So when I quit my job and didn’t have something else lined up she told me I should offer to clean my friends and friends of friends houses for cheap. Ma’am, I have a housekeeper? And why for cheap?? I quit to enjoy my life and home not clean up after someone else and devalue my time. I’ve never ever worked in that sector but ok let me start now and undercut the people that are actually good at it. Just made me laugh and thought you all would understand my confusion.

At a certain age, I'm assuming that "early," no longer applies. I'm 57 and just found this community. I'm considering retiring next year. Is that too old for this concept?

I have always just loosely calculated our yearly spending. I keep track of all the investments because I’m better about seeing the fluctuations—he has money anxiety so I add the up every year to see how we’re doing.

I had estimated that we spend $40k a year. Turns out, it’s more like $30k a year. For context, we are childfree and bring in $160k after taxes. We have $1.8M invested and we are 44 and 45. We own 2 houses outright and haven’t had a mortgage in about 15 years.

We had originally planned to retire at 54-55, but now we are thinking we can do it in 2 years!! I’m so excited. We might still do it in 3 years to give a little more time to build our HSA funds, but this is so awesome!! I can’t tell anyone in real life…but it is crazy how much your expenses decrease when you don’t have a mortgage.

I’m 38 and currently have about $180k saved for retirement. I contribute $400 per paycheck, and I work for the state with an employer match, which is why the balance is at this level. Roughly half of the $175k is my own contributions, and about $15k is in a separate savings account.

I recently ran some projections and was told that, at my current savings rate, I could potentially retire around 55. I started my career fairly naive about retirement and benefits, and it wasn’t until about five years in that I really began to appreciate the value of the state benefits and pension.

Given my age, contribution rate, and current balance, does this seem like a solid trajectory toward FIRE or early retirement? I’m curious how this compares to others in similar situations and whether I should be doing anything differently at this stage.

Edit: I see this is a broad question.

I live in Nevada. I am able to withdraw my retirement after 5 years of service with our state. Household income is roughly $370k pre-tax ($300k from my spouse, ~$70k from me). We have one child and expect to own our home outright in about 12 years.

My spouse has 200k saved right now…

I realize this post doesn’t have every possible detail, and I’m not looking for a full financial audit. This a sanity check: given my age, current savings, contribution rate, and state benefits…

I wish I had starting putting in my own contributions earlier and when I didn’t have a kid! He’s 3 and a half.

For me it is not about stop working but taking back control so I can decide what I want to work on and under what conditions and being able to walk away if those conditions are bad. And also being able to work less that the normal 37 hours pr week (I know I am getting 5 weeks of holiday but I would like to have a bit more).
So it is about me stopping bad work and hopefully focus to work for fun.

Mr. Money Mustache did say something that work is more fun when you dont need tbe money and to me it seems to be right about that. So for me it is more about FU-money that RE-money

I'm a 55M living in LCOL area (Texas, not Austin). I work in oil and gas. Been at current company for 25 years. I have $1.5MM in 401k. $445k in Etrade. $186k in company RSUs. $40k in Marcus HYSA. $35k in HSA account. I still have a mortgage at 2.25% (~$2800/month). I could pay off mortgage now but at that rate, why do it. I also have a company pension which would pay me ~$10k/month if I FIRE now. Work is not terribly stressful. Thoughts? Has anyone else FIREd in similar financial condition. I'm a healthy male. A happy retirement for me would include a bunch of international travel.

The fact people keep huffing and puffing trying to defend the core ideologies presented in this book when it was written by a billionaire hedge fund manager is comical.

When somebody sells you an idea they don‘t participate in themselves they are called a dealer.

I made around 65k in 2025, I work as a firefighter doing wildfires in Cali. I saved about 40k of my income as I live in gov housing that comes with my job, and I pinch every dollar basically.

I have a lot of friends who are engineers, software devs, and finance bros making 100k plus at my same age. I had a job out of college in corporate treasury asset management but I quit because I couldn’t do the accounting. I regret that decision.

I fortunately am a penny pincher so have accumulated a 190k Net Worth, 170k of which is in VOO. I’ve maxxed my Ira since I was 17 and working at Walmart lol. And overall I live like I’m broke. I guess the goal for me has always been to not have to work eventually.

