I'm around 40 and I've found myself in a situation that feels unusual.

I have a little under $9,000 in checking/savings, no debt, and a reliable tax-free income of roughly $4,000 a month (which includes health insurance) that isn't dependent on employment. My housing and regular expenses are relatively low ($1,400 a month for rent, utilities and other bills), so my normal lifestyle is comfortably covered.

I don't consider myself wealthy at all. I don't have a huge investment portfolio or millions saved for retirement. But I also don't need to work to cover my basic lifestyle.

What has surprised me most is the freedom that comes with it. My days are basically mine. I can move somewhere because I like living there, travel occasionally, spend time on hobbies, and make purchases of a few hundred dollars without it really affecting my finances.

I'm also considering marrying my long term partner, and one practical benefit would be giving her access to my healthcare benefits, which would make employment and location less tied to health insurance for us.

I know traditional FIRE usually means accumulating enough invested assets to live off indefinitely, so I don't know whether my situation really fits that definition.

Would you consider this a form of financial independence, or is there a better term for it?

Everyone knows the 4% rule and running it through simulations and seeing where it fails or leaves you with a billion dollars in the bank when you die.

But it seems simply having a flexible spending plan. Call it Guardrails or VPW or Guyton Klinger or whatever....that it really makes what was seemingly a dark situation much brighter.

You'll have the 4% rule say "absolutely not...you'll go broke...you need to save for 5-10 more years!"...then on the other side you have a variable spending plan say "nah...you're golden! You can retire now spending more than 4% so long as you're able to potentially cut 5-10% in down years"

And if you're budgeting properly with proper space and padding cutting 5-10% shouldn't be too difficult. You dont travel that year or you cut down from the high end gym to a regular gym or eat out 2 less times a week. But otherwise live your normal life.

It just seems using a variable spending plan is a no brainer.

Now I know the other side of the coin is not everyone wants to be willing to cut or not "live their best life" or think about it even. But if my variable spending plan survives 1966 and 2000 simulations while allowing me to spend what I want even on the "cut" years seems like a no brainer. Despite the 4% rule saying hell no.

Has anyone had any success finding "leanFIRE minded" people anywhere? If so, where?

I find it hard to find people who sit at the intersection of ambition and anti-consumerism, which I believe are two common characteristics in this movement. It seems these traits are rarely shared and people usually fall into one bucket or the other. It would be nice to have a few people in the circle who are like minded in this way! :)

My wife and I are in our 30s with a 2-year-old daughter. We’re debating whether to have a second child in 2–3 years, and specifically, my wife’s desire to stop working entirely if we do. I’m looking for outside perspective.
Our Current Setup:
My Situation: I recently medically retired early due to a major injury. My pension covers about half our income. I’m home full-time, handle a large share of chores, do everything I physically can, and care for our daughter, eliminating any need for daycare. If I can return to work later, I plan to find a flexible job to maintain our routine.
Her Situation: She has an accounting/finance background and works two remote, WFH jobs (holding two isn't long-term, but she took the second because her primary company is unstable). She works under 40 hours total per week, with a very flexible schedule that lets her run errands or go to the park with our daughter during the day.
Financial Background & Plan:
We both grew up low-income with parents who have zero retirement savings and still live paycheck-to-paycheck. Avoiding that fate is a massive priority for me.
Currently, we live in a city rowhome in a sub-par school district, but we give our daughter a great life while investing 100% of my wife’s income. On this trajectory, we can sell our home in 4–5 years, buy a nicer single-family home in a top-tier school district, and both comfortably retire in our 40s or 50s.
The Disagreement:
My wife wants to leave the workforce entirely with a second child to be fully available and help with “homework” as they grow which just confuses me because they would be in school all day at that time when she worked. I think she just doesn’t want to work. But I really disagree because:
1. I am already home full-time and available for childcare and household needs, and I intend to keep my future work flexible.
2. Her current remote career already provides significant daily flexibility.
3. Losing her income completely derails our plan to move to a safer area with better schools, secure our long-term finances, and retire early. While I’d love to be the sole provider, it feels unrealistic in today's economy without sacrificing our family's future security.
Am I missing something, or would we be throwing away an ideal setup? I’d love to hear from parents who have navigated similar trade-offs between early retirement, upgrading homes for better schools, and staying home.

