5 Years to Freedom Book review

I wanted to read 5 Years to Freedom: A Canadian Guide to Early Retirement by Réjean Venne as one of the five books in my personal finance resolutions for 2025. This book was written and published in 2021 and the author is a Canadian who left the corporate world and retired at the ages of 29 and 28 with three children. When I read this book, the author sounded familiar and I realize that I first read about him on Mark’s blog, My Own Advisor where he was interviewed in the post, Forget FIRE and Focus on Lifestyle. It’s a good read.

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Here’s my 5 Years to Freedom book review:

5 Years to Freedom: A Canadian Guide to Early Retirement Book Review

5 Years to Freedom is a book about the thought process and action steps behind early retirement. He was inspired after stumbling on Mr. Money Mustache (who many refer as the O.G. of the FIRE movement) and read all his blog posts, then 3 years later after implementing his plan, they also retired early under the age of 30.

In Part 1 he talks about what financial independence is and why you might want to retire early.

In Part 2, he goes into the nitty gritty of spending. How you can deflate your lifestyle by cutting out some big costs like childcare, high mortgage payments, high property taxes by moving to a LCOL (low cost of living area). Then he talks about the cost of having a car and how ditching the car (gasoline, maintenance, car loans) can really free up some expenses. Next is how to save money on groceries (buying bulk on items used regularly when they are on sale), and evaluating discretionary expenses.

Part 3 talks about saving your money, how to calculate your net worth, the importance of compound interest, and investing with real estate (here’s where the shocking store of their rental house is shared) and with equities.

In Part 4, he talks about actually retiring and how to craft an identity associated with retirement. He calls himself a stay at home parent instead of being retired. He also talks about the back up plan available in case he needs to survive a financial crisis.

What I LIked About 5 Years to Freedom

I liked that Réjean was very candid and detailed about his experience getting to early retirement. It didn’t sound like they made multi-six figure incomes which in my opinion is the typical recipe for FIRE. They cut the fat and focused on Lean FIRE which is changing the lifestyle drastically.

I also liked that this experience is not a typical FIRE experience of a dual income no kids household. He shows that it is possible to retire early and be stay at home parents even with children, who we all know can be expensive to raise.

What I Didn’t Like About 5 Years to Freedom

Some of the information that he espouses grated me the wrong way, interestingly I had never read some of these suggestions even though I think I read a lot of early retirement content.

One example of information that grated me the wrong way is contributing to the RESP for your children to get the CESG grant and THEN when they are of age to go to post-secondary, Réjean suggests taking back the portion (principal) that you contributed for yourself with no taxes or penalties. Then, he suggests just leaving the grant growth portion of the RESP for your child and have them pay for the rest so they can learn to be financially responsible.

He also recommends reducing your family income in order to qualify for grants for post-secondary education. He calculated that he would qualify for $7000 in grants for each of his 3 children based on his family’s current income.

Fortunately or unfortunately, Canada has a lot of income-based benefits that people tend to take advantage of. Child Care Benefit, the aforementioned grants for education, Pharmacare coverage for medications to name a few.

Also, I thought it was kind of sad his wife and him shared one cell phone. I feel that the amount I pay for my cell phone and the data associated with it is worth it, but maybe that’s my own phone addiction to work out.

Genymoney’s Thoughts on 5 Years to Freedom

5 Years to Freedom was an easy read and I think I would recommend this book to people who are interested in the financial independence retire early lifestyle.

I was shocked that he would buy real estate that sounded like the tenants were living in squalor. It sounded like a rooming house where people do drugs, don’t pay the rent, and don’t keep the place habitable. It worked out for his family in the end though but it certainly didn’t sound passive (and he acknowledged it is not passive). Currently though they sold their real estate rental properties and have traditionally ‘retired’ and rely on withdrawing a portion of their investment portfolio to support their lifestyle.

He does make a good point that a lot of what people pay for (property taxes, high mortgage payments) can be eliminated if you are okay living in a lower cost of living area. He is fortunate that his family (parents) live in Northern Ontario too. Eliminating some of these things really does cut 5 figures from the annual expenses.

He talked about buying non-perishables in bulk, especially when the item goes on sale. I took his advice to heart when I bought two boxes of granola bars the other day at Costco and looked closely at the expiry date.

It would certainly be very interesting to see if this family of four is still spending less than $30,000 CAD a year on their expenses. My hunch is no, especially with his growing children and they perhaps are involved in extracurricular activities. We know that those tend to be very expensive.

It would be also interesting to see where in their budget the Canada Child Benefit is being used since his family likely qualifies for the full benefit given the adjustlow income, which is about an additional $19,710 per year if his three children are between the ages of 6 and 17.

I’m not bitter or anything (even though I might sound like it LOL because we haven’t received any Canada Child Benefit for a while) but there are people who are smart and know how to extract value from the system they are in.

Have you read 5 Years to Freedom? What do you think of the book?