We are a mid 30’s couple who achieved Financial Independence at 34 and retired at 36. I (Mr. Shirts) have been lurking in the personal finance forums for years and its time to start sharing our random thoughts. I worked for a large financial institution since graduating college at 21 and moved through the ranks from a management trainee to running a large team/division before leaving the corporate world. My wife practiced as a veterinarian before retiring at 33 with our last move. We achieved Financial Independence entirely through corporate employment, market investments, and living by the Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement. There were no side hustles, no inheritance, and no windfalls from real estate, just the math of increasing our income, keeping our expenses low, and investing the difference in equities.
We’ve had many successes and screw ups along the way and want to share both to help others along their path to financial freedom. Financial education and literacy is a major opportunity in the world and with the freedom of information the internet provides, we want to do our part.
For more detail, I recently posted an extensive list Frequently Asked Questions.
You can also check out are various features Around The Web.
If you are interested in writing a guest or sponsored post, check out my Guest Post Policy.
You will see pictures of Hawaii all over the blog, we found our love for the islands in 2009 and much of this adventure started by saying “How can we retire and move to Hawaii?”. We may or may not actually move there, but plan on spending months instead of weeks and finally learning how to surf (edit: We did learn how to surf in January of 2020!)
The site’s name comes from having to wear dress shirts every day for my job. I couldn’t come to grips with the costs of the cleaners, so once a month or so I found myself laundering and ironing a basket full of shirts in the name of saving around $40. This wasn’t life changing money, but stood for one of the many small expense decisions that helped lead to leaving the corporate world.