She retired at 35 ready to hear ‘you must have rich parents’ all the time — but the hardest part was actually something she didn't expect

For comparison, Fidelity reports that 401(k) savers ages 35 to 39 had an average balance of about $81,600 in 2026.

After graduating from college in 2009, Lauren entered the workforce in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Living in Boston, she was barely making enough to cover rent and keep her car, taking whatever work she could find.

“That period of chronic underemployment was a kind of trauma to me. So much of my life was controlled by how little money I had,” she told The Cut.

Turning things around

As the economy began to recover, Lauren’s income started to improve. She landed a better-paying corporate job. Even while working full time, Lauren continued taking on freelance and gig work in video production and graphic design. Her approach was simple: If she could do the job, she rarely turned it down.

“Could I make a logo for someone’s flower shop? Yes, I could. Whatever it was, if it was within my skill set, I said yes,” she explained.

That hustle-heavy approach isn’t unusual: 45% of millennials ages 30 to 45 reported having a side hustle in 2026, according to LendingTree, with freelance and professional services among the most common.

Lauren also graduated with roughly $40,000 in student debt, which fueled her determination to earn more.

“Having to pay my student loans instead of buying myself groceries created a spiteful rage within me, and there is no motivator like spite,” she said. “I was angry.”

Saving her way to $1 million

By the time Lauren retired, she was earning about $110,000 a year as a brand strategist for a major technology company, while still bringing in another $10,000 to $20,000 annually from filming weddings and other events.

Her FIRE strategy was straightforward.

“You just have to spend as little money as you can while trying to make as much money as you can and invest it early in your life,” she said.

But building $1 million is one thing. Making it last another 50 years or more is another. Robert Baird, a wealth manager at Cornerstone Financial Services, told Moneywise that inflation is one of the biggest risks.

Baird gives the example of a 35-year-old spending $50,000 annually. Assuming 3% annual inflation, maintaining that same purchasing power at 60 could require more than $100,000 a year.

“By the time they are 60 years old (still very young) they will be spending over $100,000 per year to have the same purchasing power,” he said.

The health care gap

Health care adds another layer of uncertainty, particularly without employer-sponsored coverage.

“A young retiree should plan for their medical costs to increase over time and should plan for that cost to rise above their general inflation expectations,” Baird said.

And coverage itself can be expensive long before Medicare kicks in. In 2026, the national average benchmark Silver premium for a 40-year-old is $625 a month, or $7,500 a year, before accounting for premium tax credits, according to KFF.

That concern isn’t hypothetical for Lauren. Both she and her partner require specialist care, so they’ve developed a system of switching between health plans depending on what medical expenses they expect in a given year. In years when they anticipate more care, they pay for a more expensive plan; the following year, they may switch to a cheaper option.

Lauren told The Cut that she and her partner are currently living on his salary, so she hasn’t had to dip into her investment portfolio yet. That gives her money more time to grow while his job also helps cover their current health-care costs, reducing the number of years they’ll eventually have to pay for care on their own.

The part of retiring at 35 she didn’t expect

Lauren achieved what she had spent years working toward: She no longer had to work for a paycheck. But retirement brought a problem that wasn’t financial.

“It’s surprisingly lonely to be retired in your 30s,” she said.

Baird says retiring decades before your peers can mean living a very different lifestyle from the people around you.