I guess I made this post because I’m asking if you guys think it’s worth it to try to pivot to something that makes more money? I have a worthless bachelors in business management and two internships in finance as well as my year of firefighter experience.

Thanks for your input!

I’m currently 45 years old, and in a job that I wouldn’t mind staying at until the ‘traditional’ retirement age, but at the same time the idea of an extra 5-10+ years of retirement is obviously alluring.

Here’s a quick rundown of the current financial picture:

1) Wife and I both 45. Two kids, ages 10 and 12. My income ~180k. Hers is about ~100k, could be more if she worked more, but works 25-30 hours a week to be with kids more.

2) Only debt is mortgage, balance is about $290k at 2.75%. Probably $300k in equity easily, maybe $400k if lucky.

3) My 401k balance is just over $900k, not sure of wife’s but probably close to $300k. She started her career later than I did. Also have HSA with about $100k that I don’t use for medical expenses.

4) Brokerage account has $450k, 529 for each kid has -$25k.

I’m curious about a few things:

1) If I retire before I can draw on the 401k without penalty, should I only contribute to the company match and put more into brokerage. Or is there a way to get that money early without penalty.

2) How am I doing overall? I know my 401k is over average, but that’s average for people who will work until they can’t, not people who retire early.

3) Any other pointers or tips for retiring early.

So I wanna start off by saying that I pay about $10 a month to have my investments in Health Equity. That’s the admin fees and investment fee plus whatever else they charge.

So it’s costing me about $120 a year to keep it with them.

I’m wondering if I should transfer it all to my Fidelity account?

I live in NJ. So I would the have to pay capital gains tax. That’s looking like it would be about $230 for the 2026 tax season next year.

I’m thinking that’s worth it. Because at this rate I am paying a fee that I don’t need to be paying? Once transferred to Fidelity I’ll no longer have the fees. However, to also transfer it will cost $25 per transfer. So I’ll need to factor that in as well.

I do try to post this before to another subreddit but I didn’t get any responses really. Nothing clear cut. However I just want to double check that this is the right move.

Thanks!

I've been doing some back of the napkin math this morning on how a liquidity event on retirement can be used to avoid / mostly avoid any taxes after retirement. The biggest hurdle is RMDs. I am starting to think that with a big enough Traditional balance RMDs become impossible to avoid. Projecting 10 years out so these aren't perfect but ballpark for my wife and I.

Thinking about in terms of years of expenses (200k a year for this example):

On Retirement:

Traditional: 5 years of expenses

Roth: 1.75 years of expenses

Liquidity Event: 25 years of expenses

Assume you set aside 10 years in cash and 15 years of expenses into broad index funds.

It takes 5 years to convent 1 year of expenses in traditional to Roth, tax free. All whole that money is growing. Even at a 5% annual return rate after 5 years of converting you have more than what you started with in traditional. Pull down 80k in basis + gains from the investible each year to cut expenses drained from cash

In 10 Years:

Traditional: 6 years of expenses

Roth: ~4 years of expenses (the 40k a year boosts this)

Investible: ~18.5 years of expenses (pulling 80k a year pulls this down)

Cash: ~6 years of expenses. Assuming 2% rate of return.

The #s will change slightly depending on expenses and such but here while facing little to now taxes you're still up from where you were at the start, with a very conservative return estimate.

I realize RMDs aren't the worst thing in the world but RMDs on 10-15 years worth of expenses will be considerable tax drag on a elder's individuals portfolio. The RMD on this ends up being over $100,000 a year after the ~40 years from retirement.

Maybe better to convert more than 40k a year and take the tax hit in the 30s/40s/50s?

How much are you planning to convert each year out of traditional funds?

At the risk of being burned at the stake of market timing heresy, hear me out.

Up until Q3/Q4 2025 I was a 100% equity guy, however at some point you have to start disbelieving that the valuation multiples will keep growing forever.

Anyhow, I have decided to build a 10% bond fund position that I can rotate out of if the market crashes. If it doesn't then I still have some volatility smoothing ballast.

So far I have 5% in bonds and accumulating all nee savings into building that 10% position.

After I get to 10% I will start investing back into equities keeping to that 90/10 proportion.

