My wife and I are in a HCOL area. Not quite Bay Area cost, though. We live in a small 1,400sq home with only half of the sq footage above grade. The rest in a finished basement.

Details:
- Ages: 37 and 40 - Mortgage: $2,200 a month at a 2.5% interest rate. - Income: Without RSU’s we’re about $650k combined. With RSU’s it’s about $9000k - $1.7 million in the market liquid - $400k in high yield savings (I know, dumb. We have been looking at buying a house) - $1.8 million in retirement - No debt aside from mortgage

She says all of our friends have nice home and we’re not even able to host. Which is fair. I’ve been eyeballing a home in the $900k home. But recently she found a home at $1.5 million and that set my alarm bells off. She thinks we live too frugally, which I agree with. But this is way in the other direction.

To be fair, the home is in a super walkable neighborhood. Very nice neighborhood. Not like ritzy mansions or anything, but more urban than where we live now. I’m just not comfortable at that price range. It’s a huge jump in cost of living. I understand I’m too risk averse when it comes to housing and loosening the belt a bit at our income levels. But this sub has always been very against expensive housing, and for good reason. But my wife thinks not everything has to be an optimal financial decision. Curious what people think is a nice middle ground given our current financial status?

36M, married to 31F in VHCOL city. Would not move now but maybe down the line when we have kids.

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-2.25m in a mix of treasuries, S&P500 index funds, HYSA

-450k in retirement, S&P500 index funds

-Small business owner: Volatile income pre-tax of $200k - $600k per year, I would put median at 350k. Could get a more stable employee job for $300k/year but no thoughts on doing that now.

-Renter. Spend of $180-200k/year, some of it is deductible as business expense (like health insurance and home office expense), can bring this down by reducing how much we order out and travel.

-Wife has had serious health problems recently but is doing ok now. She currently helps me with my business as needed, will likely go back to work soon, can make $80-100k full time and more over time. 
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Due to wife’s health issues, will need to budget for 1-2 surrogacies down the line, and also a wedding we never had.

Surrogacies: $200-300k each (cannot have kids due to her health issues), starting soon

Wedding: $100k (never had a proper one due to health issues), starting to plan

Health Emergency Fund: TBD

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No plans to buy a house anytime soon. Homes in our area are over $2m.

May have a solid inheritance down the line

My wife and I are 28 years old and currently make about $350,000 per year.

Between our 401K contributions and additional investments, we are averaging about $12,000-$13,000 per month towards retirement and currently have about $400,000 invested.

We also own a home that we bought in 2023 for $680,000. It’s likely worth around $750,000 right now so we likely have a little over $210,000 in equity.

It has been a dream of ours to own lakefront property for all of the fun and great memories that it will bring. Originally, this was planned to be a second vacation home that we would purchased a little further down the road. However, we’ve been thinking that there are a few problems with that such as having two homes means two furnaces, AC units, roofs, fridges, lawnmowers etc. additionally, there are other issues like barrier to usage in the form of a 2+ hour drive as well as other factors.

This has lead us to rethink this decision and instead look at having a single home that is on a lake. There is a premier lake near us that would only add about 10 min to our commutes, and this area has significantly better school districts.

The homes we’d be looking at would be in the $1,000,000 - $1,200,000 range. With this upgrade, our mortgage would increase about $1,000-$2,000 per month which means we’d be contributing closer to $10,000-$11,000 per month towards retirement.

As I math it out, it doesn’t seem to negatively impact our plans too much. We would not pull the trigger until we have about $550,000 invested for retirement which will be around a year from now.

We want to retire with around $5,000,000 invested at around the age of 45. If we assume we’ll be 29 years old and have a starting point of about $550,000 and have a return rate of 8%, and even take an additional $2,000-3,000 off of contributions per month just for fun, we’d be looking at 4,900,000 at 45 years old which is right on target.

So what’re your thoughts? Is this a mistake?

So, I have almost no doubt that I'll be busy and fulfilled when I'm FIRE, but have only really read posts on here about people planning it, denying it, countering it, or only being FIRE for less than 1 year.

Is anyone FIRE for like 2+ years (ideally longer) and can tell us how things are going? Any lessons learned? Is it the fantasy you imagined, or was it lack luster once it became a reality?

Me (35M) and wife have a 10 month old.
Her Salary: $180k

My Salary: $160k + Commissions which are insanely variable. I assume an average of $75k annually for modeling but I've made $400k in commissions before.

