OasisMan said:

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i wouldnt say FIRE means living below your means -- as this would create a lower expectation for future annual spending

now, living below your means will help you achieve FIRE sooner

i hope to hit FI by 45-50 -- Fat (or obese) FIRE

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yeah that's an important distinction. living below your means helps achieve FIRE sooner, but it's just one of many tools and methods to get there.

our "slightly overweight" FIRE target is enough for double our current annual spending at 3% withdrawal rate (going conservative here for peace of mind). should be able hit it comfortably before the kids start grade school.

There are a lot of fishermen who always catch a limit. Every time they go!

I was kinda forced into it as I was trying to make the transition anyways. Got into real estate real heavy at about 32. Flipping places to have money to buy rentals, refinancing the rentals to buy more rentals. I got up to 30 at one point and had bought and sold another 30-40. All while maintaining the $45k/ year 9-5 job. I was ready to quit the 9-5 but just couldnt quite make it happen. I was keeping my foot on the gas as long and hard as I could so I could hold as many properties as I could to reap the longterm benefits. At 40, I had a kinda freak medical incident that severely hampered my ability to perform my 9-5 and do the multitasking needed to juggle that many properties.

Fortunately, I was in a position to somewhat weather the storm. My family would have been SOL otherwise! In the last two years Ive been selling some properties and either refinancing or paying off others to maximize my cash flow. It's a slow process to transfer from a game plan of wealth building to current income. Today's tax complexities dont make things any easier.

Increasing property values are a double edged sword. Property taxes are eating up more and more of my cash flow each year. Im worth more but rents are stagnant so it's an uphill battle. We are getting by ok but things are definitely tighter than I would prefer.

Some lessons learned from my experience- It doesnt matter how much you are making today, if you lose your ability to make it tomorrow. A few million in life insurance does your family no good when you are still alive but cant pay the bill. Net worth looks nice on a spreadsheet but you must know how to make it produce for you when the time comes.

yes sir. Started when I was 31. 43 now and FI. Have posted about it on the millionaires thread. The cool thing is living way below your means sticks, and even when you are FI you're still frugal or I am anyway. Old truck i paid cash for, old clothes and shoes, modest house, etc, but then again I grew up poor so I've always been hungry and realized at 31 I didn't want to spend another 30+ years in corporate america grinding 60-70hr weeks out for the man so I doubled down hard and lived way below my means. Sacrificed a ton the first few years. Have been in real estate since I was 18 (family was in it so I followed) so I took advantage of the GFC and bought a lot of fannie and freddie foreclosures and just kept building cash flow. I credit my son's birth a lot to me grinding it out and waking up. He was born when I was 31. GL.

I'm FIRN. Financially independent retire never.

Not exactly for us. We save pretty aggressively. I contribute 10% to my 401k to get full company match (only 25%), then a little more to savings. Everything my wife makes goes into savings and gets invested into my employer (s corp) at the beginning of the year. So far it has been a very good investment. My goal is owning 3% of the company in 10-15 years, at which point profit distributions could easily approach my salary income.

All in all I think we're saving 35%, and that's with a house (60% paid off) and a kid. Once the house is paid off, we can accelerate that even further. Hoping to retire at 55 with well over 25x desired annual income, though that might turn into semi-retire to retain ownership and returns until I can hit the 401k.

yea i dont see myself ever fully retiring, slowing down and getting a part time job at least. Its the option to retire that is enticing

$30,000 Millionaire said:

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I'm FIRN. Financially independent retire never.

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Retirement isn't really the end goal of FIRE. It's the freedom to do what you want.

If you are FI and choose to continue working purely out of enjoyment or not necessarily for the salary, you are FIRE.

I retired at 42. I knew after about 6 weeks into my first engineering job that corporate life was not for me. I put my savings into rental houses and farm land. Now I spend maybe 50% of my time keeping those businesses going. As the poster above said, it's about getting up in the morning and deciding for yourself what you will be doing today. Live cheap - I paid $10K for a used car when I graduated in the late 90's. That's the most expensive car I've ever purchased.

LRHF said:

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Wife and I have always planned for FIRE. The goals have changed through the years but having a plan and goals were huge.

In the last year, I have become unemployed while my SO has a small part time accounting gig. We bought a small camper and fished throughout the Rockies for 5 months this summer/ fall (chased out by snow!)