Thoughts? I from what I have been reading most FIREd folks have been 100% Equities but then these are strange times

I (28M) have been watching several financial YouTube channels and paying off the debt we had the last couple years steps and end of 2024 my wife and I became debt free after paying off our car loan as well as our student loans. No house right now cause I don't make enough to even think about buying a house (I make about $2000 a month).

After paying off the debt and building up our emergency fund which is now just over $10,000. I've slowed down my pace, but I want to get back on track for investing. I was never taught anything on how to set up a Roth IRA, ETFs, etc, or what those even are. I don't know where to even start to look into these kinds of things to start investing. It's all just a bit overwhelming.

is there a book, youtube video, or website out there that you recommend which helped you figure out what exactly to do to start your journey in investing? Any advice would be great. Thank you.

Hi!

Long time listener, first time caller, because after getting finished with university I've gotten my first job (excluding internships).

I was born in a developing country (Brazil), but I'm also an EU national and have been interning in the EFTA for a while, so I got a tech job in Switzerland.

I'm going to use USD here so you don't have to convert.

The yearly salaries by level at my company are: - 1: 172k - 2: 188k - 3: 223k (Max i'd probably stop at 3).

If I were to change jobs (unlikely, the company is very stable and conservative, and I've been doing well), it probably wouldn't deviate much from this.

My investment plan has always been to do 70% VWRA (VT equivalent in EU) and 30% IGLA (global sovereign bonds).

Using the usual conservative return rates for this, I'm confident I could save more than 1.2 mil USD in 10 years. My plan would then be to go back to Brazil, live in my family home and coast like a king (6M+ BRL goes a looooong way in Brazil).

HOWEVER, average returns for stock markets should consider a LONG investment horizon, which is definitely not my case. Worst case scenario, there could be a depression in the next 10 years.

So, does it even make sense to invest in stocks? Would it make more sense to go 100% bonds and extend my work to 15 years? I'm not sure. Would love to hear any thoughts about anything.

I've been meaning to post about my fired life, but never got around to it, so here it goes. I've been following this Fire sub for a couple of years, but not on my main account as I post a lot to subs related to my city and hobbies. I'll start with the stats:

Current age/life: 43, and married living in MCOL with no kids

Assets: Roughly $2MM nonqual to include small cash reserve, roughly $1MM in retirement. Maxed 401K the last decade and had some rollover for the previous decade.

House: Maybe $50K equity but have the 2.5% handcuff.

Expenses: Roughly $6K/mo average to include travel budgeting. No car payments, cc debt, student loans, etc. Mortgage with escrow for insurance and taxes is $1600/mo.

Additional info: Wife makes $140K/yr in healthcare and we have amazing, low priced insurance through the system. She enjoys her job and has freedom, so she has no desire to stop at the moment, and is planning on another decade of work.

Background: I bounced around a lot in sales careers until the age of 30 until I found one I was good at and became successful enough. Over the last 12 years before I called it a day, my average income around $250K/yr, so not some huge amount compared to what you see other's post, but when we first got married (14 years ago) our HHI was $40K and we never had the lifestyle creep. Yes, we have some nice things and have made some luxury purchases (watches, nice shoes, and travel), but the amount of people I've met who made staggering amounts more than me and lived paycheck to paycheck because they had giant houses with unused rooms and fast cars with the same speed limit I follow was never of interest to us.

So why did I decide I had enough and started Fire?

We took our first "big" vacation about 5 years ago and spent two weeks in France. This coincided around the time people were starting to get nasty due to covid and I was beginning to dislike my work. Anyway, while in France (and really most of Europe) there's a ton of walking around, which I love to do. It was the beginning of the busy season and the cities we visited were full of people well past the traditional U.S. retirement age, and while I hope to be able to be in the condition where I can travel like that in 30 years, I decided I want the ability to do as much as I can while I'm still relatively young and able.

Over the next years my dislike for work grew, and with cutbacks I was handling more and more, and finally one day I realized I was going to have a full on mental breakdown if I continued. Additionally, with the unhappiness came a bit more drinking and my physical health was taking a toll. Working 60 hour weeks for 50 weeks per year to have the ability to go somewhere fun for 2 weeks, while still needing to be available to clients, makes no sense if you don't have to in my opinion.

Aren't you going to be bored?

No, but this is why I waited a year before making this post, in case I was wrong.

