The Best $48K I Spent To Retire 10 Years Early
Written by
Cindy Lamothe
Edited by
Rebekah Evans
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Early retirement is often framed as a grind: earn more, save harder, rinse and repeat. But occasionally, a single well-placed expense does more than years of optimization.
GOBankingRates spoke with Joseph Keshi, CEO of Keshman Property Management, about the best funds that helped him retire 10 years earlier. Here’s what he had to share.
Shortened the Timeline With $48K
When Keshi retired 10 years early, he had spent $48,000 on educating himself about real estate, setting up his legal structure, his accounting system and analyzing deals.
“Which allowed me to invest into money making assets which then replaced my earned income faster, as opposed to the normal way to retire,” he said.
That money wasn’t spent chasing shortcuts or hype. It went toward building clarity — learning how to underwrite deals properly, structure debt conservatively, avoid costly mistakes and understand cash flow at a level where decisions were driven by numbers, not hope.
Instead of learning through trial and error over decades, the learning curve was compressed into a few intensely focused years. The result wasn’t just better investments, but a repeatable system — one that produced predictable income, reduced risk and accelerated the path to financial independence.
Turning Uncertainty Into Certainty
For Keshi, every dollar went toward learning, underwriting, avoiding bad purchases, structuring debt properly and building reserves.
“And understanding cash flow math all to create certainty where guessing was before and decades into several intensely concentrated years,” he explained.
The focus wasn’t on getting lucky or timing the market — it was on eliminating avoidable mistakes. By understanding the numbers deeply and stress-testing decisions before committing capital, uncertainty was steadily replaced with confidence.
What typically takes decades of experience was condensed into a disciplined, repeatable process.
Fewer surprises, fewer setbacks and far more control over outcomes — turning investing from a gamble into a measured, intentional strategy.
Letting the Math Do the Work
Keshi explained that being ready for early retirement went like this: passive income exceeded living costs through rental yield, controlled leverage, tax efficiency, reinvestment discipline and long-term thinking (not market timing nor luck).
Paying attention to the latter, he added, would involve enhancing skills, preserving wealth to avoid and compress lifestyle inflation, acquiring assets that pay monthly dividends.
“And keeping your eyes glued on the net cash flow, not the account balance,” Keshi added.
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