Because we have been focused on FIRE, we are prepared to move in a different direction. We are buying a small business in Durango, CO and moving around May (leaving Houston).

I plan on becoming a fly fishing guide, maybe work up to 75-100 trips a year. SO plans to run her business for a while then maybe step back and hire a manager.

I had a "10 year" plan before leaving A&M. We are currently 47/46 years old and ready to get back to bike rides, skiing, back country trips, big game hunting, fishing etc!

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**** yeah.

We're leaving Houston as well in May/June for Denver. I'm transferring within the firm and spouse is dialing back her NP career to part-time for our kid.

We've been full gas DINKs through our 20s and had our daughter at 31. I've gone civil engineer > MBA > consulting and she's an NP. We pegged our savings at 50% since day 1 of our jobs and I'm a life-cycle investing proponent, i.e. we've hummed at 1.5-3x leverage for almost 10 years. Under a few safe assumptions, even with her going part-time, we'll be at our FIRE figure in 5 years (38). I have a decent chance at Partner track and will know that answer in 5 years. If I'm successful, I'm not turning down that level of comp for a while. If not, I'm ready to really transform my career and focus on TIME.

We were both self employed for years. When we started our business we put all extra money back into it - investing in ourselves. Both of us were always used to "feast or famine" and it was never a problem. A first, we rented space from an Old Army Ag (great building & he let us have it BECAUSE I was an Aggie!) and then he sold us another building with owner financing because we never could have gotten a loan back then. We grew into an extremely successful business that we ran for 26+ years and we still saved everything extra. Frugal, yes, but not to the point of pain. We buy nice, pre-owned certified cars & pay cash for most things. Our home is never the nicest, biggest one in the neighborhood - well maintained & up to date, for sure.

We retired a couple of years ago (60 & 50) because it just wasn't fun anymore.

We bought a lake house on a quiet, private lake in 2008 while still working. We would go to & renovate on weekends. Luckily we bought with cash right BEFORE the crash or we might not have done it. We started investing in rental properties in 2015 and those rents are plenty for us to live on. We generally recoup all of our investment on each property in 5-7 years - then it's all equity. Our investments in the stock market have grown x 4 at this point and we've never touched them. AND we have a contract on our business property that - barring them backing out at some point - we will make 4x what we have in it.

We have never felt like we "suffered" keeping our eye on the future. We never had children, and I know it would have taken us a bit longer if we had.

Just had baby #6. It was quite the surprise because there was a 10 year gap between #5 and #6. I'm 44 and wife is 43. She stays home.

Have a mid-level management job with one of the best companies in the world. Save about 50% of gross income and currently saving for a lakehouse for the growing family to congregate during Holidays, etc. I'm very happy with my job but want to get out in nature more, especially when grandkids come along.

The thing I worry about most is the inevitable financial collapse of this country. I don't mean to diverge from this thread, but many of the savers on this thread will likely need to find work when the SHTF. Our leaders are blowing multiple Trillions annually and acting like everything is OK. It is not.

At one point pre-kids we were pretty motivated to go on this path. Over time we fell off the wagon. Post-kids my wife is a stay at home mom and while I have a good job it isn't enough to get some of the crazy savings rates some of the other posters in here have. We are moderately frugal, but do have some vices (travel, eating out, and good booze) that don't help.

We made a big decision last year to get out of the city and moved to the mountains (converting to full-time remote with my existing position). In some ways this gives me some of the elements I wanted with a FIRE plan, but I'm still stuck working for the man for awhile longer. I'd love to get out of corporate life and have more control over my own time by 45 (5 years from now), but with the move came acceptance that my career progression is basically over and I'm likely near my corporate income ceiling which means we need to get a little creative. I've had a small e-commerce side business for the last few years, with the kids getting a little older now we want to focus on growing that with the hopes it could help make that 5-year horizon realistic.

I wouldn't say we are on an official FIRE plan as I had never heard of this term until the last year or so on this website, but COVID has knocked us sideways onto that path...and we are kind of thankful for it.

DINKS in Dallas with higher paying corporate jobs. I took a package and left last year and am now trying my hand at consulting so my income is effectively zero right now. I'm working but just started and haven't gotten my first paycheck yet. So far I have worked 4 days and replaced 1 month of my old salary doing so. That seems like a good ratio, but I have no idea if it is comparatively speaking. Wife still at her corporate job.