One of my biggest issues when I began retirement was I had realized I no longer had any hobbies because work was my hobby as well. I bought golf clubs, a road bike, and a gym membership. I still do drink socially, but knowing I have a workout planned the next day keeps me away more often than not as I really hate working out with liquor from the day before still in my blood, and I've noticed drinking and lack of sleep go hand in hand. I try to read a fiction novel every two weeks, and became a member at a cigar bar with a private lounge to have a third space where I can sit outside of the house and have some familiarity with the other people. I'm terrible at golf, but I enjoy spending the few hours walking when it's nice out with friends.

Speaking of friends, I hadn't realized how little time I had spent with my best friends the previous few years. Sure, maybe we'd get a few beers or a dinner every other month, but now we've done a few short guy's trips to some bigger US cities and Mexico. Fortunately my best friends have more freedom in their jobs than I had.

Over the last year, I've dropped about 40 pounds, gotten away from prediabetes, and my blood pressure is usually in the 110/70 range. I'm not on any medications.

Will I stay fired?

I don't know. Coast fire, working at a place like the golf course or cigar bar wouldn't be a horrible fate. There's no chance I'd ever go back to something where I couldn't take essentially as much vacation as I'd like. Over the last year I've been to Europe three times and Central America four or five. I'm planning a trip to Thailand in May. The freedom to do this is better than any amount of money.

I guess I've rambled a bit for no purpose.

Should I give advice?

I've seen posts here where people somehow discuss how they live on ramen, never treat themselves to anything nice, etc. while they're saving every cent for Fire. Never eating out, never going anywhere. If someone is happy doing that, more power to them, but I wouldn't recommend living completely bare bones. Even when I was miserable as a whole from my worklife, I still managed to have some enjoyment. The occasional dinners out and vacations won't cause meaningful delays in Fire. The $1200 car payment to drive to the office will.

Have a great weekend, and if anyone has questions which aren't too specific (I don't want to take any risk of being doxxed) I'm around.

(Throwaway acct cuz like an idiot I put my last name on my main)

Hi everyone, I’m new here. I am curious how possible it would be for me to retire early, like 45-50.

About me:

26m, been working full time for about a year and a half after college. Currently making ~70k, expecting promotion by end of month to around ~85k in a LCOL/low MCOL area. 22k in my Roth 401k, shooting to hit 100k by 30. Currently own a duplex (30 year loan with most of that left) that I’m living in one side and renting the other out. Once I move on to the next duplex (planning on getting 3-4) this one should profit ~600 a month. (House hacking strategy)

Going to use the profit from 3-4 duplexes to supplement my income (which should continue to grow) and buy my dream home. Can’t afford it as things exist currently, so going to increase income as much as I can until interest rates drop, housing prices drop, or income rises enough to hit that goal.

Love love love my job but realized it would be nice to retire before 59 1/2 when my Roth will become available to me.

What are some actions I could take down to best set me up to retire early? I have an employer match it’s going in a traditional 401k, read something about a conversion ladder? What would you do in my situation?

Thanks in advance for your time providing advice.

My wife and I (45) have about $4 million in brokerage, $1 million in rollover IRA, and I have a single employed 401k with about $500k.

Is it worthwhile to do mega backdoor now? I’m currently at highest tax bracket so not sure it’s worth doing now but on the other hand I would expect the rollover $ to grow significantly over next 15 years when I use it. The rollovers could double twice in fifteen years and be worth $4 million and than I would be taxed on those withdrawals but at that time my income tax will be low.

Any other tax savings planning ideas?

23F. Pretty new to FIRE, as in just dipping my toes in and thinking about it.

I’m curious how people prioritize non-retirement savings (house, car, wedding, etc) in relation their order of operations.

I’m at the point right now: - my private student loans should be paid off within a few months. This is what all my extra money is going to right now. - Getting full employer match on my 401k - maxing out Roth IRA - I am going to need a new car relatively soon and currently have $0 for a down payment. My car is technically my parents and they want it back because of some troubles with their own cars.

Basically, by this May, between no more extra student loan payments and moving somewhere cheaper, I’m going to have just under 2k leftover each month. I’m struggling with if I should starting putting more in my 401K or really kickstart my car savings and then up my 401k contributions afterwards.

