如何在30歲時實現(xiàn)財務(wù)自由，早早退休？

Carl Jensen experienced what he calls “the awakening” sometime around 2012.

2012年左右，卡爾·詹森(Carl Jensen)經(jīng)歷了他所說的“覺醒”。

He was a software engineer in a suburb of Denver, writing code for a medical device. The job was high-pressure: He had to document every step for the Food and Drug Administration, and a coding error could lead to harm or death for patients.

他當時是丹佛郊區(qū)的一個軟件工程師，為一個醫(yī)療設(shè)備寫代碼。這份工作壓力很大。按照美國食品與藥品管理局(Food and Drug Administration)的要求，他必須記錄下每一個步驟。代碼上的一個錯誤，就會對病人造成損害或?qū)е滤麄兯劳觥?/p>

Jensen was making about $110,000 a year and had benefits, but the stress hardly seemed worth it. He couldn’t unwind with his family after work; he spent days huddled over the toilet. He lost 10 pounds.

當時詹森一年能賺約11萬美元，有福利待遇，但這些與工作帶來的壓力相比似乎不怎么值得。下班后，他不能和家人一起放松;他會整天蜷縮著坐在馬桶上。他體重掉了10磅。

After one especially brutal workday, Jensen searched online: “How do I retire early?” and his eyes were opened. He talked to his wife and came up with a plan: They saved a sizable portion of their income over the next five years and drastically reduced expenses, until their net worth was around $1.2 million.

在一個尤其繁忙的工作日過后，詹森開始在網(wǎng)上搜索：“我如何能早早退休?”，結(jié)果讓他大開眼界。他和妻子談了談，想出了一個計劃：他們在接下來的五年從收入中存下一大筆錢，大幅削減開支，直到兩人的凈資產(chǎn)達到120萬美元左右。

On Tuesday, March 10, 2017, Jensen called his boss and gave notice after 15 years at the company. He wasn’t quitting, exactly. He had retired. He was 43.

2017年3月10日是一個周二，在這天，詹森打給自己的老板，在公司工作15年后提出辭職。準確來說，他不是辭職，而是退休。那一年他43歲。

Although Jensen’s story may seem exceptional, a more modest version of the stockbroker who makes a killing on Wall Street and sails off to the Caribbean, he is part of a growing movement of young professionals who are intently focused on quitting their jobs forever.

盡管詹森的故事聽起來很不尋常，但這里還有一個不那么極端的版本：一個在華爾街賺了大錢的股票經(jīng)紀人拉起船帆去了加勒比。他是目前一股正在壯大的運動的一部分，在其中，年輕職場人士打定主意要全心全意地永遠辭職。

Millennials have embraced this so-called FIRE movement — the acronym stands for financial independence, retire early — seeing it as a way out of soul-sucking, time-stealing work and an economy fueled by consumerism.

千禧一代已經(jīng)擁抱了這個所謂的“FIRE”運動——financial independence, retire early(經(jīng)濟獨立、早早退休)的首字母縮寫。他們將這個運動視為逃離吸食靈魂、占據(jù)時間的工作和一個為消費主義所推動的經(jīng)濟的方式。

Followers of FIRE tend to be male and work in the tech industry, left-brained engineer-types who geek out on calculating compound interest over 40 years, or the return on investment on low-fee index funds versus real estate rentals.

“FIRE”的追隨者一般是男性、從事科技行業(yè)、左腦思維的工程師類型，他們會計算未來40年的復(fù)利，或是低成本指數(shù)基金對房地產(chǎn)出租的投資回報率，這樣的話題會讓別人聽不懂。

Indeed, much of the conversation around FIRE, on Reddit message boards or blogs like Mr. Money Mustache, revolves around hacking one’s finances: strategies for increasing your savings rate to the hallowed 70 percent, tips for cheap travel through airline rewards cards, ways to save nickels and dimes at the grocery store.

