What is Early Retirement? How many years before I retire?

I routinely get asked by readers of my blog, about my age, how many years I have been saving, and when do I plan to retire.  There are others who write me asking about my definition of early retirement.  Would retiring at the age of 50 be called "early retirement"?  How about if you took a Voluntary Retirement option from your company, and then took up another less demanding job?  Does that meet the definition of early retirement? And so on and on.  Here is how I look at it, and it has nothing to do with your or my age, if you can believe it!!

Portfolio Strategy: Feb 7th, 2015: Banks Underperform

I have been putting my bets on financials for some time now, specifically focusing on banks.  I had written about this earlier in Dec 2014, and again in Jan 2015.  Banks have done very well over the past year as shown in the performance of the BANK NIFTY in the graph below.

Just in the last 6 months as shown in the picture, the BANK NIFTY has given returns of ~25%

How much should I save before I retire?

The critical question for all retirees is "Have I saved up enough money to last the remainder of my lifetime?"

I had written earlier, about how to calculate the corpus you need to be able to retire financially independent.  The amount you need depends on only 2 factors, your estimated annual expenses, and the number of years you need to live in retirement.