If we knew the answer we wouldn’t be mindlessly scrolling to cope with our lives.

Chill bro. Killing my high

Are you currently in college? If so, what is your major and what do you want to do for a career? and end up working a crappy job I hate In this scenario, is the job just boring, or does it pay poorly/below your ability to save, or both? Nobody's going to be able to give you advice on your feelings about a job. How can I turn it around and be financially free before 30 Are you asking how to become financially independent from a job in the 8 years between college graduation? You'll probably need to develop or invent something that a company would like to buy the rights to. Random gigs will not lead to financial independence for the vast vast majority of people. Skills that pay well are generally in areas that are undesirable for most people, like working on oil rigs in the high seas or specialty welding. Think of gigs similar to the show 'Deadliest Catch'. Your best bet if you are going to college is to select a career that is likely to lead to a steady high paying job - a specialty doctor (but you won't start making real money till after you're 30), engineering (electrical, mechanical, or chemical - avoid computer or software involved majors), or fields like that.

If I stick to my plan I could’ve retired at 30. I did go to college though. Graduated at 21 with a bachelors in business and about $20k of student debt(worked summers and part time during the year to help pay for school). Had all student loans paid off by 22. Bought a house at 24. Renovated the house properly while also working 60 hours a week for 3 years. Now if I would’ve kept the house, and continued working from age 27-30, and sold the house at age 30? I would’ve had about $600k in retirement. Which is enough to retire how I want to(in SE Asia or in a small RV touring around the US). What I actually did was sell the house at 27, and travel the world for basically the next 4 years using the funds from the house sale. Still planning to be fully retired by age 40 now though. In hindsight would’ve done things differently but that’s mostly because the insane housing price explosion, I sold in 2018 right before things skyrocketed. Still no regrets though with all the traveling I’ve done. And no I didn’t have a penny of outside financial help. Not for my first car, not for groceries, nothing. My parents even had me start paying groceries and my phone bill at age 16. Started working at 14 under the table for a neighbor.

It doesn't sounds like you made a bad choice - you made the most exciting decision you could have made at age 27 and went traveling. You're focusing a lot on the opportunity cost of the money, but are you thinking enough about the opportunity cost of never experiencing those 4 (likely) amazing years?

You can’t. The easiest way to financial freedom is to live below your means and save and invest. You can’t do that with a low paying crappy job. You can look up jobs that pay the most and how to get there.

You're asking how you can make so much money in 12 years or less that you never have to work after 30?

Build a book of business. Lawn care, car detailing, power washing, other ongoing service. Build up that book. Hire someone. Continue building. Hire a few more people, largely take a managerial approach. Keep hiring and then sell your book.

Marry rich

Become a famous musician, some became free financially and some free from burden of life. (Google 27 club)

There's so much luck to it. The only way to increase your surface area is to do things or learn things that put you in proximity to big payday opportunities. It does work - but relying on luck means forget about timeline, that's not under your control.

Win the powerball

If you are able to live off very little its possible to work part-time for long-term. My goal is to have living costs so low that working is hardly necessary.

Go to college for engineering. Get a $80-$110k offer at age 21/22 fresh out of college at a major automotive company in the Midwest. Rent a $1000 apartment. Drive a paid for cash car. Save like crazy, thousands a month. It’s doable. You’ll have to live extremely frugally or in SE Asia or South America probably. But it would work. You’d basically want to be saving minimum $40k a year.

Extreme luck or extreme sacrifice, possibly both.

find the highest paying job you can and live way below your means (switch jobs every 3-5 years for 20-30% pay increase), save anything and everything, suffer for the next 10 years of your life and invest. If you have put in the work and lived frugaly you should be able to be financially free by mid 30s or early 40s. other than this win the lottery.

There is virtually no chance you will be financially free before 30. You would be very fortunate to be financially free by 50. Get real.

Sales. Stock Market. Figure it out like the rest of us. Those will be the only two cents I'll drop in your cup, you bum.

make 6 figures and save every cent

That is very difficult. There's a reason why most people work until at least 65 before they have a chance of retiring and some work until death. Wealth takes time to build and it's difficult to build. I think it would only be possible with very high income starting at a young age. If your making 500k a year starting from maybe age 20, manage to avoid being laid off for 7 years or your business or wherever your source of income comes from stays that range or higher and you live broke in a basement, take transit everywhere and invest everything it might be possible to retire before 30 in your late 20s.

If you are not afraid of labor you can start in the oilfield and easily turn it into a business. Even if it’s literally manual labor you could start a business with lease crews. Assuming you have some kind of ability since you’ve been to college there are all kinds of things that you could start out doing in the oilfield and en up making 150k+ in a couple of years . The thing to remember is almost everything in the oilfield is contracted out. Labor, electricians, guys running equipment, trucking. Literally everything. So there’s lots of opportunities to start businesses where you can start out solo.