How to Retired In Early 30s : Justin McCurry and his wife saved $1.3 million to fund their early retirement

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 Justin McCurry and his wife saved $1.3 million to fund their early retirement. 

The couple invested between $50,000 and $100,000 per year into a mix of stocks and bonds until they reached their goal.

 Read  this article to see the strategy they used to save money and to learn exactly how they manage their investments. been retired seven years and i am

living in raleigh north carolina

with my wife and three children

and we own a house here and i got

started investing out of college around

age 24 25.

justin mccurry retired from his job as

an engineer in 2013. his wife who's also

retired was a financial analyst we made

about

about eight or nine thousand

when we started out working per year

combined income and then at our peak

earning year right before i quit working

we were each at about 70 000 per year so

about 140 000

per year total income

in 2013. the couple decided early on

that they wanted to retire young and

their first step to getting there was to

make a plan i put together a spreadsheet

and some analysis and i thought hey

great i can return about 20 years and

i'm gonna need probably two and a half

million dollars

over the intervening decade i realized

that i didn't need quite that much money

and it only took us 10 years to get to

the point we need to be

mccurry used the four percent rule to

set his end goal the idea is simple you

save up a large enough nest egg invest

it and withdraw four percent every year

to cover your spending meanwhile your

investments grow and replace the spent

cash so i had estimated i needed 2.5

million dollars

some of that was to pay off the house

some of that was to pay for kids college

and then the rest of it was for living

expenses and to be really conservative

and over the years i figured out that i

wasn't spending anything close to 80 or

100 000 per year i was spending a lot

less uh 30 or 40 000 per year after i

take out the mortgage payment

so as we refined our numbers and saved

and invested more that that 2.5 million

number we started aiming for turned into

about 1.3 million once their goal was

set the mccurry's got to work and took

advantage of every saving tool they

could find

each year we were saving somewhere

between 50 and 80 of our total gross

incomes towards

retirement savings or brokerage account

and those in dollar terms those amounted

to about

uh 50 to 100 000 per year just depending

on

how much we made and the bonuses that

year in the 401k matches

the couple still maintains a frugal

lifestyle despite nearly doubling their

net worth over the first seven years of

retirement i've definitely loosened up

the belt buckle some uh primarily

because our net worth keeps growing as

our investments grow that we're watching

our net worth grow faster than than our

spending is right now which is a good

position to be in we have too much money

versus too little at this point mccurry

keeps his investment portfolio simple

and avoids picking individual stocks so

in terms of asset allocation my

portfolio is about 90 stocks that spread

across u.s

and international

index funds and the other 10 is bonds

total market bond index fund from

vanguard

so pretty pretty plain simple stuff i

don't really dabble in individual

securities or try time to market or

anything the couple's nest egg took a

huge hit during the coronavirus shutdown

but mccurry stuck to his plan i wouldn't

say i panicked i certainly pay attention

to it in the sense that i watched about

a half million dollars shrink in about a

month

so you know going from about two million

dollars in investments down to about 1.5

million that's certainly something i

think anybody would pay attention to and

worry about um i will say it's probably

the closest i've ever thought about

selling everything and going to cash or

something safe like bonds and so so i

had that thought for a split second of

you know i need to i need to

at least preserve what i have left uh

but then i you know the rational part of

me took over and said you know this is

long-term money this is money i have

invested for hopefully 40 or 50 more

years of retirement

invest in you ready set grow cnbc and

acorns