Big life-changing event for us is that we plan to move out of Dallas by end of summer and down to the coast and get fully out of the urban rat race. Doing so will get us mortgage free and drop our expenses considerably. We had already cut total expenses by around 60-70% with COVID...which was eye opening and life changing in and of itself.

I'm currently having our FA run scenarios for me once we move on the minimum investments we need to make vs the maximum spend we can sustain just to see my guard rails assuming our family income stays at current level or even drops further. Depending on what that shows and once we get a bit more certainty on the plan, I will then redeploy several hundred thousand in cash I have on the sidelines that I'm just sitting on. Hanging onto that partially for the uncertainty of our personal situation and betting on a major dip in the market by next year.

However, I need some math on this as I think I'm reading this incorrectly....y'all are saying FIRE is 25x your annual spend in investments. So, I will assume what I think is a low number ($2,000 per month) then your investment nut needs to be $600,000 total against $24,000 in annual spend?

YouBet said:

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I wouldn't say we are on an official FIRE plan as I had never heard of this term until the last year or so on this website, but COVID has knocked us sideways onto that path...and we are kind of thankful for it.

DINKS in Dallas with higher paying corporate jobs. I took a package and left last year and am now trying my hand at consulting so my income is effectively zero right now. I'm working but just started and haven't gotten my first paycheck yet. So far I have worked 4 days and replaced 1 month of my old salary doing so. That seems like a good ratio, but I have no idea if it is comparatively speaking. Wife still at her corporate job.

Big life-changing event for us is that we plan to move out of Dallas by end of summer and down to the coast and get fully out of the urban rat race. Doing so will get us mortgage free and drop our expenses considerably. We had already cut total expenses by around 60-70% with COVID...which was eye opening and life changing in and of itself.

I'm currently having our FA run scenarios for me once we move on the minimum investments we need to make vs the maximum spend we can sustain just to see my guard rails assuming our family income stays at current level or even drops further. Depending on what that shows and once we get a bit more certainty on the plan, I will then redeploy several hundred thousand in cash I have on the sidelines that I'm just sitting on. Hanging onto that partially for the uncertainty of our personal situation and betting on a major dip in the market by next year.

However, I need some math on this as I think I'm reading this incorrectly....y'all are saying FIRE is 25x your annual spend in investments. So, I will assume what I think is a low number ($2,000 per month) then your investment nut needs to be $600,000 total against $24,000 in annual spend?

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Your math is correct. I think The multiplier number needs to be 30-40 for those much younger than 55.

LRHF said:

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YouBet said:

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I wouldn't say we are on an official FIRE plan as I had never heard of this term until the last year or so on this website, but COVID has knocked us sideways onto that path...and we are kind of thankful for it.

DINKS in Dallas with higher paying corporate jobs. I took a package and left last year and am now trying my hand at consulting so my income is effectively zero right now. I'm working but just started and haven't gotten my first paycheck yet. So far I have worked 4 days and replaced 1 month of my old salary doing so. That seems like a good ratio, but I have no idea if it is comparatively speaking. Wife still at her corporate job.

Big life-changing event for us is that we plan to move out of Dallas by end of summer and down to the coast and get fully out of the urban rat race. Doing so will get us mortgage free and drop our expenses considerably. We had already cut total expenses by around 60-70% with COVID...which was eye opening and life changing in and of itself.

I'm currently having our FA run scenarios for me once we move on the minimum investments we need to make vs the maximum spend we can sustain just to see my guard rails assuming our family income stays at current level or even drops further. Depending on what that shows and once we get a bit more certainty on the plan, I will then redeploy several hundred thousand in cash I have on the sidelines that I'm just sitting on. Hanging onto that partially for the uncertainty of our personal situation and betting on a major dip in the market by next year.

However, I need some math on this as I think I'm reading this incorrectly....y'all are saying FIRE is 25x your annual spend in investments. So, I will assume what I think is a low number ($2,000 per month) then your investment nut needs to be $600,000 total against $24,000 in annual spend?

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Your math is correct. I think The multiplier number needs to be 30-40 for those much younger than 55.

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At 47, we are at that point now so this is an interesting factor as I run these scenarios with FA. However, most of our investments (about 80%) are tied up in tax deferred accounts so that would need to be considered and could/would delay your "independence" potentially.

