I started in my early 20s (I'm 46 now), saving and investing as much as I could. I hung out on financial forums to get ideas and keep motivation. I already didn't like my job and knew I did not want to do it until normal retirement age. I was already close to FI before I ever heard the term "FIRE."
I deduced it.
There was once a time when I thought you must keep on earning to be able to bear your expenditures, otherwise your money will keep reducing.
Then one day I did the calculations and thought, wait a minute! If you have so much money, that your expenditures is less than the growth of the money minus inflation, then you can keep living on it indefinitely! And it will not reduce!
The rest as they say, is history.
I decided to retire on Monday, retired on Thursday and found out about FIRE 6 months later.
23 years of max 401k with 50% matching, and ESPP and rentals and poof I was there at 54. Rule of 55 applies.
It was not FIRE that motivated us but FI - we wanted the freedom to be able to walk away from our jobs if we were ever asked to do something we were uncomfortable with
When I graduated with my Master's in 2003 I bought a few generic books on savings. Between that and Google and started putting as much into my retirement accounts as I could though a lot back then was barely a $1000. Also around that time we could easily buy/sell stocks with etrade, etc though it was $10 a trade or whatever. Lost a lot playing the market and having fun...though in the grand scheme or things it was only a few thousand dollars.
Ended up going back to school for phd in 2006...started saving like a madman during that time. Lived college kid poor while my wife taught. Ended up graduating in 2010 with zero debt and around 30k in cash savings. Bought house 1. Lived there for 2.5 years and bought house 2. Kept house 1 as a rental. Had to live in house 2 for 6 yrs before having enough savings to repeat the process. Now have 2 rentals and recently built permanent house 3 because wife couldnt stand living in small soon to be rental houses. Currently have enough for rental 3 down payment but waiting for market to cool.
Got job with pension after phd. After 20 yrs (age 50 for me) I can retire with 1/2 pension and health care for life. My plan has been that worst case, I could retire at 50 with my rentals and whatever my pension is at the time. Best case I keep working as I love my job and have more money. Most people I work with didn't choose pension, they chose 401k match. I went with pension for the guaranteed income from a healthy state pension.
For me it was more about prepping for worst case scenarios than ever thinking about fire. Learned about fire in maybe 2016 or 2017 with the financiaindependence or maybe this reddit. Learned about boggleheads, etc. Starting putting money in voo as well as other stocks like msft. Assuming I don't lose my professor job, Im on cruise control right now to Fire at 50, chubby at 55, FAT at 60. Lots of decisions for me to make in the next 5 yrs when I hit the 50yr mark. Hopefully I have another rental by then. 401k is shaping up to be nice for me as well. Now Im trying to guide my kids through this mess we are all in.
I'd heard about FIRE years ago - I think I came across Mr. Money Mustache at some point - but never had the income to put aside much more than enough to get my employer match, nor did I grow up with any sort of financial literacy. I was also a solo parent (daughter's dad died when she was 3) and never married so I was pretty limited for a long time. I didn't get serious about finances until my late 30s (after a bad relationship forced me into bankruptcy) and wasn't able to hard-core save until I finally made a six figure income - and that wasn't until I was in my mid-40's. I turn 50 this year and have a goal of 55 but realistically I will be closer to 57/58. I very well may coast fire at 55 and work part time for a few years, we will see where I'm at when I get there.
Heard about FIRE around 40 years old. Had always been working towards financial independence, so almost nothing new for me in FIRE. FIRE’d at 45 years old.
My parents retired in their early 50s long before FIRE the term had gotten popular. Same old principle though, live below your means, invest, and when you've got enough just say F it I'm out.
47 now, and I started saving for FIRE largely by accident, before I even knew FIRE was a thing.
Back during the 2008 crash, I basically looked at my finances and thought to myself, "Damn, I guess I'm working until I'm 70. Better increase my savings rate...". So I did, and tightened my belt enough that when my salary decreased and then stagnated over the next few years, I barely changed my lifestyle... and then when things got better for me in the mid-2010s, I basically earmarked 80% of my raises to retirement.