確實，在Reddit留言板或例如“錢胡子先生”(Mr Money Mustache)博客上，關(guān)于“FIRE”的討論圍繞著財務(wù)管理：將你的儲蓄比例增加到神圣的70%的策略;通過用航空公司的回饋卡廉價出行;在雜貨店省下幾分幾毫的方法。

Some practice “lean FIRE” (extreme frugality), others “fat FIRE” (maintaining a more typical standard of living while saving and investing), and still others “barista FIRE” (working part-time at Starbucks after retiring, for the company’s health insurance). To be “firing” is to slash one’s expenses to maximize saving while amassing income-generating investments sufficient to support oneself. To have “fired” is to have achieved that goal.

一些人的做法是“瘦FIRE”(極度節(jié)儉)，一些人會實施“肥FIRE”(在維持一個較為常規(guī)的生活水準的同時，進行儲蓄和投資)，還有一些人的做法則是“咖啡師FIRE”(退休后在星巴克兼職，只是為了這家公司提供的醫(yī)保)。“FIRE中”意味著減少開支，最大化節(jié)約，同時積聚能夠創(chuàng)收的投資，這些投資足以支撐生活。“已FIRE”則意味著這個目標已經(jīng)達成。

“A lot of people think you’re a new-age hippie,” said Jensen, who sold his four-bedroom, four-bathroom house, downsized to a more modest home and maxed-out retirement accounts while firing. “They can’t even wrap their minds around it.”

“許多人都認為你是個新時代的嬉皮士，”詹森表示。他賣掉了自己四臥四衛(wèi)的房子，降級到了一個面積較小的住宅里，并且在邁向“FIRE”的過程中就把資金存滿了自己的退休賬戶。“他們根本沒法理解”。

In retirement, Jensen and his wife and two daughters plan to live on roughly $40,000 a year generated from investments. Because his wife works, they have yet to draw on those accounts. It’s a life rich on time but short on luxuries: Groceries are bought at Costco, car and home repairs are done by him.

退休期間，詹森和妻子、兩個女兒計劃每年靠著約4萬美元的投資收益生活。由于他的妻子還在工作，他們還沒有動用那些退休賬戶。退休生活時間充裕，但卻不怎么奢侈：日用品購自好市多(Costco)，汽車和家里的維修都是他自己來。

“People always assume there’s an external circumstance: ‘Oh, you must have received an inheritance,'” Jensen said. “We’ve just chosen to live far below our means. That itself is a radical idea.”

“人們總是以為外部環(huán)境發(fā)生了改變：‘噢，你肯定是繼承了一筆遺產(chǎn)，’”詹森說。“我們只是選擇比自己財政承受能力低的生活方式。這本身就是一個激進的想法。”

Equally radical is opting out of the workforce in your 30s or early 40s, a time of life when men and women are normally leaning into their careers or, less happily, enduring the daily grind to pay the bills until Social Security kicks in.

同樣激進的，是在你30來歲或40歲出頭就選擇退出職場，這個歲數(shù)通常是男性和女性在人生中、在職場上前進的時候，或者不那么開心的，為了繳納賬單，忍受著每日的苦工，直到開始收到退休社保金。

Jason Long, a pharmacist in rural Tennessee who retired last year at the ripe old age of 38, said his father had a hard time understanding why Long couldn’t continue to work and collect his $150,000 salary.

杰森·朗(Jason Long)是一位住在田納西州鄉(xiāng)村的藥劑師，他在去年以38歲的“高齡”退休。他說，他的父親很難理解他為什么不能繼續(xù)工作、領(lǐng)取15萬美元的薪水。

But Long said he was deeply unhappy in his job, where over his career he witnessed drug costs skyrocketing, sick people battling health insurers and the over-prescription of opioids and the addiction crisis. His customers, angry, financially stretched, often lashed out at the person behind the counter.

但朗說，他做這份工作非常不開心。在他的職業(yè)生涯中，他目睹了藥品價格飛漲、生病的人與醫(yī)保公司斗爭、過度的阿片類藥物處方和成癮危機。那些憤怒的、經(jīng)濟拮據(jù)的顧客經(jīng)常對藥品柜臺后面的人發(fā)泄。

“There were days when I had 12- or 14-hour shifts where I didn’t use the restroom, where I didn’t eat, because so much work was piled up on me,” Long said.