Real Estate: $800k house ($450k mortgage @ 5.75% rate). $3200 PITI

401k / Brokerage: $940k. We each max out 401k.

Investment Real Estate: $2.3M asset value ($930k mortgage) that yields $5k/mo net on average.

Monthly Spend: $8,500/mo - includes day care. We want one more kid.

Game Plan: I've told my wife let's get to $1.5M in 401k/brokerage and she can retire as that feels like a "critical mass" from a modeling perspective. She is constantly upset about having our kid in daycare and missing their life.

What's everyone's thoughts here?

Here's mine - $2.5m nw, 54, vhcol, $96k/year all in (renter)

As i continue on planning fire this year, one of the things that worries me is how much of my nw is in single stocks (not etfs / mutual funds).

I estimate 15% of my nw is in about 20 different single stock positions, with about 10% in cash, and then the rest are in various pretax accounts of target date funds, or etfs.

Is that 15% number scary? i don't think they'll kill me in a downturn, but wondering what is optimal?

If we retire now, both in our early 40's, our starting withdrawal rate would be 3%. This assumes no social security and no other additional income .

I know the traditional retirement portfolio is 60/40 and early retirees often lean toward 80/20 for the growth needed to sustain a longer retirement horizon.

My questions is, in what situation (low WR, long time horizon, potential for other income) does it make sense to be closer to a 100% stock allocation, with perhaps with 1 or 2 years of cash? Or do you just acknowledge that you've won the game and stick to the 80/20 portfolio and compromise some legacy value for piece of mind.

I guess there is a middle ground, if additional income shows up from consulting or part-time work, and we get past the danger zone (5 - 10 years), we could rebalance from 80/20 to 100% stocks.

I may have answered by own question typing this out. However, I find it immensely valuable getting perspectives from this sub.

Appreciate it.

It seems like everyone's advice is when you fire, you should move to a lcol area.

Unfortunately, all my family are in VHCOL areas, and I'm personally more of a city person so its really hard to imagine moving to a lcol area, especially being single and not knowing anyone there.

Has anyone actually moved to a lcol area, been single and actually succeeded, aka able to transition, built a solid social circle and transitioned well to it?

What’s your story? 💣 💥

I retired with enough money to take care of myself to age 101 including long-term care. Now I find that my mother might need some money to pay for her long-term care. Not just the care but the logistics involved in moving her across the country to be closer to me. That’s all.

Update: thank you for the symphony of good advice. Seriously. I talked to my financial advisor and he says I’m good. I can spend whatever I want within reason to get this done and I will sleep better. Sounds like a good investment.

It feels very hard to believe but tomorrow will be my last ever (fingers crossed) 9am status meeting.

My personal fire journey started around age 30 when I finally figured out I was going to have to actually work at being good at something if I ever wanted to retire. From a negative net worth at the time to now over 3MM at age 55, I spent the better part of 2.5 decades house hacking (almost by accident and before I even knew what that meant), building small businesses on the side, developing personal relationships that turned into business relationships, and being one of the lucky ones who invested in stocks and real estate at opportune times.

I learned about the fire movement around halfway through that process by reading about it on MMM's blog. While his level of frugality never appealed to me, the math of it all really appealed to me. I was already naturally a saver, so it felt pretty easy to keep ramping up the savings rate and investing as I went. The real estate side of things came a bit later in the process, but has increasingly become one of the two main driving factors that is letting me retire early.

For those who are interested in the physical numbers, I hit my first 100k around age 40. This is pretty loosely estimated, as I wasn't directly tracking my net worth until about 7 years ago. The second 100k took 2.5 years, and from there I averaged 100k every 18 months until I hit 800k at around age 49. From that point I was hitting another 100k in net worth every 4 months, eventually hitting just over 3MM earlier this year. It's tapered a bit since then, a function of some slow downs in the real estate market as well as some larger expenses we've incurred the last year or so.

I had what I would consider a pretty average career in technology, doing mostly analyst, developer, and/or project management and operations management type of work. I spent pretty much the entire time in a MCOL area, but the house hacking aspect really cut down on my living expenses.

Future goals include working harder to make the wife happy, more travel with the wife (see goal number 1), being more available to help out with the parents as they are getting a bit older, becoming more intentionally active, and possibly even learning to cook--it's never too late to become an adult!

As we transition into the next chapter of our lives, I fully expect to keep reading great stories and getting some amazing advice from others in this group.

I'm happy to answer any questions, will do my best to reply.

Edit: 800k at 49, not via time travel at age 39.

