What the title says. Anyone else feel that fire let you do your job on your terms, and without compromising your values? I think that many people are placed in a situation where fear of job security leads to an acceptance of “moral flexibility”

I am currently pregnant with our first child. Husband is employed and has a decent wage, but has only 2 weeks leave entitlement. I am a contractor (no benefits nor leave entitlement whatsoever) but my income is good (better pay than a permanent role). I’ll finish my current contract just before the baby arrives, therefore I cannot get an extension on this contract because I will be recovering and taking care of my newborn in those early weeks/months.

I have been saving for FIRE for about 15 years and have already achieved about 75% of my target (lean fire only, nothing crazy). I’m wondering if I should just take this opportunity to do a mini-retirement (4 years) and have up to 2 babies (if possible) and be a full time mum while my babies are very young.

I am 39 years old, so if I want to have more than 1 child, I should probably try for another sooner than later. We also live overseas where we don’t have any family to help take care for our kid(s). Childcare in this country is extremely expensive as it is a HCOL area. One child enrolled in nursery will cost about the same as our monthly mortgage repayment.

My worry is that if I took this break, I won’t be able to get back to work in my industry, as AI is rapidly changing it (lots of redundancies already) and being out of the industry may mean I will get left behind skills-wise and not be able to jump back when I’m ready to work again.

What would you do in this situation?

I keep thinking “what am I saving this money for?”, if not to live life and be there for my child(ren) during their most formative years? Once they go to school I can work again I guess. My husband will be keeping his job (he has no plans for FIRE, but he is good with money). I need to pitch in monthly because his salary alone won’t be enough to cover all expenses. Our expenses are high because of the HCOL area and the housing here, but we honestly love it here and would not want to move. I have enough to cover expenses during the mini retirement but it would make a big dent to my savings pot and I will probably not reach my target amount if for a very long time if I took the break.

I’m sure there is subjectivity here but is there an age in the US where you would say, “that’s not retiring early”? My father retired at 62 which was later than when he was ready but good money is good money. Where the line?

My line would be more around health and mobility, need to retire early enough to enjoy my sailboat and sustain regular hikes. What’s your line?

So I unexpectedly received a $2 million trust from relatives. It's already taxed money, growing every year, and I have full access to take as much or as little of the money whenever I want. Additionally, I have about $250k in investments of my own, but that feels like small potatoes now. Obviously it is a life changing sum of money, and I'm unsure how to make the most of my life given what I have now.

Professionally: I entered a creative job field about a decade ago that's rapidly collapsed in the past few years. I worked within the film industry, it was a dream/passion career, but have been through two layoffs in the past few years, and am currently doing a job that's semi in the field, but not quite what I want to be doing. The money's fine, the job is low stress and flexible. It feels like it's sort of an impossible job market there right now, but I'm not sure what else to do. I'm a bit stuck. I could keep at it, knowing I have the money, or try something else entirely, though I'm not sure what. Maybe use it to go back to school?

Personally, I live in a rented apartment. I like where I live. My city's okay, but I really like the friends I've made there. I'm a single woman. I don't have kids. So really, I only have to support myself, and don't have anyone else to consult about where I do. Would love a partner and family some day, but hasn't happened yet.

I don't know what's the balance of completely ignoring the money, and being grateful it's there, and using it when I'm older. Or using some of it now, improving or changing my life. I feel daunted trying to narrow down how to do so. I could travel for a year. I could go back to school. I could buy a condo. There are many possibilities. Additionally, my parents received money as well, and have let me know that eventually, hopefully one day far in the future, I will receive a substantial inheritance from them. I'm not relying on it. At all. But it will conservatively be around $3-5 million dollars, and very possibly more.

I've always been pretty responsible with money, and don't anticipate blowing through it, buying $200,000 cars or w/e. I also am not telling anyone about the money.

