“I think about money all the time”: How this savings-obsessed couple plans to retire at 50
A dental hygienist and a tech product manager share their financial-planning strategies
Who: Bree Payne, 31, dental hygienist, and Luke Alexander, 31, tech product manager Where: Moss Park Current savings: $880,000 Cash needed to retire: $2.5 million Retirement age: 50, in 2044
Luke and I are both from Huntsville. My dad worked in forestry, and my mom was a server who started her own cleaning business. In Grade 9, they told my sister and me that we’d be in charge of paying for our post-secondary education. I started working serving jobs, sometimes two at a time. All my tips were in cash. I loved counting and stacking them up. I became obsessed with becoming rich. I started my TFSA when I was 18 and my RRSP when I was 19.
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I saved enough to go to the University of Waterloo and study science, although my parents helped out with rent and some groceries. After my first year, I took a year off to work, then switched into the dental hygiene program at Georgian College. I graduated in 2016 without any debt and with significant savings. In 2018, when I was 24, I bought a house in Huntsville with a $62,000 down payment. It was a four-bedroom, two-bathroom bungalow that was only $312,000 because it was a foreclosure sale. It wasn’t in great condition, so I spent two years renovating it.
In the summer of 2020, I met Luke on a dating app. We talked about money on our first date. He asked me what my hobbies were, and I told him that I really liked personal finance. It turns out he did too. Within a year of dating, we were sharing each other’s money-tracking spreadsheets. In 2021, he bought a 650-square-foot one-bed-plus-den condo in Moss Park. Then, in February of 2022, I rented out my bungalow in Huntsville and moved in with him. We got married in August of 2024, so now we’re tracking our expenses together.
I learned about early retirement on social media in 2020, just after Luke and I met. At first I thought, if we worked hard, we could retire in our 40s. But I started to suffer from musculoskeletal issues, which is common with dental hygienists. The job is tough on your back, neck and hands. I realized that it wasn’t worth sacrificing my health to hit an arbitrary goal. You need to strike a balance, so we’ve started prioritizing flexibility. We set ourselves a new goal: to retire at 50 with a $2.5-million investment portfolio.
As we’ve accumulated more wealth, we’ve relaxed a bit on our savings strategies. We used to save $7,000 to $8,000 a month; now that has dropped to between $3,000 and $4,000. We used to rarely order takeout or go out for dinner, but now we eat out once a week. And we’re spending more money on travel. I don’t want to miss out on activities that we can do only while we’re young. In 2025, we went on a two-week safari in South Africa that cost $20,000, and we have no regrets. We don’t plan to spend that much on travel every year, obviously. But I would choose not to purchase any clothes for an entire year if it meant we could go on an amazing vacation.
We’ve also learned that you have to be ready to pivot. Last year, I took a medical leave from my work. Now we’re just living off of Luke’s income, which luckily is more than $150,000. I’m not planning to return to dental hygiene, but I have enough saved that I can take some time to figure out next moves. Ultimately, we may still work beyond our official “retirement” age, but that decision will be driven by our interests and not by financial constraints. We’re hoping to start a family soon, and having the option for me to stay at home with the kids for a few years is important to us too.
Even though we’re in a good financial position, money is still a source of stress and a bit of an obsession. I think about money all the time. But I’d much rather be someone who overthinks a financial choice, like whether to Uber or take transit somewhere, than someone who spends without thinking.
Andrea Yu is a freelance journalist based in Toronto. She reports on a wide variety of topics including business, real estate, culture, design, health, food, drink and travel. Aside from Toronto Life, her writing has appeared in the Globe and Mail, Chatelaine and Cottage Life.
