If a person has good financial intelligence, the gap between income and spending should be MUCH larger in your graph. Income should be at LEAST double someones spending.

Secondly, income should be going UP and spending should be going DOWN a lot more than in your graph.

It’s entirely possible to reach crossover point within 5 years (10 years max) once you adjust your figures and graph to reflect the factors I’ve mentioned.

Am I missing something?
My investment yield is barely a blip on my graph!

I haven’t attempted to calculate my crossover point as there are too many unknown variables at such an early point in time, but I might try playing around with it at the end of this month just for fun.

A singular person can not be referred to as “they,” no matter how fat he or she is.

People, however, can be referred to as “they,” no matter how skinny they are.

If you are talking about one single person, the pronoun “he” is sufficient to cover “he or she” if you’re too lazy to type “he or she,” just as “man” or “mankind” also included women.

Of course, nowadays you don’t want to offend anybody, particularly those who don’t know these basic facts. Enter the nebulous and incorrect “they” when we talk about one single person.

When I write about a random anonymous person, he is referred to as “he” because that’s proper use of our language.

Actually, when I write about a random anonymous person, I always make it more than one person so I can use the word “they” and avoid having to offend the sensitivities of other people who for whatever reason despise the pronoun “he.”

Trent, you’re doing a great job.

I absolutely love the Internet because anyone can use it, no matter how uneducated he or she is.

Reason enough?

:-)

Trent, apologies for hijacking the comment section with the grammar debate. Mel has the best response I think. Others are complaining that “so-and-so does it, so it’s okay.” That logic is the reason people are saying “I could care less about that.” But don’t get me started on that whole can of worms. People misused the term “I Couldn’t Care Less” so much that grammar experts just raised the white flag and said “fine, if you people want to come across as uneducated and stupid, go right ahead!”

But that Crossover Point really is an eye opener of an idea to ponder. Keep it up!

While I’m not counting on such an occurance (with my luck at least one of the kids will move back home with grandchildren :-) if it does happen, it would be nice. At that point you could either really turbo charge the investments or go ahead and retire early. The ability to make the choices is what’s appealing.

I love, love, love this concept. However, this isn’t quite how it’s going to work for me, because I have one more element that doesn’t graph well: my pension. If I quit right now, I can get a small pension when I’m sixty. Each additional year I work, I increase the size of my pension and I qualify myself to get it a year earlier. If I wait until I’m 52 to quit, I can get my pension at 52 and it will be big enough by itself to cover expenses (because my house will be paid off by then).

Older people (at least) have similar issues with Social Security. Of course all pensions are constructs based on rules and laws which can and will change, so back-up plans are in order. Other things can change too (like bond rates, changing for the worse since this book was published). But if we keep filling this graph in, watching how things change over the years, we will acquire a lot more information on how real investments and expenses can vary over time.

It’s an exciting concept, but not something easy to achieve. To truly live on investment income you would have to be in safe investments, so this would require some large capital.

I will set up my own chart and see how it goes. If nothing else, it should help drive home the point of why you need to cut expenses as much as possible.

I just realized this week that I might hit my crossover point and be able to choose to “drop out and pursue other interests” before I am actually old enough to start taking withdrawals from my retirement accounts!

Imagine how sad I will be to know I could quit but not be able to just because I was so focused on filling up the retirement savings accounts!

Good thing I realized this today, so I can adjust certain deposits into accounts I can access earlier. 15-20 years from now, this probably won’t matter, but I’ll have the story to share about the one night I lost sleep because I thought I’d be unable to get to my retirement money and have to work for “tha MAN” extra years until “they” told me I was old enough.

Oh, and Trent—-
“Just by doing a few simple frugality exercises, this person can quit their job three years earlier.”

I know you really meant to say “this person can quit HIS job three years earlier.” It’s just one person. I think the proper grammar allows you to say “his” job, but those PC folks require “his or her.” Sating “their” when you mean “his” or “his or her” is one of those things that I notice and am compelled to correct.

Rats, I am turning into my father…