A DAD has revealed how he retired at the age of 24 - after banning his wife from Starbucks and cutting their overall spending in half.

Mike Rosehart, now 27, enjoys a life of leisure with his wife Alyse, 28, and their two children after working for just seven years.

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The former IT business analyst amassed an impressive $760,000 (578,000) after saving aggressively and making a profit from their own wedding.

Mike, from Ontario, Canada, initially had a hard time persuading Alyse to share his early retirement ambition.

I wouldnt say shes a crazy spender but she likes her Starbucks, he told SunOnline.

She wanted to have kids young so I explained that if we were able to retire early we could be there for our kids.

I told her we just had to cut our spending in half.

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It took me over a year to get her on board.

Everytime she bought Starbucks, I said: That cost us two more days away from our kids.

The couple married in 2014 and were keen to keep wedding costs down.

They pulled off the celebration for $3,800, which is well below the cost of an average wedding.

We found a venue that were offering a deal where you could have the wedding for free as long as you invited enough guests, he said.

Initially we wanted 150 guests but to keep costs down we whittled our guestlist to just 80 people.

People give a gift when they come to a wedding and so we actually made a profit on our wedding if you think about it like that.

For our honeymoon, I used the points on my credit card to go to Brazil so it didnt cost anything.

We had a friend who hosted us in Brazil so our accommodation was free.

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The dad-of-two is convinced that anyone can achieve financial independence and retire early, known as FIRE, with a little financial wizardry.

He has even taken in three mentees to teach them his money-making and saving ways.

Mike said: The secret to retiring early is: spend less, earn more and maximise the returns on the difference.

The hard part is executing it.

Most of us cant resist the Starbucks, the trip abroad or the new cellphone.

Delayed gratification is the secret to FIRE.

Mike hit upon the idea of retiring early when he was studying at the Ivey Business School in Ontario, Canada, in 2010.

He came across Early Retirement Extreme, a book about becoming financially independent on a median salary by Danish astrophysicist Jacob Lund Fisker.

He said: I was in my first year at university and I was working on a project about the psychology of happiness.

I went deep into a wormhole on the internet and I came across Jacob Lund Fisker.

He started the spark for me.

Throughout university, Mike worked full time while also studying full time.

He said: I grew up really poor with a single mother on the poverty line so I didnt have family money to rely on.

I got scholarships to go to college.

In his second year of university, he rented a bedroom for $262-a-month which was just 7ft by 8.5ft.

He later lived in a tiny apartment with Alyse for $455 a month - and saved money by cycling everywhere.

At 19, Mike bought a $152,000 cottage with Alyse.

It was a tiny little cottage, the cheapest house I could find, he said.

They put down $29,600 - half of that was money they had saved and half of it was their student line of credit.

The couple rented every room and made money off the property.

We graduated debt-free and with money in the bank, he said.

After college, Mike took a $42k-a-year job in consulting.

Alyse, who had graduated a year before, in 2013, took a graphic designer job, making $26,500-a-year.

Mike took the proceeds from the salary and bought rental properties - then reinvested the rent.

They lived on slightly less than half of Alyses salary and were saving 100 per cent of Mikes.

I kept reinvesting every profit from rental property. It kept snowballing.

We bought 10 properties in three years.

In February 2017, Mike handed in his notice at his job and Alyse also retired later that year.

He sold 11 properties and he knew that he had hit his FIRE number - 25 times his yearly living expenses.

He said: I knew I needed $485,000 to retire and I had, in equity of my property, just under $760,000.

I went into my bosss office and he told me that my job would be there when I came back in six months time.

He thought I was having a quarter-life crisis.

Mike admitted that retirement, at 24, did take some getting used to.

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Its a bit jarring at first. You find a way to cope by filling time with hobbies, and at first for me, it was gaming.

Mike teaches others how to achieve FIRE on his Youtube channel, named Mike Rosehart and he has also established his own mentorship programme.

He coaches four men, who live in his rental properties, how to achieve their own financial independence.

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Excerpt from:

Dad-of-two retires at 24 after banning his wife from Starbucks and making a profit from their WEDDING - The Sun