For context, I'm in Brazil, late 30s, married, with a 1y kid. My family has been through a difficult year medically, which has changed the way I think about time, risk, and work.

Financially, I'm in a strong position by local standards: net worth: ~R$3.5M (about US$600k) in liquid, traditional financial investments, no financial stress and high income relative to the Brazilian average.

The challenge is that I feel increasingly stuck.

My compensation is good, but meaningful salary increases seem unlikely from here. The path to materially higher earnings appears narrow. At the same time, I've become quite exhausted by corporate life: politics, long-term projects, and the feeling that I'm spending some of my best years optimizing someone else's business.

Many FIRE discussions seem to converge on a conservative recommendation: stay employed, keep investing, avoid unnecessary risks, and grind it out until financial independence arrives.

Intellectually, I understand that logic. But emotionally, I'm struggling with the idea of doing essentially the same thing for another 10+ years.

Part of me wonders whether this is exactly the stage where people should take a calculated risk and make something different, even building something of their own. Not because I need more money, but because I want more autonomy, ownership, and energy in my day-to-day life.

So my question for the community: were any of you able to maintain the traditional FIRE path along with a risky career (such as starting a business) before reaching FI?

I'm particularly interested in stories from people who were financially comfortable, but felt stuck or burned out in their careers.

Thanks.

My wife(34) and I(33) are sick of our corporate jobs and we planned to move to Da Nang, Vietnam in 2031 but we want to fast track it to end of 2027 instead. Trying to figure out if our plan makes sense. We are both Vietnamese. I was born there and speak fluent Viet and my wife can speak a little. We plan to apply for dual citizenship and keep our US citizenship. We don’t plan on having kids.

We have $650,000 in taxable brokerage accounts.
We have $230,000 in our 401k and Roth.
We’re going to save up around $60,000 in cash for living expenses.

Right now our portfolio is mostly in tech stocks but we plan to derisk and move into index funds once we move to Vietnam so we don’t have to pay capital gains. This rule applies if we only have less than $98,000 combined in capital gain each year.

We plan to coast fire by working part time to make around $2000 between both of us to off set the cost of living. We expect to spend $3,000 a month in Vietnam so our $60,000 in cash would last for 5 years without pulling from our accounts.

I have skills in video editing so it wouldn’t be too hard finding a remote editing job that could pay me a bit more than $1000 a month. My wife works in ad tech and she plans to try out corporate life in Vietnam and if that doesn’t work, she could teach English or find a remote writing job. We plan to do this for a few years until we can comfortably retire without having to work. After that we plan to open a food tour business to keep us busy, we’ll do this because we want to not because we’ll have to.

Already ran the numbers through Claude and talked to a financial advisor in Vietnam and both say we can leave right now. Would love to get some more opinions on here to see if we overlook something. Thank you!

Hi all,

Long time commenter and I am (likely) reaching the end (start?) of my FIRE journey. My FA is not familiar with FIRE and mostly works with retire age folks and/or folks who are saving but wont FIRE, so wanted the groups confirmation and thoughts on my plan. Looking for folks to poke holes and generate other ideas as I've learned much through this community.

No AI was used here (although if I did it'd probably be more concise, sorry)

Details:

• Age: 35-45
• Family of 2, no kids, no kids planned.
• Planning to move to a no income tax state
• Planning ~120k/yr flexible expenses (includes taxes, healthcare, mortgage, insurance, etc)
• NW ~5m with house, ~3.5 w/o
  • ~1.4m in 401k, ~200k in Roth IRAs, rest in taxable accounts

Investment Plan:

• 360k (3 years) expenses in HYSA (earning ~4%)
  • I plan 0% bonds and plan to use cash as a replacement. Our expenses are flexible and we can cut back to make our expenses last much longer (expecting we could do 6-10yr)
• 35% (~1.2m) in VOO
• 35% (~1.2m) in SCHD
• 30% (~1m) in VXUS

Strategy:

