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With his fraying sweatshirt and jeans, Derek Foster doesn't exactly give off an aura of money. He drives a Chevy Cavalier, shops at Wal-Mart and eschews restaurants in favour of home-cooked meals with his wife and kids. He doesn't even own a registered retirement savings plan, which would horrify most financial planners.

"RRSPs never made sense for me because my income was never high enough," he says.

Yet, a month shy of his 35th birthday, the former telemarketer and Radio Shack salesman has done what most hard-working Canadians spend decades trying to achieve: He has punched out of the working world.

"There will be no financial reason for me to ever get a job again," says Mr. Foster, who has used his free time to self-publish a book, called Stop Working, Here's How You Can, (http://www.stopworking.ca) that details how he escaped the rat race long before osteoporosis set in.

Retiring early used to mean taking a package at 55 or 60 after years of subservience to brutal bosses and soul-destroying commutes. Buy the right mutual funds and top up your RRSP and you could be playing Pebble Beach or piloting a catamaran into your sunset years, the financial industry tells us.

But Mr. Foster's new book and others like it -- including Dianne Nahirny's Stop Working, Start Living (http://www.smartmakeovers.com) and Alan Dickson's Free Parking and Advance to Go (http://www.freemoneypress.com) -- challenge the notion that financial freedom is obtainable only after decades of grinding sacrifice.

"People are told to work really hard, contribute to your RRSPs, save $2-million. What are you going to do with $2-million when you're 80 years old?" Mr. Foster asks.

Maybe you've decided retiring early could work for you, too. The only question is how to pay for food, clothing, shelter, heat, power, water, a car, telephone and university tuition for your kids.

It's not as hard as you think, Mr. Foster says. First, you have to build a nest egg -- a few hundred thousand dollars ought to suffice -- and make certain lifestyle choices, such as living in a small town where real estate is relatively inexpensive. It's also important to structure your finances to minimize taxes and maximize your eligibility for government assistance.

Experts agree it can be done.

"If you've got a certain amount of capital or if you are prepared to live at a reasonably low income you can make the Canadian system work for you," said Malcolm Hamilton, a principal at Mercer Human Resource Consulting.

In his book, Mr. Foster shows how. Canada's self-proclaimed "youngest retiree" lives in a $179,000 four-bedroom bungalow in Wasaga Beach, Ont., a resort community on the shores of Georgian Bay.

His family gets by on about $30,000 a year, drawn from several sources: dividends from a six-figure investment portfolio of blue-chip stocks and income trusts; rental income from a condominium in Ottawa; and the monthly Canada Child Tax Benefit, which is geared to low-income families with children. (His monthly CCTB cheque totals about $470 for two kids.) His wife also has a part-time job at a local ski hill.

One reason his family can live on such a low income is that he pays minimal income tax and his dividend and trust income is taxed favourably. Because he doesn't work, he pays no premiums for the Canada Pension Plan or Employment Insurance. Nor does he have to pay for dry cleaning, cafeteria lunches and other work-related expenses.

He hasn't had to forage for roots and berries -- yet. "You're not leading a Spartan existence on $30,000 a year," he says, adding he can't put a price on the time he is able to spend raising his two sons, aged 2 and 4.

Kissing the land of cubicles goodbye wouldn't have been possible, however, if Mr. Foster hadn't made some astute financial moves early on. As a university student in Ottawa in the early 1990s, he started setting aside $200 a month in an investing account. Any extra cash, such as a tax rebate or Christmas bonus, also got socked away. Even when he backpacked across Europe and spent a year working and scuba-diving in Australia, he kept up his $200 contributions.

He never earned a huge salary. His worst-paying job was as a telemarketer in Vancouver in 1996, where he pulled down $6 an hour. One of his better-paying positions was teaching English in South Korea, where he met his wife. His annual salary in the five years he worked there averaged about $25,000, but his cost of living was low thanks to subsidized rent.

When he started investing, he bought mutual funds, which earned heady returns in the early 1990s. But he gradually shifted focus to individual stocks, honing his skills by studying gurus like Peter Lynch and Warren Buffett and learning valuable lessons along the way. While living in Vancouver, for instance, he noticed a coffee chain called Starbucks that was popping up on every street corner. After studying the annual report, he bought the stock. It soared about 30 per cent in a matter of weeks. Then he sold -- a decision he regrets to this day.

"That was stupid. I should have just held on to it forever. It would have been worth about eight times as much now," he says.

Around the same time, he reaped big profits on stocks such as Pepsico Inc. and Tootsie Roll Industries Inc. As his investment portfolio grew, so did his appetite for risk.

In his most daring move, he put his entire portfolio into Philip Morris shares after the cigarette maker (now part of Altria Group Inc.) suffered a legal setback that depressed the stock price. Confident of a rebound, he borrowed on margin -- a strategy he doesn't recommend for everyone -- to maximize his exposure. It worked: By the time he sold, the stock was up 33 per cent.

Buying good stocks at distressed prices -- a strategy Mr. Buffett espouses -- continues to pay off for Mr. Foster, who focuses on easy-to-understand companies with a history of rising profits and dividends.

Last fall, he scooped up shares of Colgate-Palmolive Co. after the toothpaste maker's stock was hammered by a profit warning. The shares are up more than 25 per cent from their October low.

Having learned his lesson with Starbucks, he has no plans to sell Colgate-Palmolive. The same goes for other blue-chip holdings in his portfolio, which includes Rothmans Inc., Royal Bank of Canada, Corby Distilleries Ltd., Manulife Financial Corp., George Weston Ltd., Pembina Pipeline Income Fund, Canadian Oil Sands Trust and a dozen or so others.

"I've learned that once you find something good, just hold on to it," he says.

Mr. Foster was talking about stocks, but he might just as well have been referring to retirement. As the dividend cheques roll in, his goal now is to tick off his list of "things to do before I die," which include learning to play a musical instrument, growing a garden and doing a night of stand-up comedy.

He might even buy an RV and take his family across Canada. That's the sort of commute he could get used to.

Derek Foster

Age: 34

Job description: Retired

First job: Newspaper carrier

Most depressing job: Telemarketer. "It was the absolute worst job I've ever had, but it paid the bills, barely."

Hobbies: Writing his book, raising his two children, travelling, scuba diving.

Investing philosophy: "The surest way to invest and, hence, the quickest road to financial independence, is to buy high-quality, recession-proof companies that raise their dividends consistently over time."

Inspirations: Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch

Goals: Learn a musical instrument, do stand-up comedy.

Portfolio: Less than $500,000.