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I’m hoping to get there by 40 - 7 years out. Bought a couple investment properties and plan to do a couple more. It allows me to put a healthy amount into savings every year, but I’m not being frugal. My belief is, live your life and prioritize what’s important to you. I don’t want to miss these years traveling with my wife to put aside $10k more a year, but we still try to live well beneath our means.
Been thinking about the rental property route also. Listening to a Bigger Pockets podcast right now actually :). What kind of properties have you invested if you don’t mind me asking?
We should be FI in 5 years, but dont plan to RE. Still have many years ahead of us and we're building wealth at a very high rate right now, and would like to pass it on generationally if possible.
I'm assuming that this is something that I can pull off by the time I'm 50ish assuming that I stay at my current salary of around 100K. The funny thing to me is that before even reading up on FIRE, I had already been hitting a savings rate of 40 to 50 percent.
All my needs for living are met on just $32K and that includes a bit of stupid spending here and there. Could probably push it down to $30K, but it's not worth going crazy overm I just save the rest because there's nothing I really want that badly. My next goal is a rental property.
One of the great things about getting into the fire mindset though is when you have a deep understanding that cutting your spending has an immensely more powerful effect than earning more. Every additional amount you earn is taxed at a higher marginal rate. Also, sometimes cutting spending barely takes any effort.
Our office has free Starbucks coffee. That's a lot of savings right there if you just drink that as opposed to going to a Starbucks shop everyday
I've also learned to measure the future value of spending by putting certain costs into a compund interest calculator and seeing what that will be in the future.
To clarify above, 32K means that's how much I general pay in expenses aside from student loans. Still need to pay taxes above that obviously which is another 23K to 27K depending on my tradition 401K contributions. As it generally stands, assuming I'm done with my student loans (likely a year or two away), my income net of federal, state, local, and SS taxes is around 75K. 32K of expenses means that it's an extra 43K to max out tax advantaged retirement accounts and invest in taxable accounts.
That's where I'm sort of stuck because I need to accumulate cash on order to have enough down payment for a rental property that I would also be living in. Ideally I would make a move to industry and make a lot more and save additional money towards a down payment. Only problem is that if the market makes a downturn in the next year or two, I want to buying as much as possible consistently.
True FIRE turns me off. The reason you're able to retire early is because you're frugal to a serious extreme. And then you need to continue that frugality throughout retirement. Because I'm blessed to be a high earner, I'm able to follow a much more moderate version of this.
There are different levels of FIRE. You're talking LeanFIRE, and yeah no interest in counting pennies. As many of us here are high income earners, we could aim for FatFIRE.
Yes hoping to FIRE in the next 2-3 years. But only to travel for a while (mini retirement) and then find a less stressful job with more work life balance. Haven’t really changed my lifestyle but the expectation that it’s in the near future keeps me from buying much stuff
I can’t FIRE in the next 5 years (or anytime soon). But I always have it at the back of mind. My goal is to automatically send money to items of savings. For instance, I can’t seem to track my spending so I over contribute to my 401K. I pay down my mortgage too because I’m hoping it frees up cash so that I can buy crib no 3
I am more interested in FI than RE. I should be FI in another 7 years, age 35, at which point I certainly could retire to a normal middle class quality of life in my LCOL city. But more likely I will continue to work in what jobs interest me and bounce through a couple different careers while traveling the world. There’s a lot you can do in life and I want to do as much of it as possible, not just sit in excel for 40 years.
I’ll FI in 5 years, but my RE date is another 3-4 years after that (assuming I stay single and with no kids).
Not 5, but 8 at 40. Probably won’t RE, but move on from professional services.
We started our journey out of undergrad. DINKs for 9 years. Always save exactly 40%. It’s a happy medium of save to lifestyle creep as comp rises.
I'm 32 and FI ("leanFI" as someone said up there). I have no plans to retire anytime soon though. the key to mine was having a high savings rate, bought a couple of rentals, experimented with #vanlife while traveling as a consultant, and changing jobs for faster salary increases.
both, I went client-service, to industry, back to client service again.
People who are planning to be FI in the next 5 years, what is the number that you are targeting?
Targeting $5M but likely land at 3.5M given how the market is going
I am planning to do that within next 5 years. I will definitely have to geo arbitrage to be able to do it though.
What is FIRE ?
Can someone give highlights on it please ?
Financial Independence— freedom to not be tied down to a 9-5 desk job if you don’t want to be
Retire Early— retiring earlier than 65
It’s the concept of building a nest egg (~$1.5M+) that comprises investments/passive income from which you can draw upon to support your living without necessarily having to work anymore. You can be FI and not RE’d. The earlier you plan to stop working, the larger of a nest egg you need (because you’ll be withdrawing from it over a longer duration).
Pursuing FIRE but have no RE date in mind. I make budgeting, saving, and planning a priority so that I can have more options in the future.
If I was to think about retiring in the next five years I’d be setting myself up to utilize a Roth Conversion Ladder and maybe setting up a bond tent.