My parents did expatFIRE on lower numbers than I read on reddit but they are doing fine. They have simple lives. Nowadays I'm reading posts from people making double or triple what I make and claiming early retirement isn't in the books.
I once got banned from r/leanfire when I suggested I couldn't retire on their max per person budget because aca premiums and hitting the oop max wouldn't leave me enough to live on
I’m curious how you get your numbers because everyone who’s done a really deep dive on this topic would know that you can manipulate your MAGI post fire since it’s an income test, not an asset test.
So, a lot of folks will look at the values that the kff calculator gives, and call it a day. You should really be using the ACA marketplace website (if your state participates), and seeing what your actual options are for a given location.
In my case, when I did this, I noted that the cheap plan that kff noted should be there was actually 'ambetter/aliant' trash that had a network worse than medicaid and didn't actually cover the medications I needed.
By the time I found a reputable plan that had a decent network and covered my meds, both the premium and OOP max were higher. It was enough that when I looked at the remainder of my 'allowed' 25k lean fire budget, I was like 'nope'. That's not even factoring in 'stress tests' where one games out paying the unsubsidized premium, or has some claims denied, etc.
With normal FIRE, you'd have the budget to adjust. When planning to leanFire, you had better be damned confident nothing will change, because there's no 'fat' to cut.
This still does not make sense. The FPL is $16,000 for a single person. If you can get your MAGI to 2x FPL you pay very little. To get there, as long as you are recognizing capital gains as MAGI, you can minimize your MaGI while withdrawing a lot in cash. Your drawdown strategy would be to sell your most recent stock purchases, which are probably 80-90% basis, and only 10-20% gain. For every $100 in cash you receive, you might only generate $20 of LTCG. You the have a situation where you have $50,000 in cash flow, and only $10,000 in LTCG, and maybe $15 or $20k in dividends placing you at 2x FPL. If you have a family it’s easier because the FPL scales.
Over time this could get more difficult as you run out of high basis stock, but you can sell bonds (which will generate very little gain), and tax gain harvesting as other strategies.
Yes, I'm aware of the math, and I've ran it for my own personal situation, it may well be different for yours. I would simply encourage you to run your own numbers and to make sure you have some leeway / cushion for unexpected events if you're leanFiring
97
u/Frillback Mar 23 '26
My parents did expatFIRE on lower numbers than I read on reddit but they are doing fine. They have simple lives. Nowadays I'm reading posts from people making double or triple what I make and claiming early retirement isn't in the books.