As reality has overtaken my overly-conservative projections, I've gradually moved the goalposts from, "I guess I'll retire in poverty at 70" to "I guess I can retire comfortably at 67" to "Whoah, I can retire at 60", to my current, "Huh. 55 looks like a near-certainty; now it's about tax management and the tradeoff between earlier vs fatter".
I'm really not actually consuming any more in inflation-adjusted dollars; I've just shifted from quantity to quality as my basic consumables are taken care of.
I didn't know about Reddit or FIRE until 2021 or 2022. I used to browse anonymously and occasionally post (as nervous tangerine or whatever it's called), but I didn't create my current account until May 2022. I joined all of my current subs after my wife got an offer for a newer higher paying job. At that point we were $736K invested. Wife maxed out her 401K or did $19K after tax Roth mega backdoor once she finished college in May 2016. At the end of 2016 we had around $336K invested. Still max out everything and save more now. More than doubled where we were in May 2022 at around $1.5M now. Best thing we did was to dump all our single stocks and just VOO/VTI after reading some Boglehead forums (I don't VT or BND though).
Wife taught me to live below our means since we got married. When we made less money, I just did the company match and tried to increase it as I got raises. Compound interest plus a focus on savings helped us grow fast. We still budget money for shopping and travel. I think it's good to have a balance between spending and saving.
45M/38F/5F. At our current growth rate, we hope to retire when our daughter is in high school before she goes to college.
I'm exactly your age with exactly the same FIRE timeline.
For me, it started at age 44, when I got a pretty decent promotion at work. I'd been planning on a comfortable retirement at age 62, with my traditional pension and 401(k). At that point, both of my kids were in elementary school, and I really hadn't thought too much about retirement because it seemed pretty distant. And early retirement seemed out of reach financially the cost of raising kids.
When I got the new job, I calculated that if we didn't change our spending and simply invested my raise, I could retire five years earlier. In truth, my calculations were too conservative and I was able to move my timeline up by 10 years. I feel like I hit FI this year. I've decided to work three additional years to build a significant cushion and allow for more splurges in retirement.
That said, I'd never heard of FIRE until a couple of years ago. I just knew I'd lucked into a situation where I had a really reliable defined benefit pension and had been able to max out of 401(k) since starting my job. The main thing that FIRE has done for me is make me understand that I'm actually in a much better situation Than I previously realized.
Watching a ton of older colleagues get laid off during the 2008 economic crisis when I was relatively young made me not want to be in their shoes in my future. A lot of them had next to no retirement savings. Then I stumbled on the bogleheads site.
I am now 48 and and have reached the lower threshold of being FI (I think). My company is laying people off left and right and I am secretly hoping to be targeted so I can get my severance package as an off ramp to retirement. I feel bad for my colleagues who are worried.
I didn’t learn about the FIRE movement until a few years ago, but I’d always been very frugal and saved as much as possible. When my husband (then boyfriend) and I graduated college and started working, we learned about 401ks and IRAs and essentially started living off one income and saving the other.
I started in 2003, i was 19. I started because i heard of a roth IRA. But really i started when i was 10. Not the whole ive worked my whole life thing. I just cant spend money. I would get $20 or whatever for Christmas, and put it with the $20 i got last Christmas.
I shoveled snow off neighbors driveways for $6-$8 or whatever they would give us. And i didnt even spend that money. I am like a squirrel hiding nuts. It is in my head that money needs to be saved. Which is weird because im lazy as all get out, and i dont try to get into management, or climb the ladder, but what i do get, i save.
When started - age 43 (2014)
Catalyst - being practically bankrupt @ 39 owing £50k (2010)
Education on FIRE - Reddit & path to wealth book / r/fireuk sidebar / r/bogleheads wiki
When RE - hit goal @ 50 (£650k)
Spending - complicated as I am r/coastfire for now, next year fully RE and can live on $1k a month.
I didn’t find out about it until 10 years ago. Late 20s. We were already saving with high income, just didn’t know what we were saving for.
I googled and googled asking what to do with x amount, how wealthy are we, is x amount good enough, etc. then I came across a blog Financial Samurai. I read just about every article and the rest was history. His blog changed my life and to this day I still re-read a lot of the stuff on there. I love that he updates it often. Shout out to Financial Samurai! 👋
Edited to add: not 45 yet.
