Retirement before the age of 70 feels like a pipe dream for many under-40s today.
But one woman was able to quit the rat race at just 37 with almost £1m in savings.
Kate Donegan, 37, and her 43-year-old husband Alan are both retired, and now the financial blogger has shared her secrets to living frugally.
She claims one of the ways she did it was simply by not buying new clothes and going out for cheap meals.
The happily retired couple are now able to split their time between their home in Basingstoke and travelling abroad.
Kate left her math’s studies at the University of Oxford in her second year and she decided to move home to take a different route to make a living.
She took up an office temping job on £9 an hour before taking a three-month volunteering project in January 2005 to Costa Rica where she met Alan.
Kate decided to take up a degree in statistics at University College London and decided to live with her parents to avoid getting into any debt.
She claimed that she didn’t buy any clothes and ate cheaply throughout her whole uni career, Central Recorder reports.
When the frugal student graduated in 2008, she moved into Alan’s mum’s parents’ house so they could save for a house deposit.
“We ate packed lunches, drove a second-hand Skoda and invited friends over instead of going for expensive nights out,” Kate told Central Recorder.
The couple managed to ‘save hard’ and put down a £42,000 deposit on a £167,650 two-bedroom flat in Basingstoke in 2010.
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By 2014, Kate was bringing home £58,000 and Alan was earning £63,000.
The couple were able to put away £3,000 in total each month.
They set themselves the goal of retiring within three years with £1m in the bank.
Kate said it was to make sure they had ‘financial freedom’ to do everything they wanted to do outside of the nine-to-five grind.
By 2018 the couple had accumulated around £898,000 in savings and investments.
Just a few months later their net worth rose by £46,000 and the investments were making enough for Kate to retire.
“To many people, a big house and designer clothes signal success, but I have freedom and choice, which feels like the biggest success of all,” Kate said.
The couple’s investments alone now generate £65,000 a year – but they continue to claim they live their lives frugally.
Kate runs a blog online teaching people how to efficiently save their money.