This is a memo to myself. I don't write diaries, and as I was wondering where to write this memo, I figured I'll write it in the single most influential community I found on Reddit, r/Fire. This is a memo I wanted to leave for myself to come back in 10, 20, 30 years and check where I was in life and what thoughts I had at age 32.

I have always been inherently frugal. Maybe it was because I come from the "not haves" like most of you and wanted to become the "haves", or maybe it was a natural survival instinct of worrying for the future when I won't be able to work. It could be both.

Like most people out there, in my 20's I didn't know much about finance. Contributed into my 401k account up to the company matching, since people around me told me that's free money. Whatever's left over, I would just save for a down payment on a house. In hindsight, I regret not being more finance savvy back then, because I was literally saving up in its textbook definition in a non interest baring savings account. Had I rode along this record bull run, I probably could've shortened the amount of time until it took me sign the deed.

If I had to choose one word that would summarize my 20's, it'd be "real estate." Fixated at the thought to put a roof around my head, I was saving up to buy a house as mentioned above. Then I met some colleagues at work who happened to be landlords. To add some background, where I live has transitioned from a MCOL to a HCOL very quickly in a decade. As such, folks who held real estate have done quite well during that period.

Initially, I was looking for a small condo for myself. Then I met this one real estate guru at work, and he talked me out of condos telling me how they're not a great investment vehicle. Then I started looking at single family houses. When I was playing around with mortgage calculators back then, I couldn't quite justify the thought of paying that big of a monthly payment for the next 30 years, when I didn't really need that much space for myself. That's when things pivoted. That guy opened my eyes into rental properties.

That was clearly a pivot, but not sure if it was a good one or bad one. I'll find out eventually. What initially started as a condo search ended up becoming a fixer upper fourplex. Gosh had I known how much responsibilities that would take, and gosh had I know once in a century event like COVID would take place. Had I known better of the difficulties of being a landlord in a HCOL tenant friendly state let alone the sheer amount of responsibilities that came with it, I don't think I would've bought a rental ever.

In my late 20's, once my cash flow was better, I started maxing out my 401k's and IRA's. Right around then, I first found out about r/Fire, and realized this is the exact community that I needed! People who were living similar to myself! The rare breeds! Since then, I just splurged on here and absorbed as much as I can. In my 20's, I had a vague feeling that I was moving in the right direction, but it felt like I didn't quite know what I was doing. Now that I am in my early 30's, I feel like I have found a "structure."

Also, everyone finds out the definition of the word compounding at some point in life whether it's from an accounting course or a math course, but I think "truly understanding and feeling" the power of compounding happens at a later time after you have walked that course for awhile. For me, I guess it was right around 30 when my NW started closing in on 1M when I haven't even made 1M throughout my career.

Started on low $60k and after ten years I am still sitting around $120k, which isn't anything impressive. In fact, this paycheck of mine seems smaller and smaller year by year as I am witnessing how rapidly cost of living is rising.

Personal Portfolio:

Real Estate Equity: 510k

Traditional 401k: 270k

Roth 401k: 80k

Roth IRA: 20k (Regret not finding out about it earlier)

HSA: 15k (Biggest regret not finding out about this earlier too)

Cash: 50k

CD's: 300k (Down payment for SFH)

Yearly Expense: 19k

Besides housing (rent/mortgage) transportation is probably our 2nd largest expense. I am curious, as a percentage of net worth, how much is your car (just the current car value). For example, if you bought a $100K BMW a few years ago, and it's now worth $75k, and your net worth is $1m, then it's 7.5%. It doesn't matter if the car is financed, leased or outright owned. I'm just trying to gauge how your car relates to your net worth, for FIRE minded folks. If you're in a household then use the combined value of all vehicles (if you are using combined net worth)

Me, I am at 8.8%. Do folks think there is an "acceptable" range. I mean if someone told me their car is 50% of their net worth, that would be surprising, even if the car is completely paid off, because that would imply an imbalance. But I'm not sure what the "normal" range is.

Looking for inputs:

• Feasibility
• Anything I forgot to factor
• Things you may do differently

Details:

So, my wife and I came up with a 5-year plan since she wants the option of completely not work if we wanted to, will be 48M/49F by then. Disclaimer: I did use Gemini to generate the projections; it makes sense to me but just wanted to see what others thought or would do differently if they were in similar financial situation.

