An Engineer Who Retired At 30:

Financial freedom sounds such a mind-blowing concept to read about, be advised about and to even dream about. What real examples do we actually have of some ordinary man with an ordinary job ever achieving financial freedom?

Well, Pete Adeney is just that example. He was an engineer just like millions of others, but the only difference that sets him apart is that he retired at 30 because he no longer needed to do a job as he had enough finances to support his family for a lifetime. And how did he do that? You guessed it right, through stock market investments.

Born in 1974 in a simple Canadian family, Adeney learnt the worth of being frugal and saving as much as possible. At the age of 21, Adeney started his career as a software developer. And from the very first salary, he started to save about 50% of it every month and invested in stock market index funds.

Paul Adeney had it all calculated. His mathematics showed that if he keeps doing this he will be able to retire at the age of 37 with enough savings and investments to support for the rest of his life. He called this FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) method.

But he was wrong in his calculation, as he retired 7 years earlier than that in 2005, as he had not factored in his wife’s salary as well. Pete Adeney @30 had invested in a bunch of index funds with big firms such as Vanguard and Betterment which guaranteed a quarterly dividend.

Although Pete Adeney’s early investing helped in his early retirement a lot, he also advised millions of other 20’s daily job people to spend as less as possible. He says, at times, youngsters have less control over what they can earn, but all the control over what they can spend and save.