How to retire at 40, no matter how much you earn

Today’s young adults are regularly told that they may be working into their 70s or even 80s before being able to retire.

Even if you love your job and enjoy working, that can be a pretty daunting prospect.

And yet there are people who seem somehow to manage to retire at a young age and are able to spend their days getting up whenever they please, travelling whenever they want to and sitting in the garden with a beer.

But just how do they do it?

Jason Buckley and his wife Julie are two people who know the secret, having both retired from the corporate world aged 43.

Essentially, it comes down to saving at least 50 per cent - if not 75 per cent - of your earnings.

The couple had both become fed-up, with Julie saying she found she was “never wanting to get out of bed in the morning.”

Jason, a former IT executive, says he punched the air with joy after he walked out of work.

The couple feature in a new Channel 4 programme, How To Retire At 40.

Jason and Julie, now 45 and 44, currently live in a campervan which allows them to travel all across the world.

Of course it helps that the couple were both earning £90,000 a year previously, but apparently anyone can retire young if you're savvy enough.

Before they retired, Jason and Julie had a three-bedroom house, a double garage, two cars, a motorbike and a hot tub.

Now, the couple have a much simpler lifestyle: “We can go where we want, when we want,” Julie told The Mail Online. “We are living the dream.”

So how did they manage to save so much?

Before their lightbulb moment, the couple were spending pretty much everything they earned on gadgets, gym memberships and magazine subscriptions that they never used.

After realising this, the Buckleys decided to scrap all the extras.

“I remember just standing in the garage, asking myself: ‘What were we thinking?’ We had four bikes in there, and we never go biking,” Jason said.

“I had four angle grinders. I can’t remember why. I think I couldn’t find one for some project, so bought another. I was almost crying at the realisation of how much money we’d wasted.”

They stopped going out for fancy dinners, having expensive wines every night, buying lavish birthday presents and clothes.

And soon the couple became addicted to seeing how much money they could save.

“It became quite addictive, seeing how quickly we were paying down the mortgage and seeing the savings account swell,” Jason said.

According to the TV programme, which airs on Monday 10th July at 8.30pm on Channel 4, the absolute key to retiring young is getting your living costs down.

Their financial experts say you need savings of around 25 times your annual salary to retire in your 40s.

The TV programme meets people who prove that you don’t have to earn ludicrous amounts of money to be able to retire in your 40s, you just need to save.

For Julie and Jason, they still have an income as they rent out their house in the East Midlands while they travel, earning them £20,000 a year.

“And our outgoings, even while on the road all the time, are now £15,000 a year, so we are still managing to put some money away,” says Jason. “I know it wouldn’t be the lifestyle for everyone, but for us it is the dream.”