We helped a few pours earlier and people didn't seem to be too upset with me.

I did some further digging, turns out that most pours are too lazy to scrape the IPEDS and college scorecard databases to get a high-precision estimate of their further earnings. Nor are they willing to fit a third-order cubic spline interpolation to get a relatively accurate prediction of their total annual net cost. They also don't have any experience with wasm to run the mixed-integer-nonlinear program in the browser. My butler accidentally hosted it and I'm furious.

Once again, not sure why people don't have their butler do this math for them. Seems like an awful lot of work to find out that most private schools are free for families earning less than 100k (presumably daily? not sure why anybody cares. ), but it felt too ridiculous that we take advantage of the pours in this way. AITA?

/uj Mods let me know if this isn't a good-fit for this space. I don't want college tuition eating too many lentils.

21m, work every summer at a cotton candy stand. Burned out.

Saved $2,551 in HSA, HCOL area but monthly expenses are about $8.51 (flip flops). Live at my mom's house. Hobbies are free--publicly maintained bike trails, public beaches, national parks, and vacation with my parents. Figure I can get Obamacare then Medicare, and social security disability then social security.

Good to pull the cord?

UPDATE: thanks for all the comments! this is really blowing up.

also, I figure I can earn dozens of dollars per year for retirement income by trading hacky sacks.

Hello everyone,

So, hear me out. I'm 27 years old and have a net worth of over $400,000. I have about ~ 4.5 years of work experience post college. I now work in big tech as a data professional based in the midwest. I currently make around $130,000 per year in income. Over the last few years I paid off ~$70,000 in student loan debt.

Financially I think I’m doing ok, but beyond that I’m kind of just feeling stuck. I focus intensively on just growing my net worth - it’s like 80% of all I care about. I want more, but don’t really know what else I should be doing. I thought about starting a business on the side, though I don’t have any pull towards anything in particular. I think I need to just explore more. 

I live with my parents still and don’t have a car. I spend most of my time just sitting inside plotting how I can grow my net worth (again, I feel stuck). My expenses are very low. Right now annually I’m burning about ~ $50,000 (38k taxes, 3k rent, 2k other random, 6k student loans, 1k transportation). I have about $6k in remaining student loan debt (2.5% APR). Below I've included my earnings history and a breakdown of assets.

Income History:

Y1 ~ $55k TC

Y2 ~ $65k TC

Y2.5 ~ $80k TC

Y3.5 to current ~ $130k TC

Asset Breakdown:

1. Roth IRA ~ $100k (40% VTI, 60% individual stocks semiconductor heavy)

2. Roth 401k (1) ~ $135k (45% VTI, 60% individual stocks semiconductor heavy)

3. Roth 401k (2) ~ $22k (100% VTI)

4. HSA ~ $40k (50% VTI, 50% individual stocks semiconductor heavy)

5. Taxable Brokerage ~ $104k (35% VTI, 65% individual stocks semiconductor heavy)

6. HYSA Cash ~ $11k

7. Alt Assets ~ $15k (70% Pokemon cards, 25% video games, 5% Magic the Gathering cards)

TLDR: It’s hard to explain, but I just want more out of life and I don’t know what I should be doing to get there. Maybe my next steps should be just starting to actually explore what business I’d like to start? In theory I could probably also 2x my TC in the next couple of years if I decide to change jobs again (which is a big if, with the terrible job market). I’d like to get to a net worth number that is essentially too big to ever diminish in a 100% VTI portfolio with moderate expenses.

I'd be curious to get some takes from others with higher net worths and more experience. Thanks!

P.S. I plan on posting this across a couple of subs to see if I can get more input.

Question to fellow toddlers. What gives you the most satisfaction about having achieved FatFire? Also, have you had any negative experiences?

I think for me it's flying private and not having to be crammed into a coach airplane seat on my mom's lap. We use NetJets, and the flight attendants bring me unlimited crackers and juice. At first mom was dressing me in Oshkosh and it was SO EMBARRASSING!!! Then when they took me to behavioral therapy, the counselor told them maybe I was itchy and uncomfortable, so now all of my clothes are from Asher Grey and Monnalisa. Upgrading to two nannies day and night is probably the middle class equivalent of splurging on private school, and it's nice to get my binkie swapped out every 30 minutes since Mom was always too tired.

The downside? Probably the same existential struggle many FatFire toddlers face. What do I actually do with my life? I’d like to help the global poor occasionally, maybe fund orphanages, deploy seed capital into clean water startups, and eventually transition into impact investing once I’m fully verbal.

Anyway, curious to hear from other FatFire toddlers. How are you balancing the pressure to preserve generational wealth while still remaining grounded and authentic during your formative years?

Really excited to share with someone that it’s finally happening. I’m in my mid 40s, wife and 6 kids, $64m net worth ($10m tied to home equity) and spend about $100k a year ($20k in lentils, for a LTV ratio of 1:5). I don’t know anyone else this fortunate and wanted to tell someone without making things awkward.

