I have a buddy like that. Early 40s and about to retire and move overseas where he had a mountain house built.
He saved his money, never made rash purchases, never made emotional purchases and now he can retire.
He never took out loans and paid for college out of pocket. Bought a modest house under $200k in early 00s. Always drove clean but inexpensive used cars. They were always small 4cyl Japanese/Korean sedans or coups costing roughly $3k - $5k so there was no financing involved, no monthly payments or interest rates. Some were manual trans, some had manual windows. Didn't care about the latest and greatest tech (one accidentally didn't have an AC [emoji16]). In the 25 years that I've known him he's probably had 3 or 4 cars and that's because one was totaled.
Saved some money by doing car and house maintenance himself.
Today his house is almost paid off, just in time for this crazy seller's market, it has like doubled in value, meanwhile he has no debt, no credit card balances, nothing thats forcing him to work into his 60s and a healthy bank account.
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