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Former Amazon staffer, who began working as a janitor at 16, retires at 39 on ₹1.6-crore pension
Jamal Robinson gained spotlight after he retired at 39 at a time when his career was taking off, all after working for 23 years
Jamal Robinson, a computer engineer who previously worked with Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and Intel, retired in his late 30s and now lives in Dubai as an American expat.
According to CNBC Make It, Robinson began his career by working as a church janitor at the age of 14, followed by a stint at Taco Bell for minimum wage while attending school at the age of 16.
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How it started
He said it was when he was 17 that he decided to retire at 45. “I didn't see a lot of people that were happy with work…In my mind, I always that it make the most sense to compress that amount in my life,” Robinson explained.
However, he achieved his objectives six years earlier, at the age of 39, at a time when he was earning $1.1 million (over ₹9.63 crore) per year. Robinson retired in 2024 with $3.5 million (over ₹30.65 crore) in savings and investments and moved to Dubai on a pension of about $185,000 (about ₹1.62 crore) a year.
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From rags to riches
Since he didn't grow up with a lot of money and began working at a young age, Robinson said he knew “the value of money”. He recalled that when his friends wanted to buy $200 shoes, he realised how many hours it'd take for him to make that much money.
Keeping his learnings in mind, with every salary bump he got, he also raised the percentage of money he saved. “I went from 30% to 50% to 80% and up to [nearly] 90%. And that would excite me more, because I knew that that accelerated my goal to ultimately retire,” Robinson said.
Spending after retirement
The former Amazon staffer “pays” himself from his investments using principles of the 4% rule, which states that you should be able to comfortably live off of 4% of your investments in your first year of retirement.
“I still, even to this day, view myself as this minimum wage guy making $5.15 an hour,” Robinson says, adding, “I would make a million dollars a year, and I would struggle to spend over $50 on an item.”
According to his budget for December 2024, he spent over $4,400 on Airbnb and hotels, over $2,840 on health and wellness, $2,103 on groceries and dining out and $743 for servicing his car and on taxis.