“有的時候我一次要上12或14個小時的班。我不去洗手間，也不吃飯，因為我有成堆的工作要做，”朗說。

Like Jensen, he had been saving a sizable portion of his income over the past decade, and he and his wife had a paid-for house and an investment portfolio worth a little more than $1 million. Why stick around?

和詹森一樣，在過去的十年里，他把相當一部分收入存起來。他和妻子有一套已付清的住房，并擁有價值略高于100萬美元的投資組合。為什么還要繼續(xù)下去?

“The reality is the numbers are there for me,” Long said. “To go to a job that’s making you miserable every day, it doesn’t make sense to pad the bank account at that point.”

“現(xiàn)實的情況是，我已經(jīng)有那么多錢了，”朗說，“這時，去做一份每天都讓你痛苦不堪的工作來充實銀行賬戶是沒有意義的。”

Quitting the rat race isn’t a new concept. From the Shakers of the 1700s to the back-to-the-land hippies of the 1960s and ‘70s, a strain of Americans has always embraced simple living. One of the bibles of the FIRE movement, “Your Money or Your Life,” which teaches readers to reduce their spending and value time (or “life energy”) over material gain, was published in 1992.

放棄對財富的激烈競爭并不是一個新概念。從18世紀的震教徒(Shaker)到60和70年代的嬉皮士，歷史上有一連串的美國人信奉簡樸的生活?！陡蛔闳松阂X還是要命》(Your Money or Your Life)一書是“FIRE”運動的圣經(jīng)之一，該書教導(dǎo)讀者減少花銷，珍惜時間(或“生命能量”)，而不是物質(zhì)財富。該書于1992年出版。

But Vicki Robin, who wrote that financial guide with Joe Dominguez, said the FIRE crowd is a different breed of dropout from those in the ‘90s. “Our aim was not just to have a whole bunch of people quit their jobs,” Robin said. “Our aim was to lower consumption to save the planet. We attracted longtime simple-living people, religious people, environmentalists.”

不過，與喬·多明戈茲(Joe Dominguez)合著這本財務(wù)指南的維姬·羅賓(Vicki Robin)說，“FIRE”的追隨者與90年代的隱居者不同。“我們的目標不僅僅是讓一群人辭掉工作，”羅賓說，“我們的目標是降低消耗，以拯救地球。我們吸引了長期生活簡單的人，宗教人士，和環(huán)保人士。”

The FIRE adherents are, by contrast, “very numbers oriented, fascinated by the minutiae of taxes and accounting,” she said.

相比之下，F(xiàn)IRE的追隨者“非常喜歡數(shù)字，對稅收和會計的細枝末節(jié)很著迷”，她說。

They are also benefiting from a lengthy bull run in the stock market and, in some cases, the privilege of class, race, gender and background. It’s difficult to retire at 40 if you work a minimum-wage job, say, or have crushing student-loan debt, or did not have the same opportunities as others because you grew up poor in a crime-ridden neighborhood.

他們還受益于股市的一段長期牛市行情，在某些情況下也因為享有階級、種族、性別和背景的特權(quán)。比如說，如果你從事的是一份拿最低工資的工作，或者你背負著沉重的學(xué)生貸款債務(wù)，或者因為你在一個犯罪猖獗的社區(qū)中長大，沒有和其他人一樣的機會，那你就很難在40歲時退休。

But if, as Robin said, FIRE adherents “don’t have the aspirational part” of earlier generations, why are they so determined to quit the workforce? Many millennials haven’t been working longer than a decade, if that.

但是，如果FIRE的追隨者如羅賓所說，和前輩相比“沒有那些遠大的目標”，他們?yōu)槭裁磿绱藞詻Q地退出職場呢?如果實現(xiàn)這個目標，許多千禧一代的人參加工作的時間還沒超過十年。

It’s about having agency, she said: “The worker in this economy has very little sense of control over their existence. People are expendable. You’re a young person and you look ahead and you say, ‘What’s there for me?'”

