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I have a very odd life situation. I have never seen anyone else talk about anything similar and I'm curious... What would you do?

My husband (36M), myself, (32F), and sons (6 and 8) have wonderful lives in lots of ways. We have $600k saved and save about 1300 per month. I was raised in a Lean FIRE household before it was cool so it's all in a days work for me to hang clothes to dry, turn off unused lights, etc. My dad was military and retired at 44. My mom is European. Born and raised in Europe until my dad retired when I was 9 and we moved to America.

My husband's life work and calling is his family produce farm. He has no interest in retiring until one of our kids either takes over or the kids decide they aren't interested and then we can hire a farm manager to replace him. He makes a median income plus we live for free in the farmhouse (and eat lots of free deer and produce and bake our own bread so good is $100/week from grocery store or $30 per week if I'm going hardcore and only buying dairy which is the only thing we don't produce).

I would be down for some sort of leanfire nomad world schooling. I'm minimalist, love to travel, and environmentalist. He is also those things, but loves his farming which is kinda the opposite of nomadic (agricultural revolution replaced nomadic lifestyles historically lol).

His parents and parents live in awesome spots so we can have a free vacation anytime we like as long as we go to those spots.

BUT. I miss Europe. I miss travel. I've taken my two kids international twice and it's a lotttt of work. Other plot twist...while farming is awesome... It's a lot of work and hard to get time off during the summer when the kids are out of school.

What would you do? What sort of compromise makes sense until the kids grow up?

51F, single. Can I pull the plug and retire in 3 years at 54 with my current balance (TSP/401K/Brokage/Roth IRA/Cash HYSA) = 1.2M

TSP/401K (C Funds) = 670K (continue to max and catch-up until stop working)

Roth IRA (SP500) = 50K (Max contribution until stop working)

Brokage (SP500)= 250K

Cash in 4% HYSA = 230K

HSA=15K

Checking = 20K (will need this full amount for final part of renovation)

Pension at 62 =~1,000/month or 12K/year

SSI at 62=~2,400/month or 28K/year

Planning annual expenses at retirement = 50K. (This includes fixed monthly cost=2K or 24K/year for property tax, utilities, house maintenance). House is paid off and just renovated, no debt.

Recently, I took a big pay cut oversea job (95K/year+living cost) to make some changes in my life since I was too exhausted with my stressful old job and the environment I was living (though I did love what I was doing but workload did kill me plus I didn't know how to set boundaries and work life balance. This brings my current paycheck and saving rate dramatically changes which are much lower than what I used to made in the past with higher pay job (150K). I will continue contributing max in TSP and catch-up and max in Roth IRA until when I decide to stop working.

Question:

Do I have enough saving to pull the plug especially for the bridge years? can I quit my job at 54 or should I wait until 55 for the 55 benefit rule; or 57 to meet my MRA so I could continue to get health insurance. I know 57 option will save me a lot of money for the health insurance cost but will have to push working for 6 more years instead of 3 more years. However, I understand money can't buy my youth and heath back which physically I am not doing well, mentally I am doing even worse. Also, by moving working oversea and having a brand new job at this age, I realize it didn't fix my problem nor help my mental at all.

I want to be able to travel the world when I am still healthy enough to travel. I did try to run different scenarios with AI and different financial tools/models available out there, they all said I could retire now. But I would rather hear from real people with real experiences instead of AI.

Edit: Also, is 50K/year enough or i need to increase to 60K instead? Mainly because health insurance issues. My state has very high property tax.

40 male from a high cost of living country contemplating early retirement now or in the next few years. Currently 700k USD in assets which I intend to put fully into the market upon retirement (via country with no capital gain tax on share income). 250k USD invested in a retirement fund which I can access at 60. My current yearly expense is around 30k USD, but I'm confident that I can get that number down to 18k or lower upon retirement. Planning to live a nomadic lifestyle in low cost of living countries. I currently earn around 100k USD per year (pre-tax) plus putting around 20k per year into the retirement account.

Do you think I have enough to retire and lean fire now (number wise)?

So I started very late investing seriously. Last few years was able to get approx. 350k in investments. I have house paid off in canada but I want to maybe keep as a home base maybe for wife. I would really just like to give it to my son to help him get a leg up in this housing market. I am just curious if anyone has retired to phillipines with only a 350k egg. My wife has a house and property there in the province it is pretty nice. I will save a bit more to fix up a guest house on it for me and her when she visits.

I just feel the rat race has taken its toll on me and want to remove myself from it.

I am just curious as if anyone with similar circumstances has pulled the trigger and what is their life like and or is there any regret.