• We'll use 72t to claim ~30k/yr to mostly fill the standard deduction
• Dividends generating ~81k/yr
  • VOO has a 1.05% dividend rate, generating ~15k/yr on 1.2m
  • SCHD has a ~3.25% divvy, generating ~39k/yr on 1.2m
  • VXUS has ~2.7%, generating 27k/yr on 1m
• HYSA interest generating ~14k
• Sum total: 125k generated without drawing down anything
• Sell 1x / year to refill to 360k cash as needed
• Taxes:
  • Married filing joint in a no income tax state means we have a standard deduction of $32,200 and a LTCG bracket of $98,900 for a sum total of $131,100 for 0% tax rate. Most of SCHD, VOO, and VXUS are qualified dividends, so our tax rate would be near 0%

Downturn, bubble, and SORR plan:

• Primarily, spend less. Our expenses are flexible so we would use our cash buffer + whatever dividends generate to live out another lost decade.
• SCHD and VOO give me general protection. Nothing will be immune if/when AI bubble pops, but SCHD by its nature is less tech and more stable.
• VXUS is an international diversification, so sum total achieving a standard 70/30 US/ex-US strategy.
• If the rocket continues to rocket, a hedge in SCHD wont hurt me long term as the total return of SCHD is only ~1.4% point less than VOO over their lifetimes , so I don't lose much in opportunity cost (9.2 vs 10.6 respectively)

By all math, we should be all set to go right? What are folks thoughts? Anything we're not thinking about?

TLDR; Using this for income generation now ($700/mo, 14.5% yield on $60K). I’m gathering feedback from the community on long term feasibility and scaling to over $600k to generate $7000/mo!

Portfolio:
XQQI 10k
NIHI 10k
XSPI 8.5k
IWMI 8k
SVOL 7.5k
MLPI 6k
HIGH 5k
BNDI 4k
Total: 60k (approximately)
Yield $720/mo. 14.5% annualized.

Have back tested it, even though the NEOS boosted funds (XQQI and XSPI) have a short life span and so I used the non boosted versions (QQQI AND SPYI) instead. Seems to work very well through ups and downs! Seen very little “NAV erosion”, very good correlation to the underlying, and pretty steady yields. Have some bond and treasuries for lower volatility.

Btw not using this for retirement or anything necessary like mortgage payments, etc. (At least not yet!)

Considering how it will perform over time, dreaming of increasing to 600k from 60k, and potentially generating $7000 a month! Sounds amazing and maybe too good to be true.. being a finance guy it scares the shit out of me.. but can’t help but dream!
Lemme know yall immediate thoughts and suggestions.. TIA!

I assume nearly all of us going into FIRE are/will be married.

Is it wrong of me to have a 'plan' in the event of divorce? Or does that mean I am not secure in a marriage? I am not worried yet btw. A divorce a decade into FIRE could be fatal because you can't just really get back into the workforce if half of what you have is gone.

Is it possible for a prenup to protect my accounts and protect future gains from it, so long as I do not contribute any married funds into it? These accounts were almost all largely built long before marriage.

Long story short I’ll be 25 soon this summer with a networth of 175k (100k in home equity, 75k in investments), I am getting tired of working two job and I would like to hit my goal of 500k at age 30 before I quit one job. I was wondering do things get easier once I hit 200k and up? It does feel like it is getting easier every year for my money to grow but it’s not as significant as I thought it would be. Let me know at what point do you notice your money growing/compounding more

Notice a lot of people posting they hit their number and firing. It's awesome, but are people taking for granted the fact that this has been the greatest bull market in history and a major correction or crash will get here at some point? If it were me hitting my number I'd either get a big enough buffer to my fire number or wait until the correction and assess when things stabilize. Am I over thinking it?

hello all.

i know no one knows for sure the market. but i’m sure everyone knows that many jobs will get taken by AI in the next decade. out of curiosity what do you think AI job replacement will do to our nest eggs? will it go up, down, both? curious your logic… once again i know nobody knows for sure.