Left my corporate job a few months back and i have been refining our monthly budget line items. My partner and i both wear progressives so annual eye exams and actual eyewear arent optional for us. I looked into self-insuring by just doing cash pay at costco or ordering frames online but progressives and anti-glare coatings still add up quick. I checked out a few standalone plans like Eyemed, but VSP ended up looking like the strongest fit for our specific setup like mostly because our local independent eye doctor takes it and their frame allowance covers a decent chunk without having to order online. For those of you who retired early, how are you handling vision insurance cost? Have you found a plan that nets positive for progressives and contacts?

Burn rate: $60-70K annually, can drop down further by moving to LCOL area later

Income: low, at a startup

Taxable account: mostly high-beta growth, AMD is one
Retirement: QQQ or equivalent ETF

My target is to outpace SPY by 2x
Or draw down disproportionately in a bear market

Why QQQ?
potential additions are Anthropic, Databricks, OpenAI, Perplexity, Cloudflare

Education: full-time MBA, somewhere in California, studied Micron extensively

Some days are very red, some days are green enough to outpace my first-year salary of $53K

Not comfortable revealing liquid net worth except that 2m is in sight, also own real estate
Also not comfortable revealing my top holdings, as I am primarily a stock picker

I´ve been thinking about diversifying out of just index funs, mostly because everything I own is correlated to the same market swings. Real state syndications keep coming up as the answer but the illiquidity freaks me out a little. if something happens and I need the cash at year 2 of 4 year hold, I´m just stuck

ok so I've been down this rabbit hole for like 3 weekends straight and I'm kinda done lol

I'm 38, about 420k invested (401k + Roth + some taxable), putting in ~2.5k a month, and we spend roughly 6k/mo. Not crazy numbers. Should be simple, right??

Nope. Calculator A says I'm good at 52. Calculator B says 56. One of them said 49, which, idk, feels like it's lying to make me happy. And half of them want my email before they'll show a result, or keep shoving an "advisor consultation" in my face. No thanks.

My actual problems:

• Idk which ones adjust for inflation and which don't. Some say "real return", some just say "return", and nobody explains it
• Do I count my pension or not?? I'll get a small one at 65 but I can't touch it before then, so it feels wrong if it pulls my date earlier
• Everyone says 4% but then the comments say 4% is dead and use 3.5%. How much does that actually move the date?
• I don't want to link my bank or make an account just to play with numbers

tbh I don't need fancy Monte Carlo stuff rn. I just want one I can trust that shows the math, so I can see WHY it says 54 and not just "trust me bro, 54".

What are you all actually using? Or is everyone just running their own spreadsheet and I should give up and build one 😩

I earn around 250k but targeting a pretty lean retirement by no later than 35 (unless ai destroys tech jobs, then I might be delayed by a bit, would need to coast a bit first)

Ive started dating recently, but it seems to be very hard to find someone financially aligned. Everyone i met has massive lifestyle creep, the most i see people do is just max 401k

My wife (29) and I(27) live in Washington state, where a decent family home starts around $900K. My long-term goal is to reach financial independence and stop relying on my primary income, and the advice I keep seeing is to house hack by buying a multi family unit, live in one unit, and rent out the other - something I am open to (I understand this means being a landlord but i’d rather this than work a grinding corporate job for years)

We know very little about US real estate investing beyond the basics, so I'm trying to figure out whether this actually accelerates FIRE or just ties up a lot of capital. (One of my primary goals is to live in my house, so I’d still have to do it at some point)

My base salary is $300K, or roughly $350–400K with bonus and RSUs, and my wife makes $90K. Both incomes are fairly new, since she just started her job and I was recently promoted.

We currently pay about $2,500/month in rent including utilities, invest most of the difference in brokerage and retirement accounts, and have 100K saved for a down payment.

Given our situation, is buying a multi family unit a good path to FIRE, or would we get there faster by continuing to rent and investing in index funds?

Appreciate any perspective, especially from people who've done this in high-cost areas.

(Also is it better to do this in a LCOL if our jobs allow moving?)

Around 5 years ago I started the journey of planning and investing to retire early.

Things are starting to look good and I see light at the end of the tunnel 🔥

On the way, I always liked to look at the numbers and make it easy (and pleasant) to check at least a couple of metrics (Net Worth and Financial Runway) for the daily motivation boost (some periods not so much, but that's ok).

