Envy Yes: Want To Retire Successfully? Get Jealous

If you're in your mid-30s, have you thought about retiring?

Chances are, you have, and you have to ask yourself another question: are you doing enough to save for retirement so that you can live comfortably?

If the bare minimum is all you're doing, then maybe you just need that proverbial "kick in the pants." And while searching information on what to do, how to do it often yields modest results and fails to resonate with someone of that age on a personal level.

Then, you meet someone who is, let's say only 20 years older than you, and they're talking about retirement and calling it quits at 55 like it's no big deal. They talk about a few hundred thousand dollars the way you talk about a few hundred dollars at the moment.

They're spinning stories of total truth when they talk about how they've been smart with their money, and they value their health over just about every aspect of work, even though they might enjoy their job but don't seriously consider working any longer than they have to.

They talk with a huge, deserved smile on their face as they start to travel plans after they call it quits or are debating if they want to retire in May or August and how they want to use their plethora of vacation time still on the table.

Getting jealous yet?

As someone who experienced this first hand, it indeed makes you reevaluate what you're doing about retiring, even if it isn't something that is on the horizon or in the very near future. That paltry two percent you're putting into that 401K company match just isn't cutting it anymore, not when you realize that six percent of a $50,000 per year salary is going to mean an extra $100,000 essentially by the time you're 65.

And honestly, if you need every last cent of your salary and can't bother to give any more to your retirement fund, then you need to reexamine your budget and start cutting out expenses so that you can focus on retirement more so than things like cable television, cell phone data or spending $10 a day on lunch out at your favorite hotspot.

If a wake up call is what you need as far as retirement and saving goes, find someone, a co-worker, friend or family member that decided to pack it in (early hopefully) and retired on their own terms and pick their brain to emulate precisely how they did it.

And if you get envy along the way, that can only be a good thing.

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