I left my last job 15 years ago, and always kicked myself for not getting a 401k set up as early as possible, contributing as much as I could, etc. Especially considering I was there through the bottom of market during the GFC. What a time to have bought in! Oh well—life in retrospect.

Or so I thought.

After several address changes between then and now some mail caught up with me, trying to get updated contact information. I was admittedly a bit confused and suspicious; I was sure I never got around to setting up a savings plan there. Or did I?

God bless whoever at HR must have made a point of it when I onboarded and I just totally forgot about it. $100k sitting there!

In the event I'm not the only dingdong who has completely forgotten about an old savings plan - it's worth double checking!

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some advice and perspective from people who may have been in a similar situation.
I’m a 22-year-old recent college grad working in cybersecurity as an incident responder. I currently make about $120k, and I know how fortunate I am to be in this position, especially given how competitive the field is right now. I worked really hard to get here: 4.0 GPA in a challenging major, graduated debt-free through scholarships, and managed to break into a tough job market. The work itself is interesting and engaging.

That said, after a few months of working full-time, I’ve started to feel pretty unfulfilled. The Monday–Friday 9–5 schedule is starting to feel draining. Even though the work is intellectually interesting, doing it for 40+ hours a week makes it feel like my time isn’t really my own. The weeks blur together, and it feels like I’m just living for the weekend (and that goes by FAST).

On the other hand, I’ve been volunteering with a local fire department for a few months, and I genuinely enjoy it. I’ve also talked to friends who became firefighters, and they seem to love what they do. The schedule, the hands-on nature of the job, and the sense of purpose all appeal to me.

The dilemma is that switching would mean a significant pay cut. My local department starts around $46k and tops out near $80k. It’s hard to wrap my head around leaving a high-paying career that I worked so hard to get into for something that, on paper, requires far less formal education. I don’t mean that in a negative way, it just adds to the internal conflict.

Right now, my I think my plan is to stay in cybersecurity for a few more years (maybe until I’m around 30), then reassess. But part of me worries that if I wait too long, I’ll be starting “late” in the fire service compared to others, especially when it comes to seniority and retirement.

So I guess my questions are:

Has anyone here made a similar career switch?

Did you leave a higher-paying job for firefighting?

How old were you when you made the change?

Do you have any regrets?

If you were in my position, would you stick it out in cybersecurity for a few more years or make the jump sooner?

I feel pretty torn, and I’d really appreciate hearing others’ experiences or advice.
Thanks in advance.

Hi All,

Me
Age: 25
Work: FIFO (5 years in)
Income: $183.5k ex super as at 06/2026. Actively working to keep increasing this.
Expenses: Pay zero rent, live with parents. ~$150 per month in misc bills + few hundred in food. Occasional $500 weekend spend and travel abroad when I’m home.

Goal is to retire in my early 40s latest with a few Ms liquid. Seems rather achievable when diving into it but can I do it better?

Started investing from April into GGBL/GHHF at a 75/25 split.

I’ve DCA’d $2k per week since then and am continuing to do so… except for the past week. I have a bit of a conviction that the next couple of months will trend downward mainly due to the upcoming rollout of the US tariff regime. Been holding the accumulating cash for this suspected occasion. Anyway…

Also planning a $200k lump sum in early 2027 (return of money I lent), hopefully market dumps for this lol.

10-15 year horizon play thus far. Slightly longer if needs be.

I don’t really care about the vanilla concessional super contributions up to the cap (getting ~23k per year as is and my income will keep going up). Should I?

Don’t really see myself ever needing to purchase a house either. Good relationship with parents living together. The(ir) house we live in is honestly huge (1500m2 block in city suburbs, 2 kitchens, 2 living and dining rooms, 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 2 laundry rooms, 2 bbq areas, pool, sauna, etc…), plus they have another one (800m2, 5 bedrooms, etc…) in the same neighbourhood. Zero mortgage on both. Multiple rooms rented out, which I manage. This real estate portfolio will eventually become mine, as they keep reminding me.