她說，這與能動性有關(guān)：“在這種經(jīng)濟環(huán)境下，工作者幾乎沒有能控制自己存在的感覺。人是耗材。你是個年輕人，你向前看，然后問自己，‘我能得到什么?’”

That accurately describes how Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung felt. The married couple from Toronto became minor celebrities (and the target of online haters) when they retired from their tech jobs in 2015 to travel the world full-time. They were in their early 30s at the time.

這準確地描述了克里斯蒂·沈(Kristy Shen)和布賴斯·梁(Bryce Leung)的感受。這對來自多倫多的夫婦于2015年從他們在科技行業(yè)的職位退休，開始把全部時間花在環(huán)游世界上，這種做法讓他們成為了小小的名人(同時也成了網(wǎng)絡(luò)仇恨者的目標)。那時他們剛30歲出頭。

Shen’s wake-up moment came when she watched a fellow IT colleague collapse at his desk after clocking 14-hour days. For several years before that, she and Leung, following the path laid out by their parents, had tried to buy a house in Toronto’s ever-escalating real estate market.

讓沈警醒的時刻是，她看到一位IT同事在連續(xù)工作了14個小時后癱倒在他的辦公桌邊。在那之前的幾年里，她和梁一直都在按照父母為他們制定的路線行事，試圖在多倫多價格飛漲的房地產(chǎn)市場上買房子。

But, Shen said: “It didn’t matter how much you saved, it was a goal post that kept moving. And I was seeing people stressed out paying their mortgages.”

但是，沈說：“不管你省下來多少錢，買房子的目標一直很遙遠，而且越來越遠。我看到有人被償還抵押貸款的壓力壓垮了。”

Although they had good educations and well-paying jobs in the booming tech sector, Shen and Leung faced the looming threats of outsourcing and artificial intelligence, and had no hope of a retirement pension, or even that their employers would exist in five years.

雖然他們受過良好的教育，在蓬勃發(fā)展的技術(shù)行業(yè)有高薪工作，但沈和梁也隨時面臨著外包和人工智能的威脅，他們完全不指望將來能拿到退休金，甚至對他們的雇主在五年后是否還存在都不抱希望。

At the same time, their jobs were all-consuming. Rather than chain themselves to a costly mortgage, and therefore to high-pressure jobs, the couple decided to pour their money into an investment portfolio and peace out.

與此同時，他們的工作需要全身心投入。這對夫婦沒有把自己拴在大額抵押貸款上，從而也就沒有把自己拴在高壓工作崗位上，而是決定把錢用于一組投資，告別了他們的工作。

By ditching a big city, Shen and Leung exemplify another reason for the popularity of FIRE: the high price of urban life, especially in places like New York and Southern California. There are the insane housing prices, the high cost of child care, the temptations of so-called lifestyle creep.

沈和梁擺脫了大城市的生活，這種做法代表著FIRE流行的另一個原因：城市生活的成本很高，尤其是在紐約和南加州等地。瘋狂的房價，昂貴的兒童保育費用，還有所謂的“生活方式升級”的誘惑。

“We were spending nearly $3,000 a month on rent, and that was considered a good deal,” said Scott Rieckens, 35, who, along with his wife, Taylor, 33, and their daughter until recently lived in Coronado, California, across the bay from San Diego. “We made something like $160,000 between the two of us, but we didn’t have a whole lot left over.”

“我們每月的房租將近3000美元，這還被認為是相當合算的，”35歲的斯科特·里肯斯(Scott Rieckens)說，他和33歲的妻子泰勒(Taylor)及他們的女兒直到最近還住在加州科羅納多，與圣地亞哥隔海灣相望。“我們兩人每年掙的錢大約是16萬美元，但剩下的不多。”

After hearing a podcast interview with Mr. Money Mustache, aka Pete Adeney, whom The New Yorker called “the Frugal Guru” (he retired at 30), Scott Rieckens became fired up. He told his wife they should ditch their leased BMW and quit eating out so often. But even with those lifestyle cuts, they couldn’t increase their savings rate substantially unless they relocated to a cheaper community, a deleveraging tactic the FIRE crowd calls “arbitrage.”