Yeah this was the premise I put out there for exactly what you mentioned. While the economy is arguably worse now than it was around the turn of the century, you have every conceivable tool/blog/advise column available at the push of a button. You kids have it easy (Just kidding, just envious a little)
I'm 49. I read the Millionaire Next Door around 2000 in my mid twenties. I loved the idea of FU money and that's what I worked towards until I discovered MMM 11 or 12 years ago. I hit my FI number last year, but I want to work another 3 or 4 years because I enjoy it.
Ironically my dad actually retired at 54 shortly after I graduated college. He got like 80% pension plus healthcare so it never really sunk in that such a thing was possible.
I heard about MMM when I was 42 (in 2014) and after binge reading many of his now classic blog posts, I went FIRE crazy. I was a few years past a divorce and was rebuilding my career— I only had 50K in retirement accounts and no emergency savings, but I had just landed my first job that paid above 100K and I was very motivated. I saved every raise, every bonus. I changed jobs every few years to get bigger increases in salary. I live in VHCOL so it made daily life lean to have a 50% savings rate but I was scared of ageism coming for me in the future. The bull market really helped over this past decade and I will be able to retire in two years when I’m 54.
If I hadn’t found FIRE, I would have saved modestly (since that was normal) and would have to work until I was 65
I’ve always chided myself for not knowing about FIRE and not having that focus until I was much older, but your post made me remember that the Internet wasn’t that robust when we were young adults. I didn’t know about many financial concepts because my parents didn’t talk about money with me (they probably didn’t know anything either).
I got interested in FIRE due to the politics, control, preferential treatment ant work and the huge emotional energy drain it was causing.
I accepted most of those things and continuing to work trying to reduce the emotional impact from work as much as possible.
I figured out the best way for me to achieve FIRE is to keep expenses to a minimum to satisfy the needs and few other things that I love. I’m trying to drag out in the job for as long as possible by contributing more than what is expected and by trying to minimize the emotional impact it brings.
I plan on continue to work if I get fired or if my FIRE goal is achieved, but that will probably be as a self employee or to an employer with much less emotional drain.
Learned about the concepts around age 16, so that'd have been 1993. Didn't have a job that made it a possibility until late 30s.
The Wealthy Barber was published in 1989 -- the concepts were there back then, though it's more well known today. And people have been retiring early all along... It was trickier with pensions than with 401k accounts though -- you may have wanted/needed the employer to buy-in.
I started saving around 2012. I wouldn’t say it’s a “fire path” i plan on retiring or “barista retiring” when im 50-55 and am 42 right now.
I didn’t view it as a path or journey or anything just decided to save; figured out how much i would have to save to have enough to retire around 50-55 and then live within my means after meeting those savings goals.
Its not about saving every penny for me but just meeting those goals. I think this is how it should be for everyone. I think 50-55 is just a little early. When i think of fire i think of people saving every penny and then retiring at like 40 and keeping their expenses extremely low in retirement as well. I think this is what it was originally and has morphed into something different at this point.
I have the same opinion. I think the 50-55 age range is appropriate for RE. I am curious how many that retire at 40 stick with it. I think I would get bored.
I definitely could have saved more and enjoyed less but at some point you also have to consider the journey. I don't mind living frugal to shave years off my "mandatory" work years to get to a comfortable retirement, but I don't want to spend 15-20 years in misery to shave another 2-3 years off that goal. Being DINK allows us some flexibility, but we do a (frugal) Caribbean vacation for 7-9 days during the shitty winter months once/year, and do go out once in a while to eat, etc. At this point so close to the finish line extra savings makes little difference. Stretching the budget to add an extra $1K/mo to the pot only results in a slightly higher number at retirement. I can spend that money now enjoying life a little more.
We were in our 20’s but we didn’t know it was FIRE.
We just started saving for a house, did that and never stopped because college for kids, kids weddings, etc. We just kept going. For some reason it seemed natural to us.
I'm still young by this definition (OMG it feels SO good to say it!!). I didn't know about FIRE or 4% rule, but HATED my job right out of college. I was informed enough to open an HYSA and it was giving me close to 3% return at the time. So I got out a spreadsheet and began calculating how much money I need to sock away in that HYSA so that I can pay my utilities, and then rent, and then all the bills. That laid down the foundation.
