If the amount of money you're saving each month doesn't hurt, you're not saving enough.
I've told myself this saying every month since I was a first-year analyst working in finance in 1999. The saying came to me one evening at 9 pm while I was still at the office, waiting for a Hong Kong-based research analyst to get back to me with some data for a client. I had already been at the office since 5:30 am. Unfortunately, the analyst never got back to me.
Because the hours were so brutal, working in New York City toughened me up. I knew there was no way I could continue working 70+ hour weeks for decades, so I had to figure out a way to eventually escape. The only solution I could come up with was to save as much as possible and reinvest the proceeds in income-producing assets.
Here's my story on how my wife and I finally escaped the grind at the age of 34 for good. Today, I'm 41 and she's 38, and we now have a 16-month-old baby boy who we both take care of full-time because we live entirely off our passive income.
Essentially, I escaped full-time work, for good, at age 34, by following these six steps.