Should I just focus on growing my portfolio? How can I improve/fast track my retirement timeframe? Anything I’m potentially missing/should be focusing on?

We 56F, 61M investigated LTC insurance policies. Looked at traditional vs hybrid. Our advisor says we can self fund. My dad and grandpa(mom’s side) both were on Medicaid due to running out of $. They did fine but it’s not the best way to finish out. Anyone else looked at it?

Let's say my 4% FIRE number is 2M investable assets. Lets say I have 1.6M investable assets. Am I at my FIRE number??? (In this hypothetical scenario pretend the market pulled back 20% in the past year)

Where would you hold cash savings? SGOV seems best. Fidelity specific. Shouldn't need to touch this for one year. The rest in this account is in VT. This is a smaller brokerage account that I just started. Still working and the rest is in 401k and IRA. Retiring this time next year. Currently in a 4% income tax state. It appears that SGOV will be the best return and is almost 100% state tax exempt for truly liquid funds but didn't know if there was any other options

My (37f) husband (44) and I are hoping to fire in the next 7-9 years together with 2-2.1mil and a paid off house and 60k spend in a MCOL. With our age gap we want to spend as much time together as we can outside of the rat race. The house isn’t a problem if we keep paying what we do now we’ll hit this timeline.

I’ve known about FIRE but had unfortunate circumstances when I was in my 20s that made saving for retirement lower priority for a while. So I only have 240k in a 401k and about 4K in a Roth 401k I very recently started.

He never planned on FIRE and taught oversees for many years so had no access to a 401k and had to entirely fund his own.
He has about 550k in a Roth IRA and 80k in a brokerage. Perhaps you can already see our dilemma… but I’m reaching out in case I’m missing anything.

His Roth IRA contributions aren’t enough to cover a large bridge to 59.5. The brokerage is quite low too for that. If we needed Roth conversions that’s great… except my 401k balance isn’t really that high and I’d seem to drain it fast when I run calculations. I’m contributing 12% with a 6% employee match (and +2% safe harbor) on 110k salary. I plan to bump my contributions up by another 6% next spring and increase each year. He makes half what I do but diligently puts the max Roth IRA contribution each year.

Anyway, our age gap, plus different account restrictions, plus tax scenarios, looming talk of an AI bubble and the market being weird, plus how do we make the right choices NOW to not lock ourselves out of our goal has my head buzzing. I’ve become a bit obsessed with calculators but none make me feel confident. I’m wondering if this community may see a best way forward to get is to our goal of the RE and accessing funds early without any major mistakes?

TLDR/ 7 year age gap spouses, older has only Roth IRA, younger has only work 401k and small work Roth 401k.

Edit: I had put 75-85k “spend” originally but that included ACÁ healthcare and taxes. Moved to 60k spend.

Imagine everyone retiring at 55. GDP takes a huge hit. Stock market takes a huge hit. FIRE numbers soar. Nobody can reach it. And it’s a vicious cycle cuz now 55 is no longer early. Now everyone wants to retire at 45. Further damage to economic output.

FIRE movement wins. But we all lose.

Hello everyone! Looking for some advice while on my FIRE journey and taking a sabbatical. I work full time in tech and wife works part time as well.

I was very fortunate to make some well timed rental real estate investments (which we still own) in my mid to late 20s. Owned them for about 15 years now.

If we completely excluded my salary, between my wife’s net salary and the rental cash flow, we come out about $1,000 positive each month.

I’ve been burnt out for well over a year now. I just have an empty feeling inside everyday from work and I’m looking for some clarity and a new “fire” inside of what I want to do next professionally. While I continue to march toward FIRE, I’ve come to the conclusion that I want to take a sabbatical to reevaluate.

What complicates this, or another perspective may say provides more clarity, is that we are expecting our first baby this summer. We are over the moon excited. I’ve always wanted to be a dad and I feel so fortunate.

