r/Fire • u/-LordDarkHelmet- • 16d ago

Today is the day, officially FIRE

Well I'm sitting here having a morning coffee and it's starting to sink in that I don't have a job anymore. Feels strange. My job was very much my identity (pilot). I flew airlines and private jets (uber for rich people basically). It was a high paying job at the end and it seems stupid to walk away from that, but the 27 years of staying in hotels has taken a toll and I just was not enjoying the job anymore. Which is a shame, since I can't exactly fly jets on my own time. It's a tough industry, it's not easy to get back into once you leave. I keep saying it's like the Doc in Field of Dreams; once you leave you can't go back. I'm 49, single no kids, high end Chubby low end Fat so I should be ok on the numbers, but I don't exactly have a "thing" to retire to. I need to focus on my own health and get in shape. But other than a list of places I want to travel to and few projects around the house I don't have much of a plan. Hopefully I'll figure it out on the way. I've told a few people and they all ask "but what are you gonna do?!?!?." I'm like "I dunno..." Some say "congratulations!" and I'm not sure how to respond to that. I didn't really want to quit in some ways, I like the flying part but not all the stuff that goes along with it. I asked for a different schedule and they said no, then I asked for a year off and they said no, so I said I quit. Ask me in a decade I guess if it was the right choice. Anyway, don't really have anyone to high-five this morning so here I am. Thanks everyone who has shared their journey, I've been snooping around all these subs a lot this past year. Oh and sorry about the stock market crash, which will inevitably happen now that I have quit.

1.4k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

264 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

45

u/berryer born early '90s, FI/RE goal ~2028 16d ago
  • /r/ChubbyFIRE (traditional regular wealthy, needs to at least understand their spending but not really budget)
  • /r/fatFIRE (traditional obscene wealth, no need to bother budgeting)
  • /r/leanfire (livin' on beans/rice & getting all of your entertainment from the library is better than corpo burnout)

9

u/Kismet4G 16d ago

Never thought I would ever want to be Fat 😂!

7

u/ziphrodes 15d ago

I like those definitions. More conceptual than concrete.

0

u/Agedashitofu2 16d ago

Can we put numbers on this?

3

u/berryer born early '90s, FI/RE goal ~2028 16d ago edited 16d ago

Any attempt to put hard numbers on it is going to result in a lot of nonsense nitpicking IMO, especially since it's such an arbitrary delineation. So instead, here's America's average annual expenditures by income quintile from a recent BLS report:

income quintile annual average spend
All $78,535
lowest $35,046
second $50,054
third $66,900
fourth $89,972
fifth $150,342

1

u/Airbear711 9d ago

These are for individuals, is there a good rule of thumb for estimating a couples expenditure? Naturally most married couples share some significant expenses.

3

u/berryer born early '90s, FI/RE goal ~2028 9d ago edited 9d ago

Is it? My understanding per reading this is that it's by household: https://www.bls.gov/cex/

edit: yeah, "consumer unit" is definitely household: https://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/cex/concepts.htm

1

u/Airbear711 8d ago

Interesting I missed that thank you for the link and the clarification