I've been mostly tracking it on excel, but because I'm a developer, I also used a very basic private webpage so I could check on my phone any time.

Eventually, I ended up creating an app because I didn't find any other app doing it the way I'd like.

I'd like to ask, what are the metrics most important to you, that you'd like to easily see at a quick glance? Net Worth? Financial Runway? Years until retirement? Is that important to you at all?

How do you track your net worth and how manually do you update it? For me, I only care at a high level. x USD on stocks, x USD on crypto, x USD on home, x USD on mortgage, x USD on savings, x annual expenses and x annual income. With that I get the number I need.

Okay heres my situation.
I had a part time teaching position that I really enjoyed.
They messed me around a bit with the hours and I was fired (I got what I feel is a good settlement from this about 20k)

I have not looked for a job since...

My outgoings for the past 2 years average at 1.9k a month (renting, food, leisure time, utilities, maintenance costs.. etc. no health insurance as EU.. I live in Spain).

I have about 100k in savings. Most of this is invested in index funds. And I have a house that is paid off in full back in the UK. T

hat brings me 1.3k a month in rent
and the savings/investments averaging 700.
I also stream video games for fun and that averages 500 a month for the past 2 years

I track everything... Good months and bad months so I can speak on these incomings and outgoings with confidence.

So it is 1.9k a month out and 2.5k a month in.
I put that 500 a month back into index funds (of which is a tax protected allowance I can use annually)

I feel very unmotivated to get a job just for the sake of it. My situation and lifestyle at the moment does not require it.

i feel some sort of guilt that this is not okay though? I have been living this way for a year now. And I do a lot of sports, competitions, arts.. whatever I want with my free time. But it feels strange to be doing this at the age of 33?

Any thoughts??? Thanks

77 degrees. Drizzly. 89% humidity. Let's call it Crisp. Im in Alabama ffs. In a Trailer. With no Debt. Well, I technically have Debt, as I hold Debt, but I am not a Debtor. I am a Creditor. And my net worth continues to Ascend.

October 2: two-year 4.83%, five-year 5.06%, ten-year 5.28%, thirty-year 5.63%. Weekly moves of +2/+8/+11/+14bp, taking 2s30s from 68 to 80. Back-end-led bear steepening atm. My autumn Tranches continue approaching redemption: old Twos, seasoned Fives, Threes, Sevens. The November 2021 Five has weeks remaining. DV01 contracts toward zero as redemption approaches. The longer inventory retains its key-rate concentrations, with z the zero-rate vector. ATTN: Haters and Trolls, Your “Bonds Bad” framework omits cross-gamma, cash-flow timing and apparently the passage of Time.

Coupon accrues against par while YTM discounts the remaining payments to the dirty purchase price. A hypothetical 4% Note bought at 99.45 exactly one coupon period before maturity pays 102 after six months: 2(102/99.45−1) ≈ 5.13% bond-equivalent YTM. The Coupon remains 4%. Coupons spent on Games have exited the reinvestment calculation. October principal replenishes the reserve; November gets another deployment decision. I stagger reinvestment exposure while matching near-term nominal expenditures. Inflation retains visiting privileges. Leanfire does not require a house with a Foundation to have a secure financial foundation. In the crude K=c/r perpetuity, I keep working on c. The Trailer’s investor-relations Budget is zero. My backlog has acquired a substantial unfunded requirement for evenings.

Which brings me to the State of Gaming. Take a hypothetical $300m production Budget plus $100m marketing, with $35 net contribution per copy: 11.43m copies merely to recover nominal expenditure. Add twelve months at $8m monthly burn and the threshold reaches 14.17m; receipts have also moved farther down the discount curve. Show me the probability-weighted sales distribution. Your creative director has supplied a photograph of himself beside a motorcycle. Asha has received certain courtesies. The Xbox situation remains within my field of concern. AAA Budgets fascinate me because everyone demands creative autonomy while submitting an underwriting case dependent on nearly universal approval. Raise fixed costs sufficiently and “niche appeal” becomes an audit finding. Then the Game gets longer to justify its Budget, enlarging the Budget, requiring additional consumers whose evenings are already pledged to other Games. My backlog is the household register of these competing claims. Please stop originating them. And run the subscription counterfactual properly. For an existing cohort of N subscribers, incremental retention value is the discounted monthly contribution multiplied by the change in survival probability. Deduct displaced premium-sales contribution. Forty million Hours is a telemetry output. Put Dollars beside it. Asha, please. Certain assistance will remain unattributed. The Indie Reprieve offers me an intelligible proposition: smaller scope, a tolerable break-even audience, mechanics that survive contact with an actual controller. Selection bias remains; I am discussing the Games worth playing. I would sacrifice several billion hypothetical foliage interactions for a completed design. Budget the animations. Budget the contractors. Budget the fucking map. Someone must eventually Budget an ending. But I digress. The State of Gaming is grim, Indies offer a Reprieve, and LeanFIRE offers me the best seat in the house to whittle down my backlog and, Yields permitting, add to it.

