u/Illustrious-Cow-2513

I’m 28M, single, no kids. I live in a tiny coffin apartment (studio) with no plans on buying a house anytime soon. I like how low maintenance and easy my life is right now. Apartment costs me around $1k a month. In total my bills total around $3k a month. I plan on retiring early, but I do want to enjoy life a little bit while I’m still young.

Thing is though I still don’t have a 401k. I technically haven’t saved anything for retirement. Here is what I got so far:

Checking: $5k
HYSA: $94k
401k/Roth/etc: ZERO
Brokerage: ZERO
Property: ZERO
Assets: ZERO

Student Loans: $44k (ignoring this since I pay very little monthly, hoping this can be forgiven one day by the government)

Income: $80k/year

My net worth is $1k short of hitting $100k, hovering at 99k. But I’m not ready to hit $100k quite yet and take finances too seriously. Feel like I’m wasting my youth obsessing. This is why I’m considering quitting my corporate job and taking a 2 year break where I just chill, relax, travel a bit and have fun and redefine myself. I expect my spendings to be a little more than they are now for this reason, and I also plan on purchasing a dog and a parrot. My goal is to essentially get back to work when Im down to like $10k left. Till then I plan on living a “retired” life.

Wondering how much this will set me back from my goal of retiring early by age 50 and getting out of the rat race for good.

As in having upscale amenities, bars, restaurants, stores, extremely low crime, etc. Hear me out, we’re much closer to the beach, and now with Complete 540 people in those other areas will realize that they can get much more house for their money and still get to work on time. We’re also much closer to downtown Raleigh. Location wise we have those places beat. I think developers have realized this hence so many new builds in recent years, especially in the White Oak area. People who got priced out in those places are buying here. As more people come more amenities will come to meet the demand. Garner’s population went up by 15k since 2020. 7k in just the past two years alone. That’s a very significant jump and it tells me it’s a town on a rise. The two neighbors next to me have out of state license plates (PA and NJ), so they seem to be coming here for a better life. It’s like what I saw in Cary in the early 2010s with people coming there for affordability + safety.

What do you think? Wishful thinking?

Can anyone recommend me some good non-chain restaurants in the White Oak community of Garner? I moved down here last month and have been struggling to find good places to eat. I previously lived in Morrisville and Cary and really miss how dense the food scene there is. Can anyone recommend some nice coffee shops and tap bars as well?

Also, does anyone happen to know if there are plans on opening new shopping centers or stores down here? Like the type of places that exist in Morrisville and Cary like Trader Joe’s, Wegmans, Harris Teeter, etc. looking for slightly more “concierge” type places than Poop Lion, that doesn’t attract criminals.. There’s so many new builds down here but the only thing we have is that area where Target is, and I guess Food Lion isn’t that far but I’ve seen sketchy behavior in both these places. Maybe I’m just too used to living in Morrisville/Cary which is apparently the safest place to live in America. I went to the Sheetz nearby at 9 pm last night and rushed to check out feeling unsafe. Never had that in Morrisville/Cary lol.

There’s a sea of new builds down here, there’s gotta be something more than Chipotle, Chick Fil A, Panera,, etc for us. We need more local bistros, Pho restaurants, NY pizza, more Mediterranean, more Indian, etc. There’s obviously a high demand for all that now.

Thank god for the Mexican food trucks. Feel like they’re even better down here. They’ve kept me well fed the past month lol