Ep 90 | How I Made Retirement Possible at 50 [Re-Release]
episode
Wealthy After 40: Retirement Planning and Budgeting for Gen X
23 min
2 speakers
2 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
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What was Daylene’s aha moment that made early retirement feel possible?
In the first episode of 2025, I am resharing my story of how I was able to retire at 50. By sharing this episode again, I hope you can listen to how I made retirement possible and maybe reflect on those steps and strategies and how they can create your retirement plan to make your retirement possible. Welcome to Wealthy After 40, where I help you turn retirement uncertainty into a clear, actionable plan. If you're thinking about retirement but feel unsure whether it's even possible, I understand. The gap between where you are now and where you want to be can feel overwhelming, but it doesn't have to. Hi, I'm Daylene Higgins, founder of Elevate Finances and your personal financial coach. Having retired at the age of 50 and have enjoyed over two years of retirement bliss, I'm here to help you create your retirement dream and make it a reality.
No more wondering, no more guessing, just taking action and building a future for yourself. Join me each week as I guide you through essential topics such as budgeting, cashflow, lifestyle planning, debt and savings, insurance, Medicare and Social Security. Together we'll build a strategy to help you achieve the retirement you've always desired. It's time to shift from uncertain to unstoppable and make your retirement dreams a reality. Welcome to today's episode. I am excited to share with you today my money story, my money journey, how I was able to retire at the age of 50, and why I became a money coach. Retirement. It was something that was always on my mind. Why? One guess for myself is my dad was able to retire early due to an option they gave.
And I was a junior in high school. So I kind of learned to believe like that was why. Anyways, I want to start with my aha moment. This was, so what is an aha moment? An aha moment is when you have that realization that a change needs to occur for you to go down a path. So it doesn't have to be with money. It can be with life. But aha moments are important. Going back to my aha moment was about the age of 35 when I had gone from one law enforcement agency to another law enforcement agency. Same pension system, same requirements. And I said to myself, self, you've done 17 years at that agency, 17 more at this new one, piece of cake, right? And it was in that moment that I was reflecting that I realized I had the 13 years before that option of retirement presented itself.
So it was an option. If I wanted to take that option at that age or any age thereafter, I needed to be prepared. And why was this? Because with a pension, they only pay you 60% of your salary. So immediately a 40% cut in pay. This is where a lot of people who do have pensions, who work for the government, get hung up on the fact of that. I took the bull by the horns and I got really super focused, headed down my path. Before I want to share any more from there, I want to go back to the first of my journey. I was living at home, just had graduated from high school. It was September. Graduation was in May. I had just lost my job, so I was unemployed. Thank goodness, still living with my parents. I didn't even own a car at the time.
And I'm looking through the newspaper and for jobs. That's where we found our jobs. We made phone calls as well. Very archaic, but yes, welcome to the Gen Xers growing up. As I'm reading through the ads, I see one for a dispatch academy. It was a three-week, I believe it was a three-week course. I think it was $250 and it interested me so much. I had no inkling to go to college at that time. I was done with school and Anyways, I went to this academy. I never was a dispatcher. Those women and men are amazing. I don't know if I could have done it. I went through all of their training. I was so grateful for all the knowledge I had, but it was during this academy that The record supervisor came down and said they were hiring.
You know, that was part of the academy. We got to learn about records. She expresses that they're hiring. And guess who's in need of a job? You know, I did clerical. Those were my internships I did through high school.
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Chapters
2 chaptersSpeakers
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