'We're living the simple life': I was a fisherman and my wife was a nurse. We retired with $6 million. Here's how we did it.

MW 'We're living the simple life': I was a fisherman and my wife was a nurse. We retired with $6 million. Here's how we did it.

By Quentin Fottrell

'It probably makes little sense, given our lifestyle, to obsess over retirement accounts'

"Being able to give - and to participate in humanitarian causes, education and healthcare - feels deeply rewarding." (Photo subjects are models.)

Dear Quentin,

Find more satisfaction in giving, rather than chasing happiness through a high-consumption lifestyle.

Long before our net worth grew to well over $6 million, my wife and I made it a practice to donate 20% of our gross personal income to charity. (Not to random charities with high expense ratios, or to prosperity preachers who suggest that helping them get rich will make you rich.)

My wife was a registered nurse, and I, as a commercial fisherman, worked for years while we lived and saved on only slightly more than what crew-share employees earned.

I have to admit that when I was younger, my philosophy was simply to make sure we covered the 20% in donations and then lived fairly well beyond that. Over time, this evolved into a belief that the more you have, the more responsibility you carry.

With that in mind - unless there is some kind of crisis - it probably makes little sense, given our lifestyle, to obsess over retirement accounts, savings accounts, stock portfolios and private property, or holding company accounts relative to our fairly simple living expenses.

So I suppose this is just advice from a fairly average high-school graduate - echoing what many financial books also say. Here's our financial mantra:

-- Spend less than you earn.

-- Educate yourself about investing.

-- Don't spend or borrow more than necessary on a car.

-- If possible, avoid excessive housing debt and pay it down as quickly as you can.

-- Don't envy highfliers trying to impress others with unnecessary indulgences - something that often creates resentment from those less fortunate.

-- Never stop being curious about opportunities, but don't get so wrapped up in earning money that your family suffers. (Of course, business debt is very different from personal-lifestyle debt.)

But I can say that being able to give - and participate in humanitarian causes, education and healthcare - feels deeply rewarding. Even religious causes, which many believe have consequences far beyond this short life on Earth, are worth thoughtful consideration.

I don't claim to have everything in life figured out, but we're living the simple life. In the end: keep life - and investing - simple.

Retired Happy

You can email The Moneyist with any financial and ethical questions at qfottrell@marketwatch.com. The Moneyist regrets he cannot reply to questions individually.

Related: My brother has led a life of chaos and financial ruin. What is my moral obligation?

Investing and saving in a slow and steady manner requires human qualities that are always easy to sustain: patience, stamina, a work/life balance and resisting the call of wild consumerism.

Dear Happy,

Your secret sauce involved a plate full of fish.

You embarked on a career that you found fulfilling, I expect, and also one that had a healthy income. As a commercial fisherman, together with your wife's salary, you were both able to provide yourselves with a generous and bountiful retirement. It's a success story of taking every day, every boat and every round of the hospital ward one day at a time.

It seems simple enough, right? But investing and saving in a slow and steady manner requires human qualities that are always easy to sustain: patience, stamina, a work/life balance and resisting the call of wild consumerism. And, like this hearty fellow who invested in Nvidia (NVDA) several years ago, you may even have had a dash of good fortune and/or luck.

Your decision to effectively tithe 20% of your income rather than the traditional 10% - tithing comes from an old English word for tenth - was supercharged by your superspendthrift ways and ensured that you and your wife were not either self-absorbed or self-aggrandizing while amassing a considerable fortune in the eyes of most would-be retirees.

What does that tell me? It says that not only did you and your wife - who had one of the most important jobs in the world along with schoolteachers, and one of the most underpaid and underappreciated - live simply by, say, driving an old car without comparing and despairing about what your neighbors had. You also stayed humble.

Impulsivity and ego are the enemies of sound financial management.

It's not easy to resist choosing a lifestyle to which you would like to become accustomed, especially when friends and family might be telling you about their house purchase or spectacular kitchen extension or latest vacation to the Far East. Finance and psychology are familiar bedfellows. One constantly impacts the other.

When there was a market correction, did you sell? When there was a pandemic, did you go crazy trying to pick individual stocks that you thought would soar - like Peloton - only to see them plummet just as fast? If you faced challenges in your business or burned out in your career, did you throw in the towel or step back and breathe, and ask what your body was telling you?

I suspect that as God made you, he matched you, and your wife and your good self have been occupying that emotional middle ground. You have avoided great depths of despair and panic, and even greater heights of self-congratulation and ecstasy. Impulsivity and ego, after all, are the enemies of sound financial management. That's my way of saying good for you.

I'm reminded of the couple who were given a recommendation of an adviser by their neighbors. And while they started saving early, paying off their mortgage and driving a secondhand car while their neighbors bought the fanciest new automobile on the market and lived high off the hog, they retired early and their now resentful neighbors are no longer their friends.

Finance and psychology are familiar bedfellows. One impacts the other.

Your story, outlook and philosophy can also be applied to someone with $6,000 or $60,000 or $600,000. The trick, if you could call it that, is to find your lane and spend/save in accordance with the life that makes you happy. For some people, it's a modest home, with a mortgage that's paid off in early middle age, and a job that brings them satisfaction.

For others, like this woman who has had a correspondence with the Moneyist for nearly a decade. In September 2018, she wrote to the Moneyist to ask how she should invest her windfall of over $150,000. It was life-changing. She didn't have a degree, worked for $15 an hour, had a part-time job at $10 an hour, and said she'd never earn more than $30,000 a year.

She paid off her car and bought a tiny home, which she owns free and clear. She deposited $70,000 in a high-yield savings account. She topped up her retirement portfolio and invested $10,000 between very safe dividend stocks and exchange-traded funds. She also spent $7,000 on dental work in Mexico. Financial security means different things to different people.

You educated yourself about investing. That is key. You want your money to make money when you are either ready to stop work, or your body is saying the time has come to hang up your boots and fishing line or white sneakers and nurse's apron. Tech investors did well these past 15 years, especially the Magnificent Seven, but so will people who

Related: My in-laws, 95, are leaving us $250K. What's the smart way to invest this money?

More columns from Quentin Fottrell:

'I'm a big fan of DIY investing': I'm 64 and moving to the U.S. I have $2.6 million, but no Social Security. Will I be OK?

'I didn't ask a man to rear-end my car': Social Security is replacing my disability benefits. Will the fund run out of money?

'I'm simply exhausted': I'm 55 and have $1.3 million for retirement. Can I retire next year?

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-Quentin Fottrell

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March 19, 2026 10:22 ET (14:22 GMT)

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