Hello! Today, I have a great article from JT. JT has a great story about how he was down to his last dollars living in a hostel, to hitting his retirement number just a little over a decade later. If you’re looking for another great retirement article, I also recommend How This 28 Year Old Retired With $2.25 Million. Below is his article on how to retire in your 30s. Enjoy!

Have you ever seen a grown man ugly cry?  Our faces scrunch up like a squeezed sponge, wringing the water from our eyes.  Our shoulders shake uncontrollably.  We gurgle out a noise that’s a cross between a laughing hyena and a grunt.  We’re not pretty.

It was 2000.  I was ugly crying on the bed of the Spanish Harlem hostel where I was living, down to my last dollars.  Months earlier, I graduated college, sold my car, and drove from Los Angeles to New York City with sunny West Coast optimism.  Then after months of getting rejected from job after job after job, reality blew in like an East Coast blizzard.

They say, “New York City:  If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.”  For those of us who have tried, it can feel more like, “Since I can’t make it here, I can’t make it anywhere.”

I wasn’t crying because I failed.  I was ugly crying because I thought I was a failure.

And yet, a little over a decade later, I hit my retirement number.  So what happened between the tears of sadness and the tears of joy?  I’ll tell you exactly what I did to hit my retirement number in my 30s. [Read more…]