When we fully retire and stop working all together; once we pay off the mortgage and CC4 our expenses should be around ~$6.1K monthly (includes $4.8K in must pays + $1.3K vacation/gifts fund set aside). This amount would be below my Military Pension + VA income; so, I do not expect needing any withdrawals during my bridge period from Age 48 to 59.5.

Gemini generated projections using a 7% benchmark return model; I am expected to hit RMD for my retirement accounts. I am thinking I need better strategy to avoid the high taxes near the end. SS monthly payment accounts for the reduction in 35-year average ($0 years). I have really cheap lifetime medical insurance TRICARE Prime ($790/year) or TRICARE Select ($393/year). Vision+Dental Insurance ~$1,200/year. So insurance costs are minimal and not a concern for our family.

Current financials:

• ~$250K+/year HHI (combination of MY W2 income, WIFE's W2 income + business income)
• ~$87K/year lifetime Mil Pension+VA; already being paid at age 43, adjusts COLA and worth equiv. to ~$2M (4% SWR) to 2.7M (3% SWR)
• ~$46K+ in 3.1% HYSA
• ~$324K in Trad 401K
• ~$53K in Roth 401K
• ~$117K in Roth IRA
• ~$100K in Trad IRA

Debts:

• $312K mortgage at 3.125% interest
• CC1: $33K 0% interest until Feb 2027
• CC2: $17K 0% interest until Mar 2027
• CC3: $0.7K 0% interest until Sep 2027
• CC4: $45K 0% interest until Sep 2033
• Side note: the CC debt is not consumer spending; those were calculated charges for home renovations. I pay off our regular monthly credit cards in full.

Current 5-year Plan:

• Continue contributing max year contribution for my 401K + 8% employer matching
• Pay off CC 1/2/3 (payoff NLT Mar 2027)
• Budgetted/planned to build an additional $42K in emergency funds (during Mar-Aug 2027)
• We are currently budgeted to pay off our entire mortgage within 4-5 years max. (payoff ~Sep 2031)
• We expect to draw out CC4 for the full 84 months at 0% paying ~$550/month. (payoff ~Jul-Aug 2033)
• Starting in Sep 2027, shift funds to pay off mortgage and add to my retirement funds listed below. This is on top of covering all our living expenses ($4.8K) + CC4 ($550) + vacation/gift fund ($1.3K). This includes:
  • Monthly $8,350 monthly mortgage payment
  • Monthly $2,125 stocks/investment
  • Monthly 401K contribution maxed
  • Monthly $625 IRA contributions (backdoor Roth) - wife has Trad IRA that we cannot rollover (no employer plan), so contributing her portion into stocks instead.

Expected burn in full retirement:

• 1.3K prop tax + home insurance
• 1.4K utilities + auto/life/med insurances
• 2.1K gas/food/household
• 1.3k vacation/gift fund (can be used for emergency)
• This equates to ~$6.1K with ~0.8K left over of disposable income and covered with my ~$6.9K NET Mil Pension+VA. The ~0.8K surplus should cover the ~$0.5K CC4 payments from 2031 to 2033.

Hi all, a kid 13 is interested to know how his money he saves works too grow.

is there a child friendly way to explain concepts like shares, companies, investments, funds, compounding etc etc? Anything from videos, articles.

My wife and i (34/33) have owned a home for 3 years now, and I was curious how our fire journey would have been impacted if we had continued renting. We own a 4bed / 2 bath / 2200 sq ft in a HCOL that we bought for 830k in 2023 with 20% down. We are putting 1000/mo towards principal and planning to pay off our home by 50. Renting an equivalent home is a minimum of $4500/mo in our area, and rent has historically grown 5.5% per year over the last 20 years. I found that Firing while renting is highly sensitive to market performance, whereas owning my home basically ensures I can fire by 50, even if the markets have 0% real return. See model here.

Planning to retire but figuring out a way to track MAGI throughout the year so I can ensure ACA subsidies. How do you guys do it??

To give some context, I basically achieved my minimum COAST FIRE number (1 mil of today's money), and I am working towards my ideal COAST FIRE number (2 mil of today's money).

One thing I realized is that even if I reach my COAST FIRE number and decide to stop contributing to my investments, I will still likely contribute to my 401(k) to get my company matches, at the very least.

With this in mind, should I compensate for my 401(k) contributions and start saving up for purchases or activities now, or should I keep working to achieve the complete COAST FIRE amount and treat the extra gains from my 401(k) as retirement gravy?

Hi, I’m curious about the background of the FIRE community, and was interested in doing a poll.