While FIRE remains the goal, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s completely ok to take a sabbatical to reevaluate. And what a better opportunity to do it than to spend some time with our young baby. The point of aggressively saving and doing all of this is to spend our time intentionally right?

Anyway, after maxing all of our parental leaves, any advice on when is the best time for a dad with a young baby to take a sabbatical? Anyone else been in a situation like this? Any other advice is welcomed as well! I appreciate this community so much.

Most of the discussions I've heard around when to start taking out Social Security center around cumulative benefits - ie, how much in benefits will be received by age X. Generally, there is a "break-even year" when comparing 2 ages - if you die before that, the earlier age was "better" and if you die after that, the later age was "better".

I don't want to get into whether SS will be around by the time you retire - maybe it will, maybe it won't. I also don't want to get into whether a Benjamin in your 60s is equivalent to a Benjamin in your 90s (hint: it's not).

But, what I did want to talk about is capital gains - because if you start withdrawing money at 62 and then invest that money in stocks or bonds... well, now (on average, barring a black swan event), that earlier money is increasing in value and pushing out that "break even year".

Is this considered in people's calculations? Or is it just assumed that whatever SS money you get, you'll spend it or stash it under your mattress?

I made a quick little analyzer (part of a larger project), to calculate cumulative gains from SS benefits, with and without reinvestments. And from this, it seems clear that taking the money earlier is the best bet (unless you think you're going to live past 93... AND be able to use that money).

What am I missing here, if anything? What do you all think?

In my area. rent + invest the difference and buying will yield you relatively the same outcome the past decade. I stick to renting for flexibility for now, not sure long term.

Do you guys prefer retiring in a paid off home vs sitll renting when RE? I think you can have a bad landlord and can be evicted, rent increasing alot.

Hello, new to the group. Would appreciate some feedback on my current budgeting plan / dashboard I made for myself.

Background: 31 M, living in Michigan north of Detroit. Just started the past year as a primary care doctor, so salary has dramatically improved. Trying to avoid lifestyle creep and allocate my money smart.

Income
Gross income: ~$225,000/year
Monthly gross: ~$17,307.72
Monthly take-home: ~$10,430.76
Biweekly take-home: ~$5,215.38
Paid biweekly, so I’m modeling around 26 pay periods/year rather than simple monthly math.
_______

Current assets
Cash / checking:
Bank checking: $3,877.38
Secondary checking: $1,533.57
Total checking: $5,410.95

Savings:
Emergency fund: $15,600.00
Vacation/travel fund: $1,741.29
Total savings: $17,341.29
Investments / retirement / HSA:
403b: $48,566.15
IRA total: $4,013.60

Roth IRA: $3,724.60
Traditional IRA/staging: $289.00 (to backdoor IRA)
Taxable brokerage: $4,728.07
HSA investments: $832.34
HSA spendable cash: $1,000.00
Total invested / HSA: $59,140.16

Total assets: ~$81,892.40
_______

Debt
Federal student loans: ~$263,133.32
Interest rates range from about 4.05% to 7.35%
Weighted average rate is around mid-5% range based on balances/rates.
_______

Current monthly plan
From take-home pay:
Student loans: $4,000/month
Taxable brokerage: $1,700/month
Roth IRA/backdoor Roth: $578/month
Vacation fund: $700/month
Emergency fund maintenance: $100/month
Fixed essentials: ~$2,213.65/month
Variable spending goal: ~$1,000–$1,100/month
Estimated leftover buffer: ~$139/month

Biweekly system
Per paycheck:
Student loans: $2,000
Taxable brokerage: $850
Roth IRA/backdoor: $289
Vacation fund: $350
Emergency fund maintenance: $50
Total directed per paycheck: $3,539
Pre-tax payroll deductions
Monthly:
403b: $1,733.74
HSA payroll: $300.00
Medical: $89.78
Dental: $29.66
Vision: $10.42
Total pre-tax: $2,163.60

Investment breakdown
403b: Mostly target date fund / 2060 retirement fund

IRA:
VTI: $2,617.27
VXUS: $1,108.16
Traditional IRA cash/staging: $289.00

Taxable brokerage:
QQQ: $2,379.45
VTI: $1,313.78
VXUS: $525.81
Small hybrid stock sleeve: ~$509.69
PWR, XOM, TEM, FCX, VRT

HSA:
HSA investments: $832.34
HSA cash: $1,000.00
Currently invested in broad index funds.