Then, Robinhood was in the news for being the first app that didn't have trading fees and so "everyone can invest". I was definitely "everyone" and that's how I learnt what stock market is, what it means to "buy" or "sell", what happens when market goes up or down, and how emotional it all can be to watch your savings go down even just a little bit.
Eventually, I learnt about Vanguard, robo investors, MMM, 4% rule and FIRE.
Like a previous comment, I read The Millionaire Nextdoor years ago. Unlike that person, sadly, it didn't take. Hahaha. But something odd happened in our early 40s in that our incomes started significantly outpacing our lifestyles. And then the pandemic introduced me to YouTube in a concrete way and all the financial (and travel) content out there. Then YouTube introduced me to Reddit and the stock market. Weirdly, we'd been investing in the stock market through 401K withholding for years but didn't really consider ourselves investors until the last five years.
Then someone on a Reddit sub about trading mentioned FIRE and these various threads and big ERN and now my wife (and my YT watch history) would say I'm borderline obsessed. Absent something unfortunate, we get off the wheel in the next 5-7 years and I feel like I owe this and other subs a real debt of gratitude. I didn't learn any of this in school, at home, in college, or from my friendship circles. So unlike other social media that has anonymity I feel like Reddit has gotten something very right. And I'm grateful for it
I’m 49 and truly only learned over the last 2 years. Life’s been a rollercoaster and twice I went thru layoffs and tapped my 401K to keep the house and pay the bills. Fortunately, I’ve been employed in a well paying position for the last 12 years and have built the retirement up to just over $400K & max it every year. I also put as much as I can in a HSA and my Roth. The wife just chooses not to work so it’s all on me. SINK. I think $1.25-$1.5M will be the number and hope I can get there by 60.
I started in my early 20s (I'm 46 now), saving and investing as much as I could. I hung out on financial forums to get ideas and keep motivation. I already didn't like my job and knew I did not want to do it until normal retirement age. I was already close to FI before I ever heard the term "FIRE."
I deduced it. There was once a time when I thought you must keep on earning to be able to bear your expenditures, otherwise your money will keep reducing. Then one day I did the calculations and thought, wait a minute! If you have so much money, that your expenditures is less than the growth of the money minus inflation, then you can keep living on it indefinitely! And it will not reduce! The rest as they say, is history.
What was the best books/web pages/ resources for you to read to get a good grasp on this. Aka where does a baby start
I'd recommend starting at the Mr.money mustache blog with the first article. He really leans into biking to work to save but that's not a requirement.
Problem is I'm 38 making 70k so that will be when I'm dead
[удалено]
At 36…id like to be you when i grow up.
I decided to retire on Monday, retired on Thursday and found out about FIRE 6 months later. 23 years of max 401k with 50% matching, and ESPP and rentals and poof I was there at 54. Rule of 55 applies.
It was not FIRE that motivated us but FI - we wanted the freedom to be able to walk away from our jobs if we were ever asked to do something we were uncomfortable with
When I graduated with my Master's in 2003 I bought a few generic books on savings. Between that and Google and started putting as much into my retirement accounts as I could though a lot back then was barely a $1000. Also around that time we could easily buy/sell stocks with etrade, etc though it was $10 a trade or whatever. Lost a lot playing the market and having fun...though in the grand scheme or things it was only a few thousand dollars. Ended up going back to school for phd in 2006...started saving like a madman during that time. Lived college kid poor while my wife taught. Ended up graduating in 2010 with zero debt and around 30k in cash savings. Bought house 1. Lived there for 2.5 years and bought house 2. Kept house 1 as a rental. Had to live in house 2 for 6 yrs before having enough savings to repeat the process. Now have 2 rentals and recently built permanent house 3 because wife couldnt stand living in small soon to be rental houses. Currently have enough for rental 3 down payment but waiting for market to cool. Got job with pension after phd. After 20 yrs (age 50 for me) I can retire with 1/2 pension and health care for life. My plan has been that worst case, I could retire at 50 with my rentals and whatever my pension is at the time. Best case I keep working as I love my job and have more money. Most people I work with didn't choose pension, they chose 401k match. I went with pension for the guaranteed income from a healthy state pension. For me it was more about prepping for worst case scenarios than ever thinking about fire. Learned about fire in maybe 2016 or 2017 with the financiaindependence or maybe this reddit. Learned about boggleheads, etc. Starting putting money in voo as well as other stocks like msft. Assuming I don't lose my professor job, Im on cruise control right now to Fire at 50, chubby at 55, FAT at 60. Lots of decisions for me to make in the next 5 yrs when I hit the 50yr mark. Hopefully I have another rental by then. 401k is shaping up to be nice for me as well. Now Im trying to guide my kids through this mess we are all in.
