Retire Early | mathematically impossible for a minimum wage in the Philippines

Now I really believe that you can only save so much 💸, especially if your earnings are quite small. 📉 You've probably heard this saying multiple times: 💬

"There's a limit to how much you can cut back, but no limit on how much you can earn." 📈

After years of repetition, meticulous budgeting, tracking every centavo 🪙, and sacrificing small comforts, this phrase has slapped me multiple times—it's just so true! 😳 No matter how disciplined I was, or how much I try different budgeting hacks and cutting out lattes ☕, at the end of the day, progress is still slow. Ultimately, my savings stay relatively small compared to my bigger dream of retiring early. 💭✨

As much as I want to retire early (definitely not at 60 years old! 🏃‍♂️💨), progress is painfully slow on an entry-level salary. 📊 Remember the FIRE movement or Barista FIRE? Yes, that is attainable, but unless you find other work to increase your income, it just feels so sluggish and takes forever to materialize. 🐢 Consequently, without any income boost to power your investments and savings, you end up forced down the traditional path of retiring at 60... and my whole being is repulsed by that idea! 🚫 I refuse to settle for that, definitely. 🔥

Naturally, the obvious solution is to increase income by taking on another job. 💼 However, this is very challenging, mind you! I could enumerate 100 reasons why you should boost your earnings, but there is always a huge 'BUT'—a solid wall explaining why it’s so hard in reality. 🛑

But anyway, never surrender! 💪 You won't know until you try. Just to give an example: this blog post has been up since 2017—a total of 9 years—and I haven't gotten a single payout ever since! 😂 Yes, it's hard, but since writing is one of my hobbies, I just keep on blogging. ✍️ I feel totally fulfilled even if I am just writing for free for now! 📝✨

Looking ahead, another potential source of income might be vlogging 📹—I think that's really the way to go nowadays. 🌟 Still, you have to build it up from scratch, and it’s definitely not an instant success for everybody. ⌛

Anyway, my main point here is to actively strive for another source of income. 💸 Try your absolute best to increase your earnings! This way, you won't be stuck relying solely on budgeting, which can only do so much when your paycheck is small. 🎯 It will be a long, exhausting road ahead if you stay earning a small amount while relying only on traditional saving and investing. I'm not saying it doesn't work—of course it works! But you want to reach financial freedom as soon as possible, right? You want to retire way before your 60th birthday! 🥳

So, try to increase your income while keeping up with your usual saving and investing. 📊 Feel free to follow the Dave Ramsey steps if you like (just like I do!). 🇵🇭 But definitely for us Filipinos, since the purchasing power of our money is quite small and entry-level salaries are low, boosting our income is the true key to unlocking freedom much faster. 🚀

That is it for now! Thanks for reading all the way. 🙏