29-yr-old IIT Bombay graduate who worked at Google says he has enough money to retire

IIT Bombay alumnus, Daniel George, is a 29-year-old AI specialist. He says he has earned enough that he can opt for an early retirement now, reported Business Insider. In 2018, George was just 24 years old when he finished his BTech from IIT Bombay and got a summer internship in the US at Google with a salary package of $265,000 (approx Rs 2.20 crore) a year.

During his time at Google, he started saving money so that if he ever planned to go back to India and retire, he has enough money. He stated, “I did the math and realised that after a couple of years of saving, I could easily go back to India and retire if I wanted to.”

He further revealed that working at Google was like a dream come true for him and was like a “magical fairyland”. Google offered unlimited food, drinks and more facilities like ping-pong tables, video-game rooms, soccer fields, gym, tennis courts and free massage at office. After working for a year at Google, he realised that he was earning quite a lot of money but was paying around half of it in taxes.

This is when George started to optimise his retirement account to minimise his tax liability and started investing as much money as possible in these retirement accounts.

Speaking about how he started saving money, he explained, “I walked or biked to work, so I never bought a car. I ate three meals daily at Google, so I rarely paid for food. Even though housing is usually very expensive in Silicon Valley, my rent was quite low because I was splitting an apartment with my friends."

He added that though he saw many buying expensive cars and houses at that, he was determined to invest his money. He said, “The more I saved early on, the longer my money had to grow and compound exponentially. I could always move to low-cost-of-living cities and buy a much nicer house later. I was still having a great time at Google and never felt like I was sacrificing my quality of life."

George ended up investing over $75,000 (approx Rs 62 lakh) every year in the tax-advantaged account. He met his future wife at Google, who was also an AI scientist. By 2020, he had enough money to go back to India and retire but decided to stay and switch jobs to JP Morgan as AI lead where his compensation was doubled.

He revealed, "Even as my income and net worth increased, I still wasn't living extravagantly, other than eating out for every meal because I didn't want to cook. My only possessions were clothes, a mattress, a bed, and a 65-inch TV. At 27, I had reached my first million dollars in savings. My stock portfolio had done well, and I'd been investing all my paychecks and the large bonuses of 70 percent of my base salary from JP Morgan."

In August 2023, George, at 29, cofounded a startup called ThirdEar AI. He said, “Now that I never need to worry about earning a salary, I can afford to risk starting my own company. Eventually, when my wife and I decide to settle down and potentially have kids, I'm confident that all our investments will earn enough passive income to meet our family expenses. Because I invested early, I won't have to worry later.”

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