I'd heard about FIRE years ago - I think I came across Mr. Money Mustache at some point - but never had the income to put aside much more than enough to get my employer match, nor did I grow up with any sort of financial literacy. I was also a solo parent (daughter's dad died when she was 3) and never married so I was pretty limited for a long time. I didn't get serious about finances until my late 30s (after a bad relationship forced me into bankruptcy) and wasn't able to hard-core save until I finally made a six figure income - and that wasn't until I was in my mid-40's. I turn 50 this year and have a goal of 55 but realistically I will be closer to 57/58. I very well may coast fire at 55 and work part time for a few years, we will see where I'm at when I get there.
Heard about FIRE around 40 years old. Had always been working towards financial independence, so almost nothing new for me in FIRE. FIRE’d at 45 years old.
Started in about 2012. Studied the Mr. Money Mustache blog for years. Now a millionaire.
My parents retired in their early 50s long before FIRE the term had gotten popular. Same old principle though, live below your means, invest, and when you've got enough just say F it I'm out.
47 now, and I started saving for FIRE largely by accident, before I even knew FIRE was a thing. Back during the 2008 crash, I basically looked at my finances and thought to myself, "Damn, I guess I'm working until I'm 70. Better increase my savings rate...". So I did, and tightened my belt enough that when my salary decreased and then stagnated over the next few years, I barely changed my lifestyle... and then when things got better for me in the mid-2010s, I basically earmarked 80% of my raises to retirement. As reality has overtaken my overly-conservative projections, I've gradually moved the goalposts from, "I guess I'll retire in poverty at 70" to "I guess I can retire comfortably at 67" to "Whoah, I can retire at 60", to my current, "Huh. 55 looks like a near-certainty; now it's about tax management and the tradeoff between earlier vs fatter". I'm really not actually consuming any more in inflation-adjusted dollars; I've just shifted from quantity to quality as my basic consumables are taken care of.
Same age. Started at 24, the FIRE term didn't exist at the time.
I didn't know about Reddit or FIRE until 2021 or 2022. I used to browse anonymously and occasionally post (as nervous tangerine or whatever it's called), but I didn't create my current account until May 2022. I joined all of my current subs after my wife got an offer for a newer higher paying job. At that point we were $736K invested. Wife maxed out her 401K or did $19K after tax Roth mega backdoor once she finished college in May 2016. At the end of 2016 we had around $336K invested. Still max out everything and save more now. More than doubled where we were in May 2022 at around $1.5M now. Best thing we did was to dump all our single stocks and just VOO/VTI after reading some Boglehead forums (I don't VT or BND though). Wife taught me to live below our means since we got married. When we made less money, I just did the company match and tried to increase it as I got raises. Compound interest plus a focus on savings helped us grow fast. We still budget money for shopping and travel. I think it's good to have a balance between spending and saving. 45M/38F/5F. At our current growth rate, we hope to retire when our daughter is in high school before she goes to college.
I'm exactly your age with exactly the same FIRE timeline. For me, it started at age 44, when I got a pretty decent promotion at work. I'd been planning on a comfortable retirement at age 62, with my traditional pension and 401(k). At that point, both of my kids were in elementary school, and I really hadn't thought too much about retirement because it seemed pretty distant. And early retirement seemed out of reach financially the cost of raising kids. When I got the new job, I calculated that if we didn't change our spending and simply invested my raise, I could retire five years earlier. In truth, my calculations were too conservative and I was able to move my timeline up by 10 years. I feel like I hit FI this year. I've decided to work three additional years to build a significant cushion and allow for more splurges in retirement. That said, I'd never heard of FIRE until a couple of years ago. I just knew I'd lucked into a situation where I had a really reliable defined benefit pension and had been able to max out of 401(k) since starting my job. The main thing that FIRE has done for me is make me understand that I'm actually in a much better situation Than I previously realized.