YouBet said:

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I wouldn't say we are on an official FIRE plan as I had never heard of this term until the last year or so on this website, but COVID has knocked us sideways onto that path...and we are kind of thankful for it.

DINKS in Dallas with higher paying corporate jobs. I took a package and left last year and am now trying my hand at consulting so my income is effectively zero right now. I'm working but just started and haven't gotten my first paycheck yet. So far I have worked 4 days and replaced 1 month of my old salary doing so. That seems like a good ratio, but I have no idea if it is comparatively speaking. Wife still at her corporate job.

Big life-changing event for us is that we plan to move out of Dallas by end of summer and down to the coast and get fully out of the urban rat race. Doing so will get us mortgage free and drop our expenses considerably. We had already cut total expenses by around 60-70% with COVID...which was eye opening and life changing in and of itself.

I'm currently having our FA run scenarios for me once we move on the minimum investments we need to make vs the maximum spend we can sustain just to see my guard rails assuming our family income stays at current level or even drops further. Depending on what that shows and once we get a bit more certainty on the plan, I will then redeploy several hundred thousand in cash I have on the sidelines that I'm just sitting on. Hanging onto that partially for the uncertainty of our personal situation and betting on a major dip in the market by next year.

However, I need some math on this as I think I'm reading this incorrectly....y'all are saying FIRE is 25x your annual spend in investments. So, I will assume what I think is a low number ($2,000 per month) then your investment nut needs to be $600,000 total against $24,000 in annual spend?

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Need to account for a lot of incidental things like insurance, maintenance, new car purchases, etc.

For early retirement, aim for 3% Safety Withdrawal Rate (33x), just because the past isn't indicative of what could happen in the future. Returns could be a lot lower going forward

PearlJammin said:

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Just had baby #6. It was quite the surprise because there was a 10 year gap between #5 and #6. I'm 44 and wife is 43. She stays home.

Have a mid-level management job with one of the best companies in the world. Save about 50% of gross income and currently saving for a lakehouse for the growing family to congregate during Holidays, etc. I'm very happy with my job but want to get out in nature more, especially when grandkids come along.

The thing I worry about most is the inevitable financial collapse of this country. I don't mean to diverge from this thread, but many of the savers on this thread will likely need to find work when the SHTF. Our leaders are blowing multiple Trillions annually and acting like everything is OK. It is not.

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Wow. Quite the diverge.

Why are you saving 50% of gross into a system doomed to fail?

Dang we don't save near as much as some of the numbers in here.. but we still plan to retire in mid 50s. Mostly made possible by my wife's pension in education, and my company contribution of 15% of salary.
By age 55, with a 3% growth rate and ~$75k-80k burn (+ wife's pension), we'll never run out of money.

SoupNazi2001 said:

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Lots of incorrect information here. The math is your investments need to equal 25x your annual living expenses at a minimum. So if you spend $100K per year you need $2.5 million. A key point here is most don't include taxes in their living expenses and if you don't you need to tax adjust any money that comes from pretax sources like a 401K or IRA. Additional healthcare expenses for the crazy price of insurance until 65 is another one people leave out.

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That's the same math I'm running though which is why I asked for confirmation.

Absolutely need to include taxes. Not sure why people wouldn't. The scenarios I'm running would include every dollar leaving my pocket regardless of where it's going. It's an inflows/outflows analysis irrespective of where the dollars are coming from or going to.

My wife and I were both big savers (30-50% saving rates) in our mid 20s. Now in our early 30s, we already have a decent size net worth thanks to savings and compound interest. With kids, it is more difficult and our savings rate has dropped to 10-15% of income. We're probably 10 years away from what I would consider FI and another 15 away from when I would consider retiring.

The trick is to start investing early.

SoupNazi2001 said:

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YouBet said:

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SoupNazi2001 said:

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Lots of incorrect information here. The math is your investments need to equal 25x your annual living expenses at a minimum. So if you spend $100K per year you need $2.5 million. A key point here is most don't include taxes in their living expenses and if you don't you need to tax adjust any money that comes from pretax sources like a 401K or IRA. Additional healthcare expenses for the crazy price of insurance until 65 is another one people leave out.

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That's the same math I'm running though which is why I asked for confirmation.