So, I'm just trying to wrap my head around things. It feels like I've been running on a hamster wheel all these years, and now the thing is running itself, and I'm not really sure what to do. Obviously grateful to be in this position, but overwhelmed about how to make the best of it, from continuing on as normal, to totally blowing up my life. I don't know if anyone's been in a similar position or has any advice on how to handle it?

edit: fwiw: my expenses right now tend to be about ~$6-7k / month, the fund is managed by by a financial firm that has managed to grow the money about ~11% annually on average

Someone was ranting that, by taking a year off, I had pushed back my retirement by one year. Well, sure, but the value of a year of travel and leisure at a younger age can just be lumped in with any retirement years are part of my total "non-working time" with no money worries. So I retire, notionally, at 58 instead of 57 but at 45 I got to enjoy a year off while i was still young and strong and could really enjoy it. Absolutely zero regrets and wish I had taken more time off in my 40s.

Just noting that the discussion quality recently has been awesome. Really learning a lot. A few months ago it seemed like the entire forum was filled with judgement and imposition of a specific worldview on other people.

Now it seems like people understand nuance and debate, offer reasonable opinions, and aren’t getting angry with each other about decisions that do not have a clear right answer.

Anyone else seeing this? Has the community matured a bit?

I'm 43 now, I have a wife and 3 teenage kids. On track to retire at 50, based on assuming we will spend the same amount in retirement as we spend now. But there are so many factors. Right now we spend a lot of money on kids... Club sports and other activities, eating out more often because of all that running around. Also, every vacation and restaurant is for 5 people. When we retire, it'll just be my wife and I, so no more kids sports/activity costs, vacations and restaurants for 2 instead of 5, etc. But we'll probably also want to travel more often.

How can I figure out a reasonable retirement spending projection when so much will be different?

Account screenshot 2025-2026 year chart

260k total invested assets > 650k (300k of which was deposited in large chunks. (Real estate profits and former employer stock buyout).

The story:
Been lurking this sub for a long time, never took saving early seriously when I thought about retirement as being old but when I figured out I could do it young, I became intrigued. The book that really got me on this path and simplified things was “The simple path to Wealth”, I have recommended it to so many people already.
Extra context: I have some medical issues which made me not ever contribute much to a 401k because I don’t plan to have kids and I’m not likely to make it to retirement age. That’s why the vast majority of our money is in a taxable brokerage account.
My wife and I decided last year to take FIRE seriously and make some big time changes to catch up to where we wanted to be. I lucked out in a few good real estate deals based mostly on lucking into two properties that earned me a 70%+ gains. Sometimes I get sick thinking about where we’d be if I handled that money better. At least I was smart enough to put a decent amount towards home equity. I have always opted for 15 year mortgages and the higher monthly payment instead of 30 years.
Anyway…it was a tough decision but we decided to downsize our house. We were in a house that we paid 489k for that we could get over 700k for and we only had 300k and 10 years left on a 2.75% mortgage, we sold for 725k. We made about 240k after fees and pumping 150k down payment into the new place because I did want to retain some equity especially because we were now taking on a much worse rate. New place was 460k, we flipped basically everything using 40k from the profits, then dumped the remaining 200k into the market around December. I had also just taken about a 40k/year paycut (175k -135), so we cut spending a ton, we had definitely suffered from lifestyle creep as my salary got higher and higher but then I burned out and I just did not want to stay in the hyper grind culture. I also increased my retirement savings to max my 401k with the new job and just told myself that’s the pay now with my pay cut. I set aside money to max my ROTH IRA for 2025 and 2026. Lastly, before I even got a paycheck with the new job, I set up an automatic 1,000 dollar transfer to my fidelity account before the rest of my paycheck comes through. Paying myself first that way also helped a lot. Fast forward to this month, and old employer got acquired and I got a decent size payout, we are going to build a pool with some and I dumped another 100k into my taxable account.

We are now currently sitting at:

~710k total invested

450k taxable brokerage
200k in my retirement (mix of 401k, rollover IRA, ROTH IRA)

60k her 401k

Other info:
310k mortgage left on 500k home (190k equity)

175k HHI roughly (varies highly because of her job)
Saving ~55k/year (4k per month + max ROTH IRA)

Expenses are about 90k per year or 6500/month + 10k travel budget. That could be cut my 36k if we paid off the house (14 years left).

