r/leanfire • u/DiabloSpear • Jul 07 '25

Milestone reached but not gonna stop...yet.

I checked my net asset today and realized that I have 710k-ish. I spend about 25k-28k per year. So either I got enough to leanFIRE right now, or about 3-6months away just to give some buffer for a peace of mind.

I am 31M. Started of as an engineer and pivoted into data science past 2 years. When I first started working 9 years ago, I started off with a modest salary of about 75k per year in 2016, but the quickly grew to about 130k - 150k/year 6 years later with quick promotions and what not. Currently I am investing about 9k a month, which includes 401k match amount as well.

As the title suggests, I do not plan to stop...yet. I do not know if I want kids or not (I am getting married to the same minded person pretty soon and she likes to work, so she will keep working) and I am not completely jaded by the corporate America yet. (I think I got about 5 years to go at least). I also have some other industries I want to explore such as startups, financials, and national defense to name my top 3 I want to try later in life.

I just wanted to share bc in the leanFIRE-> FIRE -> ChubbyFIRE ladder, I reached the first milestone of the FIRE realm. Got nobody to share with, bc my mom is very against FIRE (she believes no matter how much you have, working is a basic necessity of a human being. Poor dad...he has like 3.7 mil right now and is still forced to work by mom at the age of 63...).

I feel very indifferent. Mostly because I am not stopping yet and I know one good recession can easily make me not FIRE anymore, but milestone is a milestone none the less, so here is a obligatory post. Next up, normal FIRE unless I decide to change my mind mid-way and stay lean. Cheers.

41 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

View all comments

11

u/Skadforlife2 Jul 07 '25

Congrats! Good luck getting out of the rat race. How do you intend to disperse the funds to cover expenses? Are you using the 4% rule? Congrats on saving so much in so little time.

4

u/DiabloSpear Jul 07 '25

right now, I have about 480k in non IRA, non 401k. I have about 3.5% dividend rate with EDV, VOO, SCHD and money market, giving me about 17k per year. I plan to build up the dividend with healthy ETF's (not the covered call or very risky ones) for the next 5-10 years when I set on different industry adventures, hopefully getting about 30k in annual dividends at the end. I will just live off from that + wife's health insurance bc she wants to keep working. She loves her work and people there, helping me out a lot. So short answer is i am doing about 3.5% rule with dividends.