In this report, I answer the question, how much money do you need to retire overseas? Some of you have enough now. Others need to save for 2 more years. Others need 5 or 10 more years.
Some of you will never be able to retire for reasons I will now explain.
But first, do you want to know what will stop most people from ever retiring? Do you remember the first time you saw a Schwinn Sting-Ray bike?
I think it was my good friend Jerry who first rode up on a green Sting-Ray like this. It absolutely blew my mind. It had the high handlebars and that slick back tire that drag racers have.
I took Jerry over to my house so I could show it to my mom. I begged her for one. She said I had already received a perfectly good bike for Christmas. That bike wasn’t even a year old yet.
When I finally got my Sting-Ray, a bunch of other kids already had them so it wasn’t as big a deal anymore.
And, just a few months later, everyone started showing up with Schwinn 10-speed Varsity bikes, and I had to wait a few more years before I could upgrade to the 10-speed Varsity.
I was bummed out. I vowed to myself that when I grew up, I would be so rich I could buy anything I wanted. At nine years old, I swore I would never deny myself anything once I had my own money.
That was America in a nutshell. No matter how good I had it, it was never enough. I compared myself to others and felt deprived when I didn’t measure up. There always seemed to be other people ahead of me in this game.
I know it sounds ridiculous and immature, but I felt that way.
America was and still is often a place where many of us feel like we are in a quiet competition always to have the coolest sneakers, the flashy new car, the loudest Harley, the speed boat, the biggest TV, the electronic gadget of the month.
It is hundreds of little purchase decisions made over decades that add up to delayed retirement. And if we keep it up for decades, we may never have enough to retire, no matter what age.
Well, as an adult, things started out amazing for me.
I bought my first used Porsche 911 Targa for my 19th Birthday. Although it was a used car, with 60,000 miles, and I had to make payments of $375 per month, it was still a cooler car than anyone I knew had.
Middle-aged men would ask me questions at stop lights, “Is that your daddy’s car?” Things went well for me for a year or two, but then the market crashed in 1981 and the whole thing fell apart for me.
I had stretched my budget to the maximum and things came crashing down for me. I learned that living at the outer edge of your budget is not a good idea.
Before long, I was driving a 4 door gas saver and nobody even noticed me at stop lights anymore. But eventually, things changed for me when I started listening to smarter people.
One day, I drove my gas saver to a store with a 50% off sale. The store wasn’t open yet, but there was a line forming out front. So I parked my gas saver and got in line. As usual, I started chatting with an old guy in line right in front of me.
Within about 5 minutes, I learned that he had retired at age 50 from his job as a school teacher. Rather than assuming he was from a rich family, I asked the obvious question.
How did a man on a teacher’s salary retire 15 years early? He said he read a “Finacial Independence Book.” I asked what investments the book taught him.
He said it is all in the book. If I really wanted to learn how someone on a school teacher’s salary could retire 15 years early. I bought the book that day and did not put it down until I had read it completely. Then I gave it to everyone I loved.
That book changed my life completely. If you only ever read one book in your entire life on financial independence, this is the book you need to read.
In fact, if you stay until the end of this video, I will email you a free copy of the book.
You see, there is actually nothing wrong with you if you join this silent competition that ruins early retirement in America. The system around you is screwed up.
We were all just listening to the wrong people, we were all just following the wrong people.
This Financial Independence Book was first published 100 years ago. It is not a get-rich-quick scheme. This book is fail-safe and anyone can do it.
So here is my Four-step way to retire early.
Step One: Read the Book. Do everything the book teaches, with no exceptions.
Step Two: Stop Spending Money. Begin watching YouTube videos teaching how to not spend money on anything. Google things like, how to reduce your food budget, how to reduce your utilities, how to reduce your clothing, and how to reduce everything. Get rid of your car payments. Buy a clean 5 or 10-year-old car for cash. Quit using credit cards. Pay only cash. Your new hobby is learning how to not spend money. Drop out of the rat race. Get new friends that think this way.
If you only do steps One and Two, in 12 months you won’t believe how much better it feels to play this game than it did to buy shit that is delaying your financial freedom.
When you see how fast your nest egg grows, you will wish you had learned about this when you were younger. It is never too late to start doing this. When first get your 5 or 10-year-old car, you will worry that people are laughing at you.
But later, when you watch how fast your nest egg grows, you will find yourself laughing out loud in your car, as you watch all of the $500, $600, and $800 car payments driving around you when your car payments are zero.
Step Three: Start teaching your favorite hobby online. I have a course called The Hobby Income Course. Just follow it step by step to create your online hobby income. This will give you meaning, purpose, and extra money that will help you stay retired.
Step Four: When the following two conditions were present in my life, I would personally feel comfortable retiring overseas.
Condition 1: I would want a consistent minimum monthly cash flow.
The minimum monthly cash flow would have to be consistently present in the combination of these two sources: (1) my retirement social security or pension, and/or (2) the sales and royalties from my online hobby or other online business.
How to set the minimum monthly cash flow amount: I would do an exploratory visit to my favorite choices for overseas retirement in order to determine my minimum monthly cash flow. I cover that in my retire overseas course.
So, as an example for Condition 1, if I did an exploratory visit and decided that I could live in Bangkok Thailand for $2000 per month minimum, I would want to have a minimum monthly cash flow of $2000 per month from the combination of my social security check, pensions, and my online hobby or business.
Condition 2: I would want a safety net of savings equal to 24 to 36 times my minimum monthly cash flow for emergencies.
As I teach in my retire overseas course, I would want to have 36 times my monthly minimum cash flow as a safety reserve that is completely separate from the resources creating my monthly cash flow.
Many people I have met overseas have retired with a smaller reserve, but you have to set your own safety net minimum.
So, as an example for Condition 2, once I finished my exploratory visits and set my minimum monthly cash flow at $2000 per month, I would want to have an emergency safety news of $72,000 USD separate from the resources creating my monthly minimum cash flow.
Many people go to Thailand with much smaller safety nets, but that would be my comfort zone. Now, I set that 36 times metric when I was not carrying any health insurance.
Meaning, if I had health insurance, I would not need such a large safety net. But I would still want a substantial one in case a health insurance claim was denied for any reason.
Now, this video only covers the safety net and minimum monthly cash flow determined by exploratory visits.
For hundreds of other issues that you must think about before and after you decide to move overseas, I would suggest you take my Retire Overseas Course. If you go to VagabondBuddha.com, click courses, and click Retire Overseas Course, you can watch a video where I cover the course syllabus.
To get your free copy of the Finacial Independence eBook, click the free eBook link on the screen now. To learn everything included in a lifetime membership, watch this video now.