Absolutely need to include taxes. Not sure why people wouldn't. The scenarios I'm running would include every dollar leaving my pocket regardless of where it's going. It's an inflows/outflows analysis irrespective of where the dollars are coming from or going to.

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I prefer to just tax adjust my pre-tax portfolio vs grossing up my income for taxes as I have substantial after-tax assets. Lots of ways to do it though.

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Yep. I'm just referring to the spend side of the equation for now though. Just want to get a confident number nailed down with some later year spend assumptions. So, that would include normal, month to month spend and taxes plus any one-off future expenditures like a car, home repairs, etc.

Letting my FA handle the investment side and the scenarios with that.

FireCalc helps to visualize these scenarios.
https://www.firecalc.com/

Barring significant changes, aiming for FIRE in 10 years (39 now). I've been an aggressive saver since I was a teenager (>50%), but lacked the discipline to not pull funds out of the market after every crash when younger. Would like to own some commercial RE like self-storage so not so dependent on index fund performance, move to the country and get out of the rat race.

Mr. AGSPRT04 said:

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FireCalc helps to visualize these scenarios.
https://www.firecalc.com/

Barring significant changes, aiming for FIRE in 10 years (39 now). I've been an aggressive saver since I was a teenager (>50%), but lacked the discipline to not pull funds out of the market after every crash when younger. Would like to own some commercial RE like self-storage so not so dependent on index fund performance, move to the country and get out of the rat race.

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Thanks!

0 cycles failed. That is good to know!

hedge said:

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really go find other 24 year olds with my savings rate and investment returns and I'll eat crow

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Saving that when I was 24 was easy peasy. I was maxing out everything imaginable and then saving beyond that. Now with a stay at home wife and 3 kids under 5 I can manage ~25%.

This FIRE thing entices me though. If I really went after it I could probably cut our mortgage in half and move out to the burbs, cut back on spending and vacations and get it to ~40%

RangerRick9211 said:

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PearlJammin said:

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Just had baby #6. It was quite the surprise because there was a 10 year gap between #5 and #6. I'm 44 and wife is 43. She stays home.

Have a mid-level management job with one of the best companies in the world. Save about 50% of gross income and currently saving for a lakehouse for the growing family to congregate during Holidays, etc. I'm very happy with my job but want to get out in nature more, especially when grandkids come along.

The thing I worry about most is the inevitable financial collapse of this country. I don't mean to diverge from this thread, but many of the savers on this thread will likely need to find work when the SHTF. Our leaders are blowing multiple Trillions annually and acting like everything is OK. It is not.

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Wow. Quite the diverge.

Why are you saving 50% of gross into a system doomed to fail?

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Maybe he is buying bitcoin

Another TexAgs bull**** thread. This place is the greatest collection of 30 year old millionaires that no one knows about.

Two posters on here advocating for INDEPENDENT LIFESTYLE while voting democrat who think daddy government owns everything.

65% or 75% savings rates? lol at least make it believable. One can only attain that by living in your moms basement or in areas of town I know young professionals would not live in.

Could someone share their calculations of the future value of 1 ply vs 2 ply TP?


FIRE lifestyle is awesome but no need to bull*****

SoupNazi2001 said:

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SF2004 said:

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Another TexAgs bull**** thread. This place is the greatest collection of 30 year old millionaires that no one knows about.

Two posters on here advocating for INDEPENDENT LIFESTYLE while voting democrat who think daddy government owns everything.

65% or 75% savings rates? lol at least make it believable. One can only attain that by living in your moms basement or in areas of town I know young professionals would not live in.

Could someone share their calculations of the future value of 1 ply vs 2 ply TP?


FIRE lifestyle is awesome but no need to bull*****

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If you make $300K and live off $100K that is a very high savings rate and your not eating rice and beans. Not really that hard and even easier if both work.

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Everyone on TexAgs got offered $300K in their twenties in order to FIRE in their forties.

Forgot.

In a dual income household of professionals, $300k combined income by early 30s isn't that hard to pull off. Even $150k combined would afford a pretty decent living with a 40% saving rate if the people were willing to live modestly, especially if maxing out pre-tax vehicles to get total tax burden into low brackets, and that only requires ~$75,000yr salaries on average.

Quote:

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In a dual income household of professionals, $300k combined income by early 30s isn't that hard to pull off.

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Probably not as easy as you're making it out to be, either.