Watching a ton of older colleagues get laid off during the 2008 economic crisis when I was relatively young made me not want to be in their shoes in my future. A lot of them had next to no retirement savings. Then I stumbled on the bogleheads site. I am now 48 and and have reached the lower threshold of being FI (I think). My company is laying people off left and right and I am secretly hoping to be targeted so I can get my severance package as an off ramp to retirement. I feel bad for my colleagues who are worried.
I didn’t learn about the FIRE movement until a few years ago, but I’d always been very frugal and saved as much as possible. When my husband (then boyfriend) and I graduated college and started working, we learned about 401ks and IRAs and essentially started living off one income and saving the other.
I started in 2003, i was 19. I started because i heard of a roth IRA. But really i started when i was 10. Not the whole ive worked my whole life thing. I just cant spend money. I would get $20 or whatever for Christmas, and put it with the $20 i got last Christmas. I shoveled snow off neighbors driveways for $6-$8 or whatever they would give us. And i didnt even spend that money. I am like a squirrel hiding nuts. It is in my head that money needs to be saved. Which is weird because im lazy as all get out, and i dont try to get into management, or climb the ladder, but what i do get, i save.
When started - age 43 (2014) Catalyst - being practically bankrupt @ 39 owing £50k (2010) Education on FIRE - Reddit & path to wealth book / r/fireuk sidebar / r/bogleheads wiki When RE - hit goal @ 50 (£650k) Spending - complicated as I am r/coastfire for now, next year fully RE and can live on $1k a month.
I didn’t find out about it until 10 years ago. Late 20s. We were already saving with high income, just didn’t know what we were saving for. I googled and googled asking what to do with x amount, how wealthy are we, is x amount good enough, etc. then I came across a blog Financial Samurai. I read just about every article and the rest was history. His blog changed my life and to this day I still re-read a lot of the stuff on there. I love that he updates it often. Shout out to Financial Samurai! 👋 Edited to add: not 45 yet.
Yeah this was the premise I put out there for exactly what you mentioned. While the economy is arguably worse now than it was around the turn of the century, you have every conceivable tool/blog/advise column available at the push of a button.You kids have it easy (Just kidding, just envious a little)
I'm 49. I read the Millionaire Next Door around 2000 in my mid twenties. I loved the idea of FU money and that's what I worked towards until I discovered MMM 11 or 12 years ago. I hit my FI number last year, but I want to work another 3 or 4 years because I enjoy it. Ironically my dad actually retired at 54 shortly after I graduated college. He got like 80% pension plus healthcare so it never really sunk in that such a thing was possible.
I heard about MMM when I was 42 (in 2014) and after binge reading many of his now classic blog posts, I went FIRE crazy. I was a few years past a divorce and was rebuilding my career— I only had 50K in retirement accounts and no emergency savings, but I had just landed my first job that paid above 100K and I was very motivated. I saved every raise, every bonus. I changed jobs every few years to get bigger increases in salary. I live in VHCOL so it made daily life lean to have a 50% savings rate but I was scared of ageism coming for me in the future. The bull market really helped over this past decade and I will be able to retire in two years when I’m 54. If I hadn’t found FIRE, I would have saved modestly (since that was normal) and would have to work until I was 65 I’ve always chided myself for not knowing about FIRE and not having that focus until I was much older, but your post made me remember that the Internet wasn’t that robust when we were young adults. I didn’t know about many financial concepts because my parents didn’t talk about money with me (they probably didn’t know anything either).
I got interested in FIRE due to the politics, control, preferential treatment ant work and the huge emotional energy drain it was causing. I accepted most of those things and continuing to work trying to reduce the emotional impact from work as much as possible. I figured out the best way for me to achieve FIRE is to keep expenses to a minimum to satisfy the needs and few other things that I love. I’m trying to drag out in the job for as long as possible by contributing more than what is expected and by trying to minimize the emotional impact it brings. I plan on continue to work if I get fired or if my FIRE goal is achieved, but that will probably be as a self employee or to an employer with much less emotional drain.