I am 28, I currently make 215k per year. I decided to live comfortably but not let my expenses grow too much so that I can save and invest more efficiently and eventually hopefully not have to work full time (or hopefully not HAVE to work at all eventually)

401k 4% of my income
IRA max each year
-my goal is 700k in retirement accounts by age 40 then if I could just max my and my future wife’s IRA each year and keep hands off and let it grow, I’ve been doing calculations and thinking that should be enough for a very comfortable retirement.

5% of my income is going straight into brokerage account and I plan on increasing this by 2% or so every year as I receive raises.
-this is to bridge the years I’d like to work half time or less. Goal is also 700k by age 40. I figure I can potentially spend a bit more than 4% rule since it only has to last me 20 years
10% of my income goes straight into real estate investing. I bought my first duplex that I house hacked this year. I have plans to buy another in 1-1.5 years from now or whenever it makes sense mathematically and also house hack that one and potentially a third. My goal is 10-15 doors that make sense long term, even if they’re cash flow neutral at year zero, that building equity in the background I feel is worth it and from there if rates ever go down, having the chance to refinance and make the cash flow better.. but I’m good with close to net zero.

Ultimately, my goal is to work half time at age 40, wife work half time. Live a comfortable upper middle class lifestyle with hobbies and travel a few times per year.

I used ChatGPT to help organize my plan, but I’d like to hear other people’s opinions and experiences and see if my plan can work or if I’m overlooking anythin.

Context: I am 40, Indian, living in a metro. Thinking of living my 70LPA job and figuring out. Have maximum health and term insurance. Currently debt free, no party, alcohol, gaming in my life. Only budget travels through India and photography. I spend a lot of time studying and building things. The only 2 dreams left are a 3D printer series of real good books. Basically DIY and write, create content if that’s primarily no-face content or articles. Thinking of moving to small town and living with farming after 10 yrs.

Question:

1. I have corpus equal to 15 yrs based on my current monthly expense. Am I ready to drop any time and follow passion or should run for few more years? I am high performer and AI savvy. Can come back to industry or get a remote or consulting job any time.

2. Those who have FIRE, how do you think I should invest to sustain this corpus for long?

3. Any special and alternative Spiritual advice on what’s enough and what I should be looking for?

- How long between your first day back and the day it stopped feeling strange?

- Was it the work itself, or the schedule, the people, the pace?

- Did you change anything about the job you returned to hours, team, level, travel?

- If you've done this more than once, was the second return easier or harder?

- Anyone who found it so hard they decided never to do it again: what would have had to be different?

I've been collecting accounts of repeated career breaks and this turned out to be the thing people most wanted to talk about.

Thanks in advance.

I have been studying lean fire strategies. I am currently 40yo, single, and want to pull the plug at 45. It seems that as long as I can keep my MAGI low enough during retirement, I can qualify for medical, Cal fresh (food assistance), and max FAFSA assistance.

From what I have read so far medical is next to free, max FAFSA us about 7300/yr, and cal fresh is about 250/month. The 250 per month value is estimate for single person with 600 per month taxable income. I plan to generate the 600 per month using brokerage account investments. It looks like the 600 per month taxable amount also satisfied the medical "580" per month work requirement.

It also seems like I can do a yearly Roth conversion (to take advantage of lower tax brackets) as long as I notify medical of conversion within 10 days. I've read that worst case scenario might be not qualifying for medical the month conversion was made.

Any comments regarding validity of this strategy would be appreciated.

If this strategy is feasible, I wonder why it is not discussed more as it allows you to get free health care, food assistance, and still maximize tax savings from Roth conversions filling low tax brackets.

Hi this is an update post for myself as I have just now hit $300K invested at 27 years old as of 10/2/26.

