By: Jacob Lund Fisker
When many of us think of retirement, we think of some far off time in our future when we’ve saved enough money and reached an age where the government will allow us to withdraw our money without significant penalties. When Jacob Lund Fisker thinks about retirement, he’s thinking about the here and now. You see, Jacob retired when he was 33. How? By following the principles that he outlines in the book.
What this book has done for me is to turn much of what I thought about personal finance on it’s head. At this point, I can’t say whether I will attempt to try and join the ERE army or not, but I can guarantee you that I will be looking at things from a different point of view from here on out.
The book itself is dense. Dense in that it’s packed full of information. There’s no way that one read through will be enough. You’ve either got to read it several times, or supplement that first reading with plenty of reading of Jacob’s blog. It reads (the book, not the blog) much like a textbook does. It’s even segmented into sections the way a textbook would be. Luckily, it’s not all facts and figures and there’s a bit of discernible humanity in there as well. Jacob lays out how he managed to retire at 33 by some extreme saving. Then he goes into how he lives off of less than $10,000 a year that he draws from his investments and a few odd jobs (that he enjoys) during the year.
By no means is the Early Retirement Extreme going to be for everyone. It’s a hard read. But, it is well worth the read. It’s the “thinking man”s personal finance book. It’s not chock full of anecdotal evidence, but raw hard facts and numbers. It will change the way you think about personal finance, and life in general.
You can buy it directly from the Printer or from Amazon(click the picture)
I started this blog to share what I know and what I was learning about personal finance. Along the way I’ve met and found many blogging friends. Please feel free to connect with me on the Beating Broke accounts: Twitter and Facebook.
You can also connect with me personally at Novelnaut, Thatedeguy, Shane Ede, and my personal Twitter.
Jacob’s journey has definitely been an interesting one! Whether you are willing to go as far as he has or not, he definitely is challenging the status quo.
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I think that’s why I liked the book so much. I’ve spent a lot of time over the last year questioning the status quo. Not necessarily taking action yet, as I’m one of those people who has to analyze it and have all the facts first, but he’s definitely lead me further along the journey than anything else I’ve read recently.
How about “less than recently”? (If you want an even harder read that’ll blow your mind, try Charles Smith’s Survival+.)
It’s still top five in the “less than recently” category. It’s a little bit harder to gauge in that category though, as most of the books in that category, I’ve acted upon for longer than a week. 😉 With time, it might crawl into that top spot. And, thanks to your recommendation, I added Survival+ to my “must read” list already. Hoping to pick it up soon.