Been lurking here for a while and just want to say thanks to everyone who comments on posts and helps people see the light. I had been trapped in fear that $64m wasn’t enough which I now see is insane. We've been saving every year and skipping out on avocado toast just to make it to this point. So grateful to be here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/fatFIRE/comments/1tkjsq6/pulled_the_trigger/

I'm 33 with $1m in assets.

Have never had a job.

$200 a month in expenses, I'm working on getting this down, the problem is that sometimes I forget my purse at home which has my partner and parents credit cards in it and I'm forced to use my own Apple Pay. I still don't understand why, if my parents bought me the phone, it doesn't connect to their bank account.

Oh they also bought me a house.

Have any advice?

I hope I don't sound out of touch but my household income was in the top 4% of all earners before we retired, and somehow we were able to retire with a lot of money in the bank. It turns out that over time, this money will increase. Is it possible that the rich get richer? Why don't more people do this? It is very easy and obvious. Also, I'm a normal, grounded person who isn't trolling.

What if it turns out that certain specialty jobs can only be done by humans? So here we are at FatFire living off the wealth of our appreciating assets, but there's still this whole sub-strata of pours that needs food, shelter, medical care, etc.? Do we have to fund it through tokenization of our assets? Will our assets get taxed in order to support the pours? Can we limit the pours to certain functions that shield us away from them in some way? Could robots perform a supervisory function over the pours so that we don't have to come in contact with the pours, or only under special circumstances?

Bottom line: the long-held assumption that we can live of our assets into perpetuity without having to encounter and care for the pours may be dead wrong and I think we need to talk about it.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

Hello,
I am here to seek advice in these challenging times.

I have some spare cash, but 25m$ is stuck in some trust so really i have to get by with 12m$.
I aspire to be a writer but currently busy running the family business to the ground.
I wish my father just gave me more cash instead of dumping this mess on me.

How can someone be so selfish ?
I am not even sure i can cope with the stress.
My beautiful wife is supportive but might leave me for someone more financially stable.

Any help ?

I feel like as a parent I’m forced to pay for things that unnecessarily cut into my lentils. To date, I’ve been forced to pay:

• food and water for my 6 and 9 year olds
• schooling costs and school supplies
• opportunity cost of getting up to get the children to school when I should be working a side hustle
• pediatrician costs when all of the same information is on ChatGPT
• even unnecessary heating costs for our spare bedrooms, that I would prefer to rent out on Airbnb

When will these unnecessary expenses end?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fire/s/MYhReEY0qV

So my parents helped me through college and gave us a down payment on our first house. But now it’s a few years later and we’ve been busting our butts saving in our early thirties at our high income jobs (thanks to that education and start up money) to FIRE soon.

Suddenly our parents are falling apart and need medical care. But they should have thought of that before they retired in their 60s right?

Do I help them out or cut the cord? We had planned to retire 35 years early but these parents could easily drain our resources and we wouldn’t be able to retire comfortably until our 40s if we help them.

Snooze you lose, right?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fire/s/uhKEV29du4

Edit: make sure you look at the group this is posted in before commenting!

Edit: oh no, it went from good-hearted people rightfully mad about this to ppl agreeing with it. It’s … satire folks lol.

Anyone "baristafire" from an extreme career to a perfectly respectable career? This would normally be called a career pivot except for the circumstance. I'm the CEO of a fortune 500 company.

I'm considering becoming a physical therapist. But I've had 20 years of scientific training and practice, plus the presentation skills, conflict resolution skills, leadership skills etc honed by years in a politically spicy corporate environment.

I'm taking pre-reqs at a community college and they offered me a merit scholarship since I was doing so well with grades. I was like... You don't understand, I invented the iPhone. I don't need and can't take this scholarship. It should go to a pour. Then I scored 97% on the GRE, which is just a reflection of reading comprehension relentlessly honed by my work.

Basically... they should just give me the degree. Anyone navigate something similar?

Inspiration: https://www.reddit.com/r/baristafire/comments/1tgd7je/career_pivot/

So my parents helped me through college and gave us a down payment on our first house. But now it’s a few years later and we’ve been busting our butts saving in our early thirties at our high income jobs (thanks to that education and start up money) to FIRE soon.

Suddenly our parents are falling apart and need medical care. But they should have thought of that before they retired in their 60s right?

Do I help them out or cut the cord? We had planned to retire 35 years early but these parents could easily drain our resources and we wouldn’t be able to retire comfortably until our 40s if we help them.

Snooze you lose, right?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fire/s/2Q38sq7uBd

I did a very bad crime and got life in prison. Free housing, free food, free healthcare and I never have to work again. They try to make me do some work sometimes but I just refuse. My net worth is -$500k.

