Life Hacks: Institute of Hacking. The Best Times to Buy Anything in 2011. Find Open Source Alternatives to commercial software. Random. Tips-from-early-retirees-usnews: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance. At 31, Robert Charlton had grown disillusioned with his job as a technical writer.
"The idea of doing a desk job for another 30 years seemed painful to me, so I came up with this idea of trying to retire before 45," he says. He shared the idea with his wife Robin, who was then 31 and working as a travel agent.