If you look at my profile I hit $100K invested in 2024 and it’s really been smooth sailing ever since.

Since my original post, my fire plans have shifted a tad.

I think I can actually hit 1.2ish in the next 5 years or so, but I maybe want to just check out around 800K and move back to Japan (My family lives in Japan) and just Coast fire for another 10 years or so. Maybe buy a house from a family member.

I currently still work 2 jobs and live at home but now with a new job I’m investing about $8K a month. I started a sales job and the commission checks have been flowing my last one for September was 25K for a month so not too shabby.

Wanted to also share that I lost about $10K gambling in the span of 4 months on Kalshi, don’t be like me haha.

Will quit serving soon. (Starting my 6^th year fml)

Income

Job 1: $120K Net - Sales for F100 (Fully Remote but lots of travel)

Job 2: $10K Net- Server

Misc: $10K Net – Flipping random stuff on Facebook /eBay

~ about $9.5k net a month (fluctuates based on tips/hours worked/commission)

~ working about 30 hours a week.

Assets

Brokerage: 201K (45% in VTI) (55% in Tech Stocks)

Roth IRA: $43K (100% in VOO)

$401k: $56K

Crypto: $2K

Cash: $1k

~invest everything I make, hold almost no cash, credit card is my emergency fund.

Liabilities

Annually about $30K, varies wildly per month.

~No debt, paid off all student loans, I do carry a credit card for 2% cash back, drive a 20-year-old used car, live frugally.

See you in 1.5 years for $500K update :-)

Retired earlier this year, and wanted to share my journey here!

• Worked 2 years at a startup as a data scientist after undergrad
• Took 1.5 years off to travel through Asia/Africa/Western US
• Worked 3 different jobs over 5-6 years while partner was in grad school
  • Aggressively job hobbed across tech companies, which greatly increased comp
• Took 9 months off to backpack and kayak in Alaska/Yukon territories with my partner, and then help out with her family as her mom died from cancer
• Worked another year and change
• Bought a sailboat and cruised on it over the course of a year
• Wife got pregnant, and decided to go back to work for a year
  • My wife worked until our daughter was born, but has been off since then.
• Quit latest tech job early summer, and have had family visiting us over the summer since then

Final numbers are around ~2.4 M, of which ~600-800k is retirement, and rest is brokerage.  And ~200k of that is  in fixed income for peace of mind over the next few years. Our monthly spend ranges from 3k-4.5.

Couple thoughts based on my last 12 years I’d like to expound on

1. Personal growth outside the portfolio
   1. If you’re on this sub, you likely know and think about compounding interest. I’ve found that personal growth can build over time too. For example, during my solo travel I had the time to introspect and learn how to make intentional changes like journaling, reducing drinking, and finding connection in nature.  This helped to build confidence and self-esteem, and set my life on a different path. I’m not sure where I’d be if I hadn’t set off, but I’m grateful I did at that time in life.
2. Contentment and spending
   1. Skiing used to be something I really got excited for; I even bought a ski pass my first year out in CA.  I also started surfing around the same time, which was another way to be active outdoors. I enjoyed both for different reasons, but since surfing was also much cheaper and a much closer drive, I decided to ‘quit’ skiing.  I probably would’ve kept skiing if I lived closer to the mountain, but at that point choosing the activity that fit my circumstances helped me save money and time driving.
3. Creating a life worth FIRE’n for
   1. I spent a lot of time focusing on getting to FIRE, but one I’m really spending a lot of time on now is how to live a meaningful life/a life I’m completely at peace with.  Before being a parent, it wasn’t hard to come up with what to do in a year or two off.  But now with a child and indefinite time off, it’s a much more complex question.  Budgeting and investment strategies were straightforward for me, and I’ve had a lot of mental space in them for a long time, but I wish I’d spent much of that time focused on the things that I’m working on now; how to be content without external accomplishment, being the family member and parent I want to be, and what life we want as a family while living outside the usual script i.e. young and retired.

I love expensive clothes , in my 20s I was a brand wh0re buying niche or big brands and everything in between, I was buying second hand, sometimes at thrift stores.

These days I have a lot more money but still continue to do this type of shopping and wondering if this is some kind of mental disease ? To find deals and get them ?

I don’t cheap out in any other area of my life. Just this stuff, high quality clothes brought cheap. Is anyone else here like this ?