Simple Ways to Retire Early: It Doesn't Take Getting Rich Quick

This article isn't just a lot of fluff - retiring at the ripe age of 43 to 45 years old is one of my goals in life, and I don't give up on things easily.

I had everything figured out. I started saving from my paper route when I was a kid (opened my first savings account when I was 12) and had $30,000 in an IRA by the age of 23. Sounds like I had it all figured out, right? Wrong - I got greedy and tried to speed up the process. I got into flipping houses. We bought an house pre-foreclosure (at a good price) and poured money into the renovations (pulled from the IRA and credit cards). The house turned out great, but if you remember 2006, that's when the housing market took it's historic turn from can't lose to can't win.

Fast forward 9 months of having the house overpriced (trying to make $40,000 off the deal), having a bad agent, paying holding costs, a refinance and our own living expenses, and we were going to not even end the situation on level ground. All in all, we lost $60,000 on the deal from start to finish - not exactly something for "Flip This House" on TV. If I can still work the numbers to retire 15 years after I start over (with a bunch of debt), anyone can. The average debt (credit card) is nearly $8,000 in the country, which is a small hole compared to around $40,000. That's the set-up for the story of worst to first. Here's what I did to turn things around:

First, I researched Credit Help companies, deciding on Incharge.org. They helped work with the credit card companies to reduce the unsightly interest rates that were between 15-30% on the cards to an average of 6.8% for the whole account. That was the first and most important step. Getting a handle on your debt (making the interest as low as possible and paying off accounts with an interest rate above 10% as fast as possible) is job #1. I would be saving hundreds of dollars a month (previously spent on interest) and could put that towards principal payments or savings.