在聽了《紐約客》對“錢胡子先生”(真名皮特·阿登尼[Pete Adeney]，《紐約客》稱他為“節(jié)儉大師”，他30歲就退休了)的播客采訪后，斯科特·里肯斯深受啟發(fā)。他對妻子說，他們應(yīng)該放棄他們租的寶馬車，不再經(jīng)常在外面吃飯。但即使在生活方式上做了這些縮減，他們也不能大幅度地提高自己的儲蓄率，除非他們搬到一個更便宜的社區(qū)去，這種去杠桿化的策略被FIRE族稱為“套利”。

The idea, Adeney said, is “to reap the high salary” of a place like Silicon Valley, “then take that nest egg out to any of the thousands of nice, affordable cities and towns we have in this country and begin a second stage of life on your own terms.”

阿登尼說，他們的想法是從硅谷這樣的地方“獲得高薪”，“然后把積累起來的錢帶到這個國家成千上萬的不錯的、負擔(dān)得起的市鎮(zhèn)去，按照自己的意愿開始第二階段的生活。”

Taylor Rieckens, who works in recruiting, was initially reluctant to give up her BMW and beachy life and the prestige that went with it, until she saw a retirement calculator that showed they could retire in 10 years if they adopted FIRE and moved, or when they were 90 if they continued their upscale lifestyle in Coronado.

泰勒·里肯斯的工作是為公司招募員工，起初她不愿意放棄自己的寶馬車和海灘邊上的生活，以及這種生活的氣派，直到她看了一個退休計算器的結(jié)果，計算器顯示，如果他們采用FIRE生活方式并搬走的話，他們可以在10年內(nèi)退休;如果他們繼續(xù)在科羅納多享受高檔生活方式的話，他們需要工作到90歲才能退休。

“I never paid attention to the finances. I thought it will all work out,” she said. “After I had a baby, I had stress around how I could spend more time with her. I was almost a slave to my job because of the way we were living.”

“我以前從不關(guān)心財務(wù)情況。我以為一切都會順理成章，”她說。“生了孩子后，我在如何能把更多的時間花在孩子身上這個問題上面臨很大的壓力。因為我們的生活方式，我?guī)缀醣晃夜ぷ魉邸?rdquo;

Last year, the couple left Southern California in search of a community that would give them more financial freedom, a journey Scott Rieckens, formerly a creative director for a creative agency, is chronicling in a documentary, “Playing With FIRE.”

去年，這對夫婦離開了南加州，去尋找一個能帶給他們更多經(jīng)濟自由的社區(qū)。斯科特·里肯斯曾是一家創(chuàng)意公司的創(chuàng)意總監(jiān)，他用紀錄片《玩FIRE》(Playing With FIRE)記錄了這個過程。

They ended up in Bend, Oregon, where there’s no state sales tax and they could afford to buy a house. Gas for their used Honda CRV with 186,000 miles (they got rid of the BMW and downsized to one vehicle) is a dollar-per-gallon cheaper than in San Diego, although Scott Rieckens often rides his bike around town.

他們最后選擇了俄勒岡州的本德，俄勒岡州沒有州銷售稅，他們也買得起那里的房子。他們買了一輛已經(jīng)跑過18.6萬英里的本田CRV舊車，放棄了寶馬，家里只剩下一輛車，在當?shù)亟o本田車加油，每加侖的汽油價格要比圣地亞哥便宜一美元，不過，斯科特·里肯斯經(jīng)常在城里騎自行車。

“The whole retire-early thing is unimportant to me. It’s more about gaining control of your time,” he said. “If you dive into the definition of retirement, what you’re retiring from is mandatory labor. It’s not necessarily about piña coladas on the beach.”

“提前退休這種事對我來說并不重要。更重要的是控制你的時間。”他說。“如果你深入研究退休的定義，你會發(fā)現(xiàn)，你是在從強制勞動中退休。不一定要在海灘上喝菠蘿汁朗姆酒才算。”