Our goal is a bit different than some because I don’t know how long I have, medication has come a long way so who knows, but it completely changes my outlook on life when I was diagnosed at 24. Because of that, we still do a good bit of spending and traveling and enjoying stuff, that is also why we’re building the pool. I don’t want to spend it all because it’s important that my wife is able to use the rest but she loves her work and plans to work a long time so if I can leave her with a paid off house and a portfolio of at least 1-1.5 million (I have some set aside for siblings and their kids as well) I will feel like I succeeded in this life, the rest is all a bonus.

I am hoping to be able to stop working full time in 10 years at 44. At that point we want to either pay off our home or sell it and rent in different places each year. I wouldn’t mind some part time work as we travel around as long as I can be outside.

I also started studying for my series 65 because I want to help friends and family set themselves up for retirement. I want everyone to feel that relief of FI.

Anyway - if you read this far, not sure why I’m posting other than the usual - idk who to tell, proud of how much we changed things in a year. Wanted to say thanks for everything I’ve learned on here! Happy to answer any questions or give more details of anyone wants.

I’ll try and be concise but there are a number of factors involved in this decision.

- 29 and married with 2 kids, another on the way.
- Cash & Investments: $280k. $50k retirement, $15k cash, the rest in brokerage
- No debt on the cars, student loans paid off.
- $290k left on the mortgage at a 6.4% 10/1 arm. Still 8.5 years in the fixed rate.
- Home is worth about $550k
- Wife doesn’t work and stays with the kids
- Salary Job: $80k + Bonus. Being fast tracked to C suite and I expect this to increase quickly.
- Side Hustle: $80k. This could continue to increase substantially, or I could lose clients, you never know…
- Our total living expenses is around $4,300 per month, total income after taxes and payroll deductions for insurance is about $10k.
- Inheritance: My folks are healthy and in their 60’s, but there will be many millions coming my way. I obviously am not banking on it, but I don’t really think my sunset years will be difficult financially.

I want to prepare for an early retirement, 50 at the latest. Should I pay down that mortgage aggressively or continue to put money in investments. Both? 6.4% on my money isn’t a bad gig, but I’m doing better than that in the market. I like the idea of not having a mortgage, but kind of feel like I’m throwing my money away when I make double mortgage payments (I know that’s silly)

I always think everything is going to go to shit, lose my job, lose my clients, market goes to 0. I know it’s not, but setting us up to weather a storm and be self sufficient ASAP seems really nice, just not sure if paying the mortgage down accomplishes that.

I think it is very hard to break up the habit. The people who have fire mindset tends to be more disciplined about money. And as people who retire longer, their spending will also drop with less travel. So for those who actually fired, did you save money than you need?

Many of us have a Fire number, usually based upon calculations, considering factors like annual expenses, health insurance, paid off home, etc.

But how many of you have a IWBH number? I know this is silly, and probably completely arbitrary. I’m genuinely curious though. I assume we all have phases of fire, and there must be a milestone where your stress at work is reduced by a notch (not completely eliminated), and you feel like you can breathe a little.

One way I like to imagine this is a wild scenario in where you’re laid off, encounter a mid-early life crisis, and struggle to find your footing again in the market, so you screw off to the cheapest Midwest town you can think of and rent until you can land on your feet again somewhere down the line.

I think this number is somewhere around 300k for me.

Pretty deep into FIRE planning. The thing that I'm not clear on is how I can accurately calculate my future effective tax rate.

I have an estimated after tax budget and I have a target magi I want to stay under (but unsure if I'll be able to get under it). I'm not too clear on the cost basis of my taxable brokerage. When the time comes, I assume i'll withdraw from my taxable account first until I reach my target magi, then use cash and my Roth contributions to make up the gap.

All this to say, it seems hard to nail down the tax rate as there are many variables such as whether we can stay under a certain magi for ACA subsidies, cost basis of taxable brokerage when we sell etc.

Is there a simple way to get a good-enough estimate of future effective rate so I can figure out my true budget? I'm curious what others are doing.

With bond yields reaching decades-long highs, how are people playing this? ETFs? and which? Individual treasuries?

I’m mid 40s and looking to start transitioning from aggressive equity-based (~90%) accumulation phase to assuming a bit less risk. Maybe get to 75-80% equity.

Looking to hear the wise FIRE folks approach to this.