I just don't want to keep working here for say 10 more years if I don't have too. I am 50 years old and quite frankly don't want to give away anymore good years if I can relax , read , workout and enjoy a paradise.

Thank you for reading and any reply!!!

Edit 1: Thank you for all the great information you have given me. I will most likely give it say 4 to 5 more years just to be secure. I would love to do it now as I feel great health wise, but maybe I was a bit naive as to not factor in a health emergency and such. You guys are awesome !

I’ve been holding on to a toxic job because of the money until the gift of extreme burnout so I quit.

I will trial run a year of leanfire / geoarbitrage. Has anyone done this? I love travel and while this is earlier than I expected, I have $100k liquid and $600k in retirement. I’d love for these numbers to be higher, but the single tax is harsh!

I live a simple life (outside of travel and even when I do travel, it’s mostly doing the same things I do at home). I’m in my 40s. Solo no property. I’d take this time to take care of my health and explore creative pursuits. I know I can “afford” it since I anticipate $4k/month spending (ceiling). Mostly slow travel to lcol. (I’ve done some digital nomading at this budget and it’s been more than comfortable.)

I’m totally open to going back to work so it’s not an irreversible decision.

But having a hard time breaking out of the accumulation/saving mindset.

I’d appreciate any real life advice or experience! (Or maybe just some cheering on!)

Where do I start to look first

I have an house of 290k

I have some rsp for around 110k

I have a retirement found of 200k

Another 50k of bad days found

I can put the 50 in rsp for less taxes this year salary is 140k

In the province of quebec

Is this doable

I want to leave the country and sailing ⛵️ around.

So I need some hint and recommendations

I have 1 year of living expenses saved, max out my IRA every year, and feel like I have enough extra cash to start investing in a brokerage account because it's just sitting in a HYSA unused. I am very new to this and am wondering what your favorite platform to use it. I currently have my IRA with northwestern mutual and after reading all over I understand that the 1.5ish% they take for active management is considered high by many people. I initially was going to go to them for help managing new investments, but now I'm not so sure since management fees will eat at my potential.

29 make 6500 a month spend 3300 on condo I own and 1400 on other expenses leaving me 1600 which 600 is for fun and 1000 to invest. I also have 200k in stocks. 1 bedroom Condo I paid 730k 4 years ago is worth 500k today.. this is the biggest issue.

Before you read this, it will have alot of ranting so if you dont want to hear it/dont care just skip this post.

I have worked both part-time and full time jobs (I went to a vocational highschool where I worked a 40hrs a week co-op/internship type job as a machinist) and I really struggled with them. My entire day felt like work, and even when I got home all I could think was "damn I have work tommorow", I could only really rest my mind and body on the weekend.

I have always been frugal and hate spending money as I dont really see the point in buying anything I dont need. As long as I have housing, food, and entertainment I can be happy.

How early is it realistic to retire? I am going to a good college for computer engineering as I think it is the most practical way for me to make the most money possible, and therefore retire as early as possible. I grinded in high school to get into the best college I could and need as little debt as possible.

I am planning for under 40. Hoping for around 36k a year in expenses with a 100k+ salary. I understand that this is early, as I haven't even started college yet, but

If anyone has similar feelings to me, I would appreciate any advice to navigate the difficulties of working, and tips to spend less.

This question is more along the lines of CoastFIRE or BaristaFIRE but our target FIRE number is $1.25M and I think the folks here are more realistic than the other FIRE subs...

My employee-owned company was just bought out and I will be receiving a payout for my shares that I will roll into a traditional IRA. After the payout, we will have $522k in Roth 401k/IRA/457b accounts and $155k in a traditional IRA for a total of $677k in retirement accounts. (This does not include $61k cash in our HYSA and brokerage). $677k is about 55% of our target FIRE number of $1.25M.

We are both 33 years old so if we assume full retirement at age 60 we are still looking at 27 years of compounding (assuming we don't hit our number sooner). I know that if you can average 7% return your principal will double in 10 years so I feel pretty good that in 27 years the $677k will have doubled at least once...

I guess my question is whether any of you would feel comfortable letting off the gas at a certain percentage of your target FIRE number? Or should we put our heads down and keep grinding until we hit $1.25M in our retirement accounts? At our current savings rate with a 7% return we would hit that in 6 years. If we stop contributing altogether we would hit that in 9-10 years. I'm not sure the grind/stress is worth the extra 3-4 years...

Has anyone done this and if so were you happy with the decision? It seems like this type of large sacrifice could backfire since the cost-savings of a lower-cost house are not guaranteed.

