Jeff Yeager - How to Retire the Cheapskate Way: The Ultimate Cheapskates Guide to a Better, Earlier, Happier Retirement

ALSO BY JEFF YEAGER

Dont Throw That Away!

The Cheapskate Next Door

The Ultimate Cheapskates Road Map to True Riches

Copyright 2013 by Jeffrey Yeager

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press,
an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.,
New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

Three Rivers Press and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Yeager, Jeff.
How to retire the cheapskate way : the ultimate cheapskates guide to a better, earlier, happier retirement / Jeff Yeager. 1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Retirement incomePlanning. 2. RetireesFinance, Personal. 3. Retirement. I. Title.
HG179.Y4328 2012
332.024014dc23

2012019928

eISBN: 978-0-307-95643-9

Cover illustration by Scott Pollack

v3.1

The following book is what I call colorized nonfiction. That means its basically true, with the exception of any characters, passages, people, places, events, dialogue, and other stuff that I made up or at least embellished for the sole purpose of trying to keep you, the reader, from lapsing into the coma-like state commonly induced by reading books about personal finance.

Also be advised that any similarities between the cheapskates depicted in this book and you or someone you know is purely coincidental, but it may be a warning sign that your Inner Miser is trying to tell you something.

Like most books about personal finance, this one is intended as a general guide. You should seek the advice of qualified financial professionalsas well as other qualified cheapskatesabout your individual financial situation and retirement plans.

Lastly, no cheapskates were killed or harmed in the writing of this book, but a few spendthrifts were accidentally waterboarded.

J EFF Y EAGER
The Ultimate Cheapskate

To two men who have inspired me greatly:
my brother, J OEL Y EAGER ,
for a lifetime spent helping so many others, and the late R OBERT B. J OHNSON ,
for many of the lessons youll read about in the pages ahead.

The best part of life is not just surviving, but thriving with passion and compassion and humor and style and generosity and kindness. Maya Angelou said it, but I learned it from Joel and Bob.

CHAPTER 1
Introduction:Who Says You Cant Afford to Retire?Just Go Ask a Cheapskate

Everything wed ever read or been told about retirement planning and investing seemed to be a lie, or at least wasnt working out for us. It wasnt until we really started looking at the spending side of our finances that we began to feel like retirement was once again something within our reach something we could actually control. We realized that we could simplify our lives and retire very happily on less money than we ever thought possible.

Frugal retirees Doris and Chuck Wye

W hether your goal is to retire early or simply enjoy retirement more, this book will show you how the key to realizing your retirement dreams is more about howand how muchyou spend than it is about complicated investment schemes or even the size of your retirement nest egg.

That should be a refreshing message to many Americans today: Since the start of the Great Recession in 2008, Americans have lost more than $2 trillion in retirement savingsthats more than a third of their prerecession savingsnot including the drop in the value of their homes. According to a 2011 Gallup poll, nearly 60 percent of those surveyed had changed their retirement plans because of the economic downturn. Record numbers of Americans now say theyll need to work longer than planned or believe that they may never be able to afford retirement.

Not so fast, say my happily retired cheapskate friends, as well as other masters of smart spending who are still working toward their dream retirements, with their retirement plans unaltered by the economic meltdown going on around them. This book contains their retirement blueprints, their tried-and-true plans for retiring the cheapskate way.

In the pages ahead, youll meet some of my fellow cheapskates, and I dont use that term in a pejorative sense. If you prefer, call us frugal, thrifty, or even just smart consumers. In my own lexicon, being a cheapskate is a virtue, not a vice. Its not about being greedy or dishonest, and its not about sacrifice or deprivation. Its all about choicesdeciding whats really important in your life (particularly those things that come without a price tag) and skipping the rest. I honestly believe that most Americansnot all, but mostwould be happier, and the quality of their lives would actually increase, if only they would spend and consume less.

So, to me, a cheapskate is the polar opposite of a conspicuous consumer. Cheapskates are too self-confidentand frankly too smartto spend money on things they dont need, and probably dont even want, just to impress others. Cheapskates believe that their time here on earth is too precious to waste it chasing after more money and more stuff than what they really need. And, as youll see, many of them have decided they really dont need that much to be happy.

At age fifty-four, Ive been a practicing cheapskate most of my adult life, although Ive fallen off the wagon a few times along the way. Having grown up in the rural Midwest, in a family that viewed spending money as an option of last resort, I was raised in a culture that knew the value of a dollar and placed a premium on thrift and frugality. Heck, we were proud of our ability to pinch a penny until Lincoln cried. In fact, rumor has it that the Yeager family crest bears the inscription Spartium Homo Erectus, which, of course, is Latin for Cheapskate Who Stands on Two Feet.

We were by no means poor. But with two sets of grandparents hardened by living through the Great Depression and loving parents who taught us that many of the best things in life truly are free, I learned the value of thriftcraft at a young age. Its little wonder that, with my upbringing, for a career I settled in the nonprofit sectorwhere stretching a buck is a job requirementand spent twenty-five years as a CEO and fund-raiser for a number of national nonprofit organizations in Washington, DC.

Because I practice what I preach when it comes to frugal living and smart money management, at the age of forty-seven I was able to functionally retire, oras Ill talk more about laterbecome selfishly employed. Selfish employment is when you have at least enough financial security and independence to be able to do whatever the heck you want to do for a living, regardless of how much you might, or might not, earn from doing it. So thats when I became the Ultimate Cheapskate and started writing about money (and, specifically, spending less of it!), based on my own life experiences and the financial lessons Id learned as a nonprofit manager.