Weston, the Web's most-read personal-finance
writer and winner of the 2007 Clarion Award for online journalism,
appear every Monday and Thursday, exclusively on MSN Money. She
also answers reader questions on the Your Money message
board.
Published Sept. 13,
2007
Click here for
Three more real Life Stories of couples retiring
early.
