Retire before 40

While taking some time-off this summer, you may have thought: "Wouldn't it be nice NOT to have to go back to work?"

Ah, the dream of early retirement, to be able to do whatever you want while you're still young and healthy - like taking long walks in the woods, composing music or spending more time with your children. And how wonderful it would be not to have to deal with traffic jams, office politics and work-related stress?

Let's take a look at four people who have done it. As an added bonus, they also happen to have written books about their experiences.

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Dianne Nahirny retired at 36 with a net worth of $225,000 (now higher) and a mortgage-free house in a well-off Hamilton neighborhood - despite having an average annual income of $20,000 while working. Her book, Stop Working ... Start Living (2004), describes how she did it.

The key, says Nahirny, is money management. While she did supplement her income with earnings from sources like home-based businesses and investments, she says it's easier to build up and maintain a nest egg by trimming unnecessary expenses.

Nahirny, who is single, enjoys local instead of luxury vacations, uses "free alternatives for banking, watching movies, concerts" etc., has "energy-saving devices from the dollar store," grows herbs and vegetables, subscribes to dial-up Internet instead of cable-TV, and prefers cabs, buses and car rentals to owning a car.

A second element in her success was real estate. She bought a condo when she was 22 and sold it for nearly double the purchase price in the late 1980s. She then successively bought better houses, upgraded them, and sold for more profits (except for an early 1990s transaction).

Derek Foster left the work force at 34 with assets of nearly $500,000 and a paid-off four-bedroom house in a resort community on the shores of Georgian Bay - despite never averaging more than $25,000 a year at a variety of jobs. He used his new-found leisure to write and self publish Stop Working: Here's How You Can! (2005).

Like Nahirny, he made an early commitment to saving regularly. When he was in university, he decided to begin "paying himself" $200 a month. But one difference was that he looked more to the stock market as the place to invest his savings.

Much of his book covers his investing approach, which consists mainly of buying shares in non-cyclical companies with lengthy histories of dividend increases. He waits to buy them, in Warren Buffett fashion, while they are value priced due to some transitory troubles. He once put all his money into tobacco company Altria Group.

The income from his portfolio has been supplemented by income from an Ottawa rental property, his wife's part-time job, book proceeds and child tax benefits for his two toddlers. All together, his family lives off nearly $35,000 a year, which Foster estimates is close to $70,000 before taxes and payroll deductions.

There were some life style choices. For example, they bought their house in a small town where real estate prices were lower. And their car is a low-end GM model. But Foster is free to pursue personal goals, such as spending more time with family and learning stand-up comedy. Check out his Web site for more info.

Ernie Zelinski hasn't had a job since 1980 when he was fired from his work at the age of 31 for taking unauthorized leave. The former electrical engineer then wrote and self-published a book, The Joy of Not Working. It was a hit, selling over 150,000 copies worldwide.

He has since written more than ten books on retirement and related topics, a recent effort being How to Retire Happy, Wild and Free (2004). His major recommendation: the earlier you take retirement, the better. Another of his themes is using retirement time to find a true calling that ignites your inner fire (even better if it's self supporting).

Zelinski, who is single, spends three hours daily in Edmonton coffee shops, writing his books. He sleeps until noon, works out at the gym twice a day and doesn't work in months with an "r" in them.

Alan Dickson has been semi-retired for most of his adult life, working 20 to 25 hours a week as a small-business entrepreneur while he and his wife raised five children. He was also a financial planner for a time. In his forties, he used some of his spare time to write and self-publish Free Parking: a 2nd Look at Financial Planning (2001), which became a bestseller and can be purchased on his Web site.

He urges readers to disregard financial planners who say you have to save up a lot for old age. Many government programs already provide senior citizens with a comfortable, albeit modest, existence, the Duncan-B.C. resident states. Indeed, a big RRSP is unnecessary: the income stream, if high enough, could result in the claw back of benefits from old age security and guaranteed income supplement programs.