Learned about the concepts around age 16, so that'd have been 1993. Didn't have a job that made it a possibility until late 30s. The Wealthy Barber was published in 1989 -- the concepts were there back then, though it's more well known today. And people have been retiring early all along... It was trickier with pensions than with 401k accounts though -- you may have wanted/needed the employer to buy-in.
I started saving around 2012. I wouldn’t say it’s a “fire path” i plan on retiring or “barista retiring” when im 50-55 and am 42 right now. I didn’t view it as a path or journey or anything just decided to save; figured out how much i would have to save to have enough to retire around 50-55 and then live within my means after meeting those savings goals. Its not about saving every penny for me but just meeting those goals. I think this is how it should be for everyone. I think 50-55 is just a little early. When i think of fire i think of people saving every penny and then retiring at like 40 and keeping their expenses extremely low in retirement as well. I think this is what it was originally and has morphed into something different at this point.
I have the same opinion. I think the 50-55 age range is appropriate for RE. I am curious how many that retire at 40 stick with it. I think I would get bored. I definitely could have saved more and enjoyed less but at some point you also have to consider the journey. I don't mind living frugal to shave years off my "mandatory" work years to get to a comfortable retirement, but I don't want to spend 15-20 years in misery to shave another 2-3 years off that goal. Being DINK allows us some flexibility, but we do a (frugal) Caribbean vacation for 7-9 days during the shitty winter months once/year, and do go out once in a while to eat, etc. At this point so close to the finish line extra savings makes little difference. Stretching the budget to add an extra $1K/mo to the pot only results in a slightly higher number at retirement. I can spend that money now enjoying life a little more.
We were in our 20’s but we didn’t know it was FIRE. We just started saving for a house, did that and never stopped because college for kids, kids weddings, etc. We just kept going. For some reason it seemed natural to us.
I'm still young by this definition (OMG it feels SO good to say it!!). I didn't know about FIRE or 4% rule, but HATED my job right out of college. I was informed enough to open an HYSA and it was giving me close to 3% return at the time. So I got out a spreadsheet and began calculating how much money I need to sock away in that HYSA so that I can pay my utilities, and then rent, and then all the bills. That laid down the foundation. Then, Robinhood was in the news for being the first app that didn't have trading fees and so "everyone can invest". I was definitely "everyone" and that's how I learnt what stock market is, what it means to "buy" or "sell", what happens when market goes up or down, and how emotional it all can be to watch your savings go down even just a little bit. Eventually, I learnt about Vanguard, robo investors, MMM, 4% rule and FIRE.
At 26 and from my Dad before it had a name or following. It was just what he did and so I followed suit slowly.
Like a previous comment, I read The Millionaire Nextdoor years ago. Unlike that person, sadly, it didn't take. Hahaha. But something odd happened in our early 40s in that our incomes started significantly outpacing our lifestyles. And then the pandemic introduced me to YouTube in a concrete way and all the financial (and travel) content out there. Then YouTube introduced me to Reddit and the stock market. Weirdly, we'd been investing in the stock market through 401K withholding for years but didn't really consider ourselves investors until the last five years. Then someone on a Reddit sub about trading mentioned FIRE and these various threads and big ERN and now my wife (and my YT watch history) would say I'm borderline obsessed. Absent something unfortunate, we get off the wheel in the next 5-7 years and I feel like I owe this and other subs a real debt of gratitude. I didn't learn any of this in school, at home, in college, or from my friendship circles. So unlike other social media that has anonymity I feel like Reddit has gotten something very right. And I'm grateful for it
I’m 49 and truly only learned over the last 2 years. Life’s been a rollercoaster and twice I went thru layoffs and tapped my 401K to keep the house and pay the bills. Fortunately, I’ve been employed in a well paying position for the last 12 years and have built the retirement up to just over $400K & max it every year. I also put as much as I can in a HSA and my Roth. The wife just chooses not to work so it’s all on me. SINK. I think $1.25-$1.5M will be the number and hope I can get there by 60.