>>I thought by the time you're 54 you could retire. I'm much younger and I could retire in a couple of years. What is your saving rate?
That is not going to help him much now. Not everyone has or could have started saving early in life. Some did not due to ignorance, some did not due to life circumstances, some did but other life events could have taken that from them (i.e bad investments, divorce, medical issue, or 100's of other things).
Just because you have the luck and privilege to be on the FIRE path does not mean everyone else is as lucky or choose that path. This person may have not planned to retire early and looking back now wished they had made that plan in the 20's. The road not taken an all that...
>>Change jobs until you find a job like that. There are plenty, I can assure you.
Again it would seem you are taking your anecdote and applying it globally. This is very region specific and I can assure you in my region there are exactly Zero jobs in IT that allow you to start at 10am, take a 2-3 hour lunch, and knock off an 6pm...
I will not implicitly state those are not common, but I can not imagine a region where they are?
I didn't say he should have retired, it's just my expectation for a software engineer to have the ability to retire by then.
It's very likely he could retire but he just didn't realized. Maybe looking into it, it's not a bad idea.
I worked on 3 continents, in more than 10 companies. No employer ever told me I'm coming in too late, my lunch time it's too long or I'm leaving too early (6pm).
Retiring early is risky. Due to market volatility the safe withdrawal / drawdown rate is lower the longer you need your pot to last, and the impact of miscalculating your expenses worse the lower that rate becomes.
Underestimate your annual expenses by $10K on a 5% SWR? Ok you need a pot of $200K more. At 3%? $333K more. 2%? $500K.
With interest rates in a 700 year downward trend, and yields dropping across all asset classes, you should NOT assume, as a software engineer, that you will be able to retire in your 50s.
Still, of that's something that appeals, start saving and investing, otherwise the chance is literally 0.
10 companies, and "much younger" than the OP. hmmmmm I wonder.....
That aside, like I said if your experience is true, which i have my doubts, it does not match mine. Most companies I know of even if they have flex time want their people to start before 9am, and generally do not allow 2-3hr lunches as normal course. Now if you only worked as a contractor this may be different but a salaried position employed directly for a company... Notta gonna happen every often.
At most of the companies I have worked for you would be put on performance review and then terminated.
Very interesting, I worked both as permanent and on contract basis and they did their best to keep me. Nobody even come close to fire me. I guess just different kind of experience. I'm not trying to convince you, I'm just saying, there is better out there.
That is not going to help him much now. Not everyone has or could have started saving early in life. Some did not due to ignorance, some did not due to life circumstances, some did but other life events could have taken that from them (i.e bad investments, divorce, medical issue, or 100's of other things).
Just because you have the luck and privilege to be on the FIRE path does not mean everyone else is as lucky or choose that path. This person may have not planned to retire early and looking back now wished they had made that plan in the 20's. The road not taken an all that...
>>Change jobs until you find a job like that. There are plenty, I can assure you.
Again it would seem you are taking your anecdote and applying it globally. This is very region specific and I can assure you in my region there are exactly Zero jobs in IT that allow you to start at 10am, take a 2-3 hour lunch, and knock off an 6pm...
I will not implicitly state those are not common, but I can not imagine a region where they are?