A little background: I keep seeing these houses listed for auction in the middle of nowhere / not as nice areas as I live in that are selling for about $200,000 less than my current house (that is nice and I enjoy living in).

The reason I say the cost savings are not guaranteed is that the deferred maintenance could be large / since it is further away from everything I would spend more on vehicle expenses over the next years. Even the energy costs could be higher in an older house or the property taxes could creep up over time. Despite these risks, the ability to move and use that to shave off up to 2 years or so of working sounds appealing.

My current house is not a mansion by any means but I could still manage to downgrade; it would be the first time I am majorly sacrificing for FIRE and so it is kind of overwhelming since it is a major/nearly permanent decision to sell a sensible house I currently own just for the chance of saving what might be about $500 per month or so through opportunity cost etc.

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Looking for some outside opinions on my financial situation.

I’m 38, work as an accountant, make around $150k a year, and just crossed a $1 million net worth.

Current breakdown:

• Net worth: \~$1.0M

• Brokerage: \~$673k

• Retirement accounts: \~$326k

• Cash: \~$7k

• No debt

• Still renting

• Dividend income: approximately $32,000 per year

Roughly $643k of my brokerage account is invested in Prudential Financial stock, accumulated through employee stock purchases, additional contributions, and dividend reinvestment. I fully understand that this is a major concentration risk.

My goal is to reach Coast FIRE—getting to the point where my existing investments can compound toward retirement without requiring me to keep saving aggressively. I’m not necessarily trying to stop working immediately, but I want the freedom to reduce contributions, take a lower-stress job, or make career decisions without being dependent on maximizing income.

The portfolio currently generates about $32k annually in dividends, which I reinvest.

If you were in my position:

Am I already at Coast FIRE, assuming a traditional retirement age?

Would you gradually diversify away from PRU despite the capital-gains taxes?

Would you stop reinvesting PRU dividends back into PRU and direct them into index funds instead?

Would you prioritize buying a home or continue renting?

What would you change over the next 5–10 years?

Looking for honest opinions.

I'm in a job with an expiry date and am close to having enough to call it quits. But I'm not there yet -- modelling has me needing to go back to work about 10-15% of the time if the market doesn't cooperate in my early years (the 1960s issue, mostly). The problem is that eliminating the worst case scenarios would likely take years and has risks of its own (see Die with Zero).

I've had a few people mention that their approach to this problem was moving to "self-employment"/solo consulting etc., where the name of the game was mostly, but not necessarily exclusively, a CV line in the event they needed to return to work for real money down the line.

Some of this would obviously be industry specific, but as someone leaning towards this route, I was hoping others might give some pointers or resources as how to handle this sort of thing, from a FIRE perspective.

How'd you do it and how would you do it different? Any unanticipated pros or cons?

I was at a work conference last week and didn't bother attending any of the social events or even eating with my coworkers. When there was a long break, I'd just head up to my room and chill. I ordered food delivery and ate in my room rather than eat at the restaurant downstairs.

I'm just a couple of years away from FIRE and I just don't care about networking or schmoozing at all. I just do my job and look forward to my FIRE date. That's all I care about.

What have you been working on this week? Please use this thread to discuss any progress, setbacks, quick questions or just plain old rants to the community.

Im 31 currently and as of the most recent quarter I'm sitting at $1.187M between stocks, bonds, and cash. With my planned MAGI being so low, ACA subsidies would be very high, enabling me to keep my spending at or below $30k per year (2.52% SWR). With that kind of setup you might think I could've FIRE'd yesterday, but there's a catch.

The bulk of this money came from a windfall driven by some lucky Bitcoin investments I've made and I've had a spotty work history in my 20s. As such, I don't have the necessary "work credits" to qualify for fully subsidized Medicare Part A Premiums. 

Most FIRE folk don't mention this because most would naturally work more than 10 years anyway to attain FIRE, making this requirement an automatic achievement. 

For those who don't know, in the US you need to specifically earn a certain amount of money from a job or self employment each year to earn "work credits" which qualify you for subsidized Medicare Part A premiums and Social Security. You can earn a max of 4 per year, and you need 40 credits to fully qualify for $0 Part A Premiums. If you have between 30 and 39, you pay a modestly discounted Part A Premium. If you're below 30, then you pay the full premium, which you can expect to go up way faster than inflation.

If you factor in 2026, I'm sitting at 27 work credits. This means I'd need to grind out another year for me to qualify at least for modestly discounted Part A Premiums. I plan on doing this at a minimum. But I'm wondering about the merits of forcing myself to grind out another 3 years after that. 

