On the lists of young workers, retirement isn’t always a top priority. This 41-year-old single mother, on the other hand, did more than just fasten her suitcase.
Lakisha Simmons, who worked since she was 14 years old and retired with over $1 million in her retirement fund ($850,000), has a story on CNBC.
Simmons worked as an associate professor at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, despite coming from a working-class home, and she was able to earn $150,000 in 2020 by juggling her full-time employment with side hustles.
Simmons, on the other hand, had set a goal for herself: to retire at the age of 45. As a result, she used the FIRE Method, which stands for “financial independence, early retirement” and is also regarded as an aggressive saving strategy. The first year, Simmons sold her home (to pay off her $2,400 monthly mortgage), cut back on all her costs (converted to a prepaid cell phone plan, cooked meals at home), and saved $100,000.
“Simmons keeps more than 50% of her investment portfolio in an S&P 500 index fund, around 25% of her money in a total stock market index, and the rest in a mix of bonds and ‘some individual stocks in companies like Apple and Amazon,’” reported the outlet, who revealed that she originally planned to retire when she reached $1 million in her retirement fund, but that she eventually stopped when she fell just short due to burnout brought on in part by teaching recurrently.
“My investments have grown even though I haven’t contributed anything since I left my job on May 31, 2021,” she said to CNBC. “Now I have around $910,000.”
According to their findings, “More than half of Black and Latinx households have no retirement savings at all; less than a third of White households are without retirement assets. Black and Latinx households who do have savings have less put away towards their retirement.”
