What do you need to retire?

Of course, you can't talk about retiring early without running the numbers.  

So what do you need to retire?

Savings and investments.  This is the main target and source of income.  Everyone is going to have their own target, based on their retirement age and cost of living.  Let's consider it invested - more about that the amount and investing later.

Pensions may be a part of the main investment, but not all.  The minimum pension age is 62 in Sweden, but let's call it 65 in case of changes.  Retiring at 50, that means at least 15 years before any pension can be drawn.  

Add to that a place to live.  In our case a house, with no mortgage outstanding, and preferably low running costs.  Ideally be a place you're comfortable living with for many years to come.

Add to that a year (at least) of funds - enough to cover the first year without drawing from savings & investments.  That's a good test of your annual budget.

And that's it.  The most important steps will be calculating the annual budget, and then coming up with a target number for the savings and investments.