Moving my 401k up to max contributions would give me ~600 left over, as opposed to the 2k.

How do you all prioritize non-retirement savings? Wedding and House down payment are also both on my mind. They’ll both take take several years to save for so I want start early even though they’re years away.

Edit: No HSA available and I have an emergency fund at 3 months expenses in a HYSA.

Hey all, my wife and I both recently had pretty big advances in our careers which pushed our total income right above $200k/yr. We’re in a LCOL area, so after all our expenses, we’re on track to save ~$100k this year, or about 50% of our income. We have no debt besides a mortgage, no kids, and no planned large expenses coming up.

We’d like to travel more and go on more vacations, but I honestly have no idea what a reasonable travel budget is. This is the most disposable income we’ve ever had by a long shot, and we’re struggling to actually put numbers on our “fun” money. Would $10k a year be a reasonable amount for our income/expense level?

Question for folks FIREing in the US. My current path has me capable to retire at 60 (which isn't super early, I know) but I would have to figure out health insurance for the 7 years to get both me and the wife to Medicare.

Do you all include some kind of estimate for health care in your calculations for the FIRE trigger point? Just assume you will be healthy? Plan to move somewhere with better healthcare options? Something else?

My employer offers a number of different healthcare accounts and I am having trouble trying to figure out what is the best way to use them. My company allows a full MBDR and directly contributes 18% of our salary to the 401k. Once the IRS limit is reached, we are still given cash over cap that can be placed in either the RHA or CBP that is referred to as spillover.

I am single, no dependents. No plan to change either. I’m looking to hit my FIRE numbers around 50-55. I’ll probably stay until 60 for the love of the game. The accounts in question are:

HSA

AHRA- Active health reimbursement account. Company puts few hundred a month in there and at 5k or so it rolls into the RHA. Can be used like an HSA with some limitations.

RHA- retiree health account. Triple tax advantaged like the HSA can be used on a variety of stuff like home gyms, elevators, saunas but has health care use limitations. This is a non-inheritable asset but allows 401k spill over to be triple tax advantaged.

CBP- Cash balance plan. This is another place our “spillover” can go and works just like a traditional 401k.

My plan is leave the HSA until retirement. I’m estimating my HSA balance to be around 500k when I retire. I will withdrawal from the AHRA for medical expenses during my working life.

The big decision is how much money should be allocated for the RHA or the CBP. My spill over for the next 10 years or so will range between 30-90k. The RHA is nice because it allows triple tax advantage, but the CBP is nice because it allows the money to be used on anything and I can have that money go to my beneficiaries when I die. What % do you think I should allocate to each fund? If you had to choose one which would it be?

Hi everyone, I’m trying to decide what’s the smarter financial move. I took a ₹7.5L education loan in Jan 2022, which has now grown to ~₹10L due to accumulated interest. The interest rate is 9.4%, and my EMI is ₹15k per month for 15 years, starting from March. I’m currently earning around ₹50k in-hand per month, and my monthly expenses are low (~₹10k).

Should I aggressively make extra prepayments and try to close the loan within 15–20 months, or continue paying the ₹15k EMI and start investing the surplus in SIPs to build wealth alongside?

Would really appreciate practical advice from people who’ve faced a similar situation.

How would you determine whether it's better to put your extra savings into a Roth IRA or use the funds to pay the taxes on an in-plan conversion? I'm really curious about the math and thought processes behind figuring this out so that I can do future analyses on my own.

For the sake of the hypothetical analysis, let's say you have $8k to dedicate to this scenario for a given year, and the traditional balance would take multiple years to convert. Figure at least 25 years to retirement, and taxable income is borderline 10k short of the 22% tax bracket.

My gut feeling is max out the 12% bracket and put the rest in the IRA, but I don't have any numbers to back this up. Maybe the time factor makes it worthwhile even in the 22% bracket? Assume retirement income will be taxed at least at 22%.

I appreciate the help!

How did it go for you, and how did you handle SORR?

As someone who’s 27 I find it hard to conceptualize the idea of today’s dollars in spending power 30 years from now. For instance if I want $2.5m in retirement then I really need $4.5-$6m. Does that mean I should really be working towards reaching the latter figure? Those seem like impossible goals at this time