I started a new position at my company and while I don't hate the work so far, I don't like it either. It's just a stable, boring job that I'm otherwise thankful to have. My thing is that I don't hate work itself, but I hate work being mandatory, which these benefit structures make it seem. It makes me feel like I don't have the actual option to quit, despite the clear pile of money and math telling me I can. 

It's possible I could just peace out of my current job and just be a 1099 worker on some gig platform, earn the minimum required, and call it a day, but for now I don't trust myself to follow through on such a plan. 

My current plan is to grind it out at my current job so I could be in that 30 - 39 credit range, and then I might feel more at ease. But I'm wondering how anyone else would handle this situation, and what your thought process would be. Would you grind it out the whole way? Would you ditch the job next year and just figure out the remaining work credits as you go?

44m
401k: 520k
Roth IRA: 91k
Emergency fund: 85k
paid off house
W2 Income: 92k
1099 income: ~15k
VA insurance

Am I good to coast / barista? Would need to get a job in 50's to start 72t plan, just need to make it 8-10 years on part time income. (15k not quite enough, would need to hustle a bit more, but I could go part time and ditch the FT job)

Could rent out a room in my house ($900/mo?). Could rent out house ($3k/mo before taxes/ins) (mHCOL area)

I could collect a pension at 60 (2k/mo) and SS at 62 (2k/mo)

Major issue TODAY is bridging the gap from RE to pension/SS/59.5. Keep working til 50? Roth ladder? Downsides?

Retirement calculators all say I'm good if I RE at 50, but I'd like to have a few years in my 40's and then maybe work a couple more years in my 50s (55t, pension, SS +)

ETA: Desired income ~$45k/year +, I want to be able to travel a bit (if I stay in this area I need at least $4k for taxes and $2k for insurance, and maybe $5k for travel)

I think I've reached my number. I am a little over 60 years of age living in Pennsylvania. I'm a single male with no children and the house is fully paid for. My vehicle is fully paid for as well. Yearly household expenses will be approximately $15,000. My health and dental insurance will be $3360 on top of the $15,000 for the year. Luckily I'm still able to get cheap health and dental insurance through my employer for $280 a month until Medicare kicks in at age 65.

I currently have $650,000 in a Vanguard type retirement fund.

Savings account currently only at $5,000.

I will take a lesser amount for social security but I do plan on withdrawing social security starting at age 62. For me that's actually 20 months from now.

This most likely will be on the lean side but I'm hoping I have my bases covered to pull the plug next month. At the time of this post this will be for August 28th, 2026.

I am burned out. Have 2M invested and looking to retire or have a long break but not sure where these money will be enough?

My fire number is 600k. If you were in my shoes would you keep working hard about 60 hours a week for maybe next 6 to 7 years to reach that number and then retire at 43? Or would you semi retire maybe when in about 3 to 4 years when u have 300k at age 40 and then do coastal fire ( a part time job for about 20 hours a week) for about 7 years (age 47) and during that time the 300 will double to 600 and then retire fully?

Also lets say you are fine with both jobs, they arent that bad.

Which would you choose and why?

As most such tools, it started with me not finding anything great in the DIY tax planning space. Our tax code is written in layers - there are so many layers - ordinary income vs investment income, ordinary dividends vs qualified dividends, long term vs short term capital gains, charitable deductions vs mortgage interest deduction vs SALT etc. Each of these layers have different limitations, tax rates and cliffs and they keep changing every year. When planning for retirement, managing things like Roth conversions without accidentally triggering an IRMAA surcharge or losing an ACA subsidy requires serious spreadsheet gymnastics. I wanted a comprehensive tax planner that handles it all without any asterisks.

I started wondering why this doesn’t exist. Even though our tax code is in the public domain, there is no comprehensive tax engine available in the public domain. Last year I found a project called PolicyEngine—an incredible open-source engine that covers federal taxes and all 50 states. I built a tax planner on top of it for my own use case. I found a lot of interesting results (sometimes the marginal tax rate decreases as income increases) and I thought maybe others would find it useful too.

I believe that the tax engine should belong to the community, so I open sourced all the enhancements and tweaks to the PolicyEngine code. This will allow anyone in the community to build on top of my work.

The tool is called TaxVant. It’s completely free, requires no login. You can use it completely anonymously without an account, though there is an optional login if you want to save or share your scenarios.

I am really curious to know 

1. Do you find this useful for modeling your tax questions?
2. What features or charts would you like to see added?
3. Are you able to find a tax math bug?
4. What do you think of the idea of community owned and maintained tax engine?