How I Retired Early At 49 With $1.3 Million In Ohio

All these visions of this young girl growing up in the south, you know, and in rural poverty, living down a dirt road, having nothing and getting to the point where I actually have a million dollar net worth. It was just the greatest feeling ever. My name is Jackie Cummings Koski.

I live in southwestern Ohio. And I achieved FIRE at the age of forty nine with $1. 3 million dollars.

I came to my FIRE number after learning that you do twenty five times your expenses and that totally made sense to me. My FIRE number was right at $1 million. My expenses were between like $40k-$45k a year.

So I reached that FIRE number when I was forty six, but I wasn't quite ready to retire at that point. I ended up working for two more years and I actually liked my job, so I wasn't in any rush to run away. I wanted a little more of a cushion.

So I worked for a couple more years and retired on December 6 of 2019. My relationship with money growing up was that it was always scarce. We basically lived in poverty, but I was raised by a single dad with six kids.

I don't know how he did it. We barely made it. We barely scraped by.

So as I went through college and started my own career, I always had this nagging feeling that I just never wanted to be back in poverty again. I had to pay my own way through school, so I was working full time and I was taking a full load of classes. I was getting paid peanuts, but finally I had my own money.

I really felt rich at that point and when I look back, I don't even know how I was able to do it. I learned more from that than I learned from what was being taught in the classroom. A lot of people do think that you have to make over six figures, but because there's so many variables and factors that you need to look at.

I was always wanting to be smart with the money that I had versus thinking that having a higher income was always the thing that got me ahead. I was a single mom for so many years that if I were to sort of do the hard hustle to try to make more money, that would be time away from my daughter. So I figured the best way to approach it is to just do more and be smarter with the money that I had.

Not much has changed in terms of my budget. I'm still spending roughly $40,000-$45,000 a year, so my monthly expenses probably run about three to four thousand. So my mortgage is about $1000 a month.

I don't have a car payment. I own that outright. Grocery would be in there.

I want to say maybe that's four to five hundred dollars a month. Maybe I'll go out to eat a couple of times, maybe go out to drink with friends, expenses like utilities, cell phone, things like that. All in, I'm usually between three and four thousand dollars.

And some of those expenses may even be tax deductible because I have my own little business. I'm not the frugalist and I'm not the minimalist or any of those things. But I think again, going back to my background and growing up, I think that just helped me, you know, have it be a part of how I did everything.

I own my own home. That is the only real estate that I own. Just about all of my money is in the stock market.

I primarily do index funds. However, I'm one of those crazy people that actually enjoy investing in single stocks as well. My company 401K was a huge help.

Again, I was there for 20 years. The matching that we got was if you put in seven percent in your 401k, the company would match you nine percent and that is far beyond what most companies offer. So of course, took advantage of that.

The biggest chunk of my investments was in my 401k that helped grow my net worth tremendously. Oh, really. Big milestone for most people is when you hit the $1 million net worth mark, and I think I was forty six when I hit that number.

I feel like I have so much more opportunity because I don't have the stress of work. I don't have the pressure of structuring my day or my efforts and activities based on what someone else wants. So I get to channel all of my energy towards what I really love, what I consider my life's work.

I love the outdoors, so I love hiking, walking, but it has to be in a beautiful place. And there's this park really close to my house that I try to go to nearly every day. And I just enjoy like smelling the roses and just taking a deep breath and enjoying being outside.

I think we make a mistake by trying to assume that everyone has the same hierarchy that we do in terms of how we spend our money. And I'm always defaulting to those things that really don't matter, like if I can get a better deal on my cell phone, that's not going to matter much to me if I'm going to look at my home insurance or my car insurance. And just because I shopped around, I got a slightly cheaper price.

You know, that's not going to change much for me, but if I'm going to save a few bucks, then I'll do it. There are things that I have decided I wanted to do, and that is just sort of that's just a feeling I never thought I would would have. And I love my days now because I get to set them up the way that I want and I can just breathe more.