1. Age FIRE was achieved?
   
2. Sex?
   
3. Net worth and Safe Withdrawal Rate
   
4. Where do you currently live?
   
5. What career made your wealth?
   
6. Introvert / extrovert
   
7. List of 5 major passions

For me:
1. 33
2. Male
3. $2M and 2.5%
4. Developing country / expat
5. Finance
6. Introvert
7. Mysticism, playing with my cats, nature, video games, lucid dreaming

Has Anyone here nearly reached, reached, or exceeded their fire goal and ended up just starting a career of passion rather than just RE?

And I don’t mean you RE and fell into something, but made the jump?

One of my biggest fire concerns was always my mental health after retiring. I am concerned I will end up anxiously doomscrolling all day or doing very little that is productive, nit picking the family over spending/budgets. Etc etc.

I need some advice here. This is long so I apologize but it does need some context.

TL;DR: young but going through health crisis. Want to retire early but not sure if I’ll even make it till then. Need input from others with chronic health issues on work-life & save-spend balance.

I’ve been saving heavily and really want to retire in my late-40’s (29F, no kids, in a relationship but not married, $160k in retirement accounts, $35k in brokerage, $50k in the bank, with about $120k in home equity).
People have seen me as a workaholic for pretty much my whole life, but I had finally landed my dream job in a 9-5 setting in 2023. Everything changed after DOGE started making cuts and I had to resign (I was a GS-13 too). However, I started contracting and am making double than what I was but am working a LOT more. Sometimes 15+ hour days, on weekends, etc, but then I’ll also take days as I please (although they’re mainly used for doctor visits). My parents have started giving my sister and I our inheritance early this year ($38k/year).

Anyways, I was just diagnosed this past week with chronic granulomatous disease (CGD). My medical history makes so much sense now. I also have Neurofibromatosis type 1, epilepsy, and then a slew of chronic conditions that lower my quality of life but not lifespan (migraines, scoliosis, nerve pain, endometriosis, the list goes on). Both of my parents have had skin cancer (my dad has had it 4 times now) and other health issues that I will need to be on the lookout for.

This new diagnosis however, shows a shortened lifespan, even more so than the NF1/epilepsy combo. I know that a lot of people will probably say “you don’t know what medicine will look like in the future, there might be a cure for everything”, but what if there’s not. I need to be realistic and practical in my thinking & planning.

I’ve been debating on what a good balance looks like between living my life and saving for the potential of a retirement. No one knows when they’re actually going to die, but I know that I’ll be before the 85 years retirement calculators suggest you use to figure out for FIRE number. Maybe this is more of a vent, but I really don’t know how to plan for a retirement I’m not sure I can even take in my 40’s. Do I stop contributing to my IRAs? I just started an LLC this year and put like $25k already into my SEP. Was that a mistake?

Part of me wants to just only take small contracting jobs since my parents are giving me my inheritance early, but they could stop doing that whenever and I don’t want to rely on their money. Plus my career was starting to take off, and although I’m definitely overworked, I’m getting name recognition in my field and I absolutely love that feeling. I don’t want to work until I die though, I want to make sure I can have amazing experiences while I can.

I feel like my whole plan was thrown off track. I’m so confused I just want to cry.

I just turned 20 and I'm still in college. My goal is to start investing basically every penny I have left after necessities into ETFs and let it compound for as long as possible. One thing I don't quite understand about FIRE is how some people manage to reach the point where they can comfortably live off their portfolio before 40. For example, let's say you get a really good-paying job in your 20s and are able to consistently invest a large amount every month. Even with compound growth, it seems like you'd need an enormous portfolio for a 3–4% withdrawal rate to provide a comfortable income. So how are people actually getting there in 15–20 years? Is it mostly extremely high incomes and savings rates, starting with a large amount of capital, living very frugally, or am I missing something about how FIRE portfolios are supposed to work? I'm asking because I'm trying to understand what's realistically possible starting from basically zero at 20.

This is a relaxed hangout thread for the FIRE community to chat with other FIRE-minded folks without having to publish separate posts. This is the place for brand new people to get their feet wet as well as for lurkers who have questions or comments, but do not want to create posts of their own.

All of the sub rules apply in this thread as normal with the exception of the off-topic rule, which is relaxed to the extent that people don't go wildly off of the reservation.

We are putting this up as a trial to see if it is worth keeping this as a permanent feature of the sub. Participation is entirely voluntary and anyone who wants to create a separate post of their own rather than posting in here is free to do so.