I know someone who studied Organic Chemestry and such in college, and comes from a family of doctors and nurses, who has decided to take a quick and rough track to early retirement with at least a million dollars. His plan as he described it to me involves working in managerial positions at various places (mostly restaurants), not spending money on expensive luxuries like new vehicles, fancy houses or vacations, and investing in long-term funds (he's looking at Vanguard as his primary investor, but is also researching others). He gets a lot of flack from his family, since working three restaurant jobs is low status compared to being a medical professional (My parents were also skeptical when I told them. Notice: my parents go to Florida every chance they get, in spite of all of their credit card debt and house/vehicle payments. And they just bought a freakin' Hummer and new cell phones and... Are not as rich as those would imply. -_- ).
But I can't do any of those things, and only have $1000 to work with at any given time (most of my money comes from disability benefits, which will end if I have more than $2000 in resources at the end of the month). My parents have implied that their assistance with student loans will end once I'm living on my own (Except that they know that my SSI payments are less than the total loan payments, and had better know that I'm stuck with them as gatekeepers and am not, in fact, going to learn Afghan languages to go work for the US government overseas).
All of which is to say that diverse investments and holding off on luxuries seems like a good idea, and is probably what I'd try if I actually had net positive income. Both of those require patience. Hopefully, not ten years type patience.
But this is just me and one guy I know. I'm sure there are cleverer strategies floating around here. I like that he's using low status work cleverly rather than aiming for higher status work and amassing debt in status signalling games, at least.
Can you please elaborate on your friend's plan? It sound interesting, and I'd like to see the details: how much he works per week, earnings, expenditures, expected net worth over time, etc.
Thus spake Eliezer:
It seems that many here might have outlandish ideas for ways of improving our lives. For instance, a recent post advocated installing really bright lights as a way to boost alertness and productivity. We should not adopt such hacks into our dogma until we're pretty sure they work; however, one way of knowing whether a crazy idea works is to try implementing it, and you may have more ideas than you're planning to implement.
So: please post all such lifehack ideas! Even if you haven't tried them, even if they seem unlikely to work. Post them separately, unless some other way would be more appropriate. If you've tried some idea and it hasn't worked, it would be useful to post that too.