“People say a kid costs $17,000 a year. We’re doing it for $6,000”: This couple didn’t let parenthood keep them from early retirement

Who: Kristy Shen, 43, and Bryce Leung, 43, computer engineers Where: Davisville Retired at: 32, in 2015 Cash at retirement: $1 million Current savings and investments: $2.9 million

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Kristy: Bryce and I graduated from university in 2006 and got jobs in computer engineering. Back then, I thought we’d work until we were 65. We’d saved some money and were looking to buy a house in Greektown when the work of computer engineers started getting outsourced overseas. I felt like I had to over-perform to keep my job. I was working 60-hour weeks until, in 2012, my co-worker’s lung collapsed. He almost died. Apparently, his doctor attributed it to stress and overworking. I have no idea if it was true, but I realized I didn’t want to buy a house with a 25-year mortgage just to collapse from stress and die.

Bryce: Our original plan was to figure out a way for Kristy to become a writer while I kept working. Instead, our research led us to financial bloggers.

Kristy: A light bulb switched on—rather than putting all our savings toward a house, we could build an investment portfolio and use the dividends to retire early. We already had good incomes: a combined $160,000 a year, plus $500,000 in savings. We just needed to go into hyperdrive and start putting away 70 per cent of our earnings. In 2012, we set a goal to build an investment portfolio worth $1 million by 2017.

Bryce: We were lucky to have very low rent—we paid $800 a month for a 500-square-foot apartment in Greektown. It had downsides: the walls were thin, and we didn’t have laundry.

Kristy: Cooking all our meals at home saved us up to $1,500 a month. We’d been spending around $400 a month going out for drinks or stocking up at the LCBO, so we started bottling our own wine. It costs only $2 or $3 a bottle.

Bryce: We didn’t own a car. During a TTC strike, we ran to work. After that, we decided to cancel our gym memberships and transit passes and just keep running. Thankfully our offices had showers. We had a car share, but it cost only $30 or $40 a month.

Kristy: We reached our savings goal early, in just three years, and officially retired in 2015. My parents were not supportive. My mom thought I was an idiot for not buying a house. We didn’t speak to each other for six months. My dad kept sending me job listings and telling me to go back to work.

Bryce: We gave up our apartment and thought we’d travel for a year, then settle down in a smaller city like Waterloo or Hamilton. But, once we started travelling, we loved it.

Kristy: We thought it would cost $100,000 a year, but we were able to do it for only $40,000 by balancing more expensive destinations, like Portugal and Spain, with cheaper locations in Southeast Asia. We saved money by staying in cheap Air­bnbs, using points and applying for travel credit cards. While we travelled, we wrote a book called Quit Like a Millionaire, which was published in 2019.

Bryce: When the pandemic hit, we came home. At first, we stayed at Airbnbs, which had become incredibly cheap since there were no tourists. Eventually, we rented a one-bedroom apartment at Yonge and Eglinton for $1,500.

Kristy: It was around this time that we decided to have a child. The research said raising a kid cost about $17,000 a year. I was worried, but I knew we could do it wisely. Our son was born in 2023, and we decided not to upgrade our house for the first two years of his life. It’s not always easy. During sleep training, he slept in our bedroom while we slept on the sofa bed.

Bryce: We save a lot of money on child care since we both aren’t working. And while we ordered takeout a lot in the first few months, we’ve gone back to making everything ourselves.

Kristy: Our total expenses are still under $60,000 a year, but we know that number will increase. We’ll have to move to a two-bedroom soon, which will up our rent by about $700 a month. Our son’s food costs will increase as he grows, but we’ll stop needing diapers and baby gear. I think it will balance out.

Bryce: Kristy and I thought we were done with travelling, but we started to get the itch again after our son was born. We did a short family trip to Mexico in 2024 and a three-month-long trip to Spain in 2025. They both went well, so now we’re thinking about whether we can be nomadic and homeschool our son. It’s more expensive travelling with a kid—we need airport hotels after long flights, for example, so we can all recuperate. But it’s also fun to see the world through his eyes.

Kristy: Right now, our investment portfolio, which is mainly low-cost index ETFs, gives us dividends of about $70,000 a year, and we mostly live off that. We also wrote a second book, which is an additional source of income.

Bryce: The income from our book and related speaking engagements ranges from $30,000 to $100,000 per year. It’s variable, so we don’t rely on it for long-term planning.

Kristy: Sometimes I cannot believe that this is my life, especially considering how I was raised. I was born in a small village in China without running water. My parents, at one point, raised our family on the equivalent of 44 cents a day. Travelling the world with my family and having a multimillion-dollar portfolio is unbelievable.

Bryce: What we’re doing doesn’t require you to be that smart or lucky or even to have a high income. We know people who have gone from being broke or earning $40,000 a year to becoming millionaires. People forget that you get promotions and raises over time. No one starts with a six-figure salary. We certainly didn’t. You just need to understand how to save more than you spend, how to invest and then let the stock market and the power of time do the rest.