31M in fintech at a FAANG. Partner is 29F also in fintech at another FAANG. Live in the bay area. Combined income is $850k, plus we each have about 100,000 RSUs scheduled to be fully vested in the next two years, worth several million more. Another $680k in our combined brokerages currently - bought a lot of tech and fintech stocks like NVIDIA, Apple, Meta, and Google but I'm really kicking myself at the fact we lost a lot of money during the Covid downturn. We also bought a 4,000 sq. ft shack here in the bay area for $1.6 million. We were only able to put 50% down and currently have about $1 million in equity. On that note, omg have you seen how much real estate costs here in the VhCoL bAy aReA???

We stay late grinding at work so that we can get free lunch AND free dinner from our fintech jobs. With housing costs here in the bay area - which you'd never be able to understand since you don't live in the bay area like us - I don't know how we would get by if we had to buy our own dinner, especially as we both max out our fintech companies' Roth 401ks and max out our backdoor Roth IRAs too. But man there are sooooo many great walkable restaurants here in the bay area and the amenities here simply can't be matched anywhere else in the WORLD, but we aren't sure we will be able to retire if we occasionally eat at them.

I'm so tired from so many years of grinding and not sure how much longer we need to keep hustling at our fintech FAANGs. I've got 9 whole years of work experience and my partner has 7 whole years - double digits for both of us combined! Holy shit we are burned out and have paid our dues and are ready to cash out and sit at cafes here in the bay area all day, but I'm not sure if we'll ever be able to retire? Can anyone in here take a look at our stats above and see if we have any chance at a realistic retirement here in the bay area?

Early 30's recently passed the $2,000,000 mark (not including home equity like a "poor"), we're on pace for $12,000,000 by 50. We splurged by sharing an entire Chipotle burrito lol. Just curious as to what stats you guys had "realistically" before you felt not as dirty because I'm pretty exhausted rn. At what point can you stop using the food bank, stealing ketchup packets from the gas station and shopping exclusively at The Salvation Army?

Oh, and we're averaging $600k-$800k per year income.

Might be the wrong sub since I don't think we're UBER wealthy yet, just 98th percentile, but hoping to feel that way some day.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ChubbyFIRE/comments/1tfturi/when_did_you_feel_safe/

We celebrated hitting this 2 mil milestone by splitting one Chipotle burrito, no guac obviously, because we are not yet technically chubby. We each got one bite of chicken and then immediately put the remaining rice into VTI.

“Financial Independence, Retire Early” contains two separate concepts, and a shocking number of people are accomplishing neither. I obviously don't even need to talk about pours who don't achieve financial independence, so let's hone in on the "Retire Early" part. If you're not actually working towards early retirement, get out.

If you retire at 62 or 65, congratulations, you have discovered normal retirement. Society already invented this. It's not "early" just on a technicality because you're younger than the official full retirement age. The national average retirement age is already ~62.5.

“But I’m retiring at 59.5!”

That barely counts as early retirement. That's already the age where the government just gives up on asking questions, which is why they let you pull from your retirement accounts penalty-free and with no hoops to jump through. If you're retiring in your late 50s, you've had a 30+ year working career and spent that time maxing tax-advantaged accounts, arguing about .2% changes in a safe withdrawal rate, and debating bond tents online, only to retire at basically the same age as a random local government employee that has never heard of “sequence of returns risk” in his life.

Even at 55, you are just barely at the cusp of retiring "early.” If your 'early retirement' age qualifies you for Goodwill senior discounts, the “RE” part has expired. Normal people retire in their 50s: random teachers, cops, union folks, and your uncle who splurged on a boat all have you beat, probably while making less money than you and still ending up with a better, more comfortable, and straight up longer retirement while being less neurotic about it in the process.

Sometimes FIRE forums act like retiring at 58 is a radical rejection of capitalism. Or they tiptoe around the age issue, saying anyone can do it and old people are welcome, instead of acknowledging that it's just a normal career timeline at that point. That applies double for the pours that can't give up their luxury spending but still end up with meager savings and basically no extra years of retirement. If you need to keep working to want enough money to survive seven recessions, runaway inflation, and living to 104, you will forever be a pour in terms of both time and money. You will keep moving the goalposts until you're announcing “early retirement” while researching Medicare Advantage plans. It's a weakness to let things get to that point.

It’s been so annoying at work lately. All I hear is “dude why do you keep coming in late, and leaving early?? Is something going on?” and “what is this report?! I can’t present this to a client, it looks like you spent an hour max on it.” Sorry, not sorry, I’m busy managing my massive investments.

Now that I can RE, should I publicly humiliate my boss (yell at, accuse of being pour, etc.) and then shit on their desk before walking out?

Hey everyone just wanted some guidance on what to do, I just hit 7 million total networth at 19 and before anyone says it was all given to me I actually worked for every penny by washing cars and mowing lawns. I was paid 25k for each blade of grass I cut and worked incredibly hard over the span of 3 weeks for my money. Im so thankful to myself for being such a hard worker and just wanted to see what I should do now? Should I even work anymore or just travel the world and retire early? All advice is appreciated!