Hi all,

My wife and I have been following this forum for quite some time. We find it very good as we learnt a lot from the many smart people here. We often discuss the ideas that were shared here and we got inspired to leave the rat race and retire as soon as possible so that we can pursue more meaningful things in our lives such as travelling to exotic places, reading, studying our religion deeper, charity work, etc.

We are now both 40 years old and earn a total income of $160k pa. We own a condo, which has mortgage of $600k and worth $1.2m. Our other assets include cash, CPF and some dividend stocks, worth $500k in total. We own a luxury car which is paid up, left 1 year of its COE. Currently our savings is $40k pa.

Here is our plan to retire early at 55:

1. We will sell our condo at $1.2m, pay off the condo mortgage and use the cash balance of $600k to buy a 4 room HDB flat for $400k. We then have $200k cash avaliable to invest. So now we are debt free and no more loan to service. We will save about $35k pa in mortgage payments.

2. We will sell our car and take the bus. This saves us $25k pa.

3. After all the these moves, we will increase our savings to $100k pa.

4. So, we will start with about $300k to invest in blue chips giving us 4% dividend yield or $12k pa. Every year we will add $100k in investments and the dividend will then increase. Over 15 years, our investment will grow to about $2.5m and the dividend will be $100k pa.
We can then retire at 55 years old with $100k pa passive income.

What do you think of this plan?