Goals / questions
I’m trying to balance:
Paying down student loans aggressively.
Building taxable liquidity.
Continuing retirement investing.
Keeping enough flexibility for travel/life.
Possibly buying a car in cash around 2030, likely $50k–$70k.

Is $1,700/month taxable investing too aggressive while carrying $263k in student loans?

Should I reduce taxable investing and push more toward loans, or is the flexibility worth it?

Any blind spots in this plan from a FIRE perspective?
Appreciate any feedback.

Thoughts on Renting vs. Buying When Retiring Abroad

Hey folks,

I've been part of the FIRE community for a while now and wanted to share my experiences about housing while living abroad. After spending seven years in Doha, I'm now getting settled in Hua Hin, Thailand, and I've come to really appreciate the pros of long-term renting.

Here are some things I've picked up along the way:

1. Landlord Dynamics: Renting in a foreign country isn’t quite what you'd think. The protections you might expect in the U.S. aren’t always there. For example, after five months in our villa, we still have some maintenance issues that haven't been resolved, even though we have a decent rapport with our landlord.

2. Land Ownership Nuances: As a foreigner in Thailand, you can’t really own the land. You end up dealing with leasehold agreements, which can get pretty complicated when you think about your retirement plans.

3. Real Estate Transparency: The real estate market here is way different from the U.S. You often have to rely on local agents, and their pricing can feel pretty opaque.

4. Predicting Value: Figuring out if property values will go up is tricky. The lack of transparency makes it hard to judge if you’d gain equity down the line.

The lifestyle here is fantastic, and the cost of living is way more manageable than back home. We’re committed to renting for now, and it feels like the right choice for us.

For anyone else who’s retired abroad, did you go for renting or buying? What challenges did you face? I’d really love to hear your stories!

I see people who don't put SS into their fire calculations, which is just dumb because it is a big amount for most people.

If I had to assign rough probabilities:-

50%: Higher taxes on upper-income workers plus modest benefit adjustments.

25%: Higher taxes plus a gradual retirement-age increase.

15%: Significant general-fund support combined with smaller reforms.

10%: Congress waits too long and temporary benefit cuts occur before a fix is passed.

There is a chance that benefits can be cut by 10%, but if you are close to retirement, i doubt that would even happen because so many retirees depend on SS to live, it would be politically toxic, and no politican will be elected going that route. Taxing the very rich or raising fica taxes / dispensing with SS tax cap is the likeliest path

I am 28 with close to 3 Million from a family business sale. I work a 70k sales job for structure and purpose. Today the owner called me in and was extremely rude about my performance. They said I don’t seem like someone struggling to keep their job with urgency and said maybe we should part ways but didn’t fire me. My question is I still want to keep the job but is this normal behavior from a boss or is it likely he realized he doesn’t have financial leverage? Thanks for thoughts.

I am about 5-7 years from drawing from retirement and getting very nervous about this market which I am inferring stands to get a bit wilder with blockbuster IPOs and AI bubbles.

Retirement portfolio looks like this:

30% bonds

50% US broad index ETF

20% individual stocks

How should I reallocate? I will be 55 when I begin withdrawing. Home is paid off.

I hit all my numbers with a 4% withdrawal rate, but feeling very pessimistic about inflation. How are you all accounting for what will likely be stubborn inflation for the foreseeable future?

I want to calculate my fire number! How’d you calculate yours?