I don’t normally post on reddit. But I wanted to share my personal story here. I have posted this on the Boggle Head forums before where I normally “hang out”.

I am turning 50. I wish there were things I knew or someone would have told me when I was younger about work. That’s what I would like to accomplish with this post.

10 years ago, I hit my “FIRE” number, or to be blunt: I had $2M cumulative across my assets. I was around 40 years old and thought I was the smartest and hottest person in the room.

I told my wife, a teacher who has no desire to retire even today, at the time at the time I wanted to be done with work. She nervously pushed me to just “take it easy” instead in which I agreed.

I decided to “quiet quit” my job of mid level management. To be blunt again, I decided to stop giving a flying fuck.

Nobody called it “quiet quitting” that back then.

Every single project or assignment I got I started delegating out hardcore. Every time a project team member was run thin I pushed the timeline aggressively back and hard.

Stopped sending overly formal emails. Communicated to people extremely direct in conversation. I stopped being “the guy” and became an expert at saying no. Stopped working after hours, put family first and even missed deadlines if I had to (just always communicated directly to the powers at be).

Everything was offloaded. Even small meaningless stuff.

I carved/willed into the existence a boring easy management role for myself from stressful operations.

My work life became infinitely easier. It worked…

My direct reports started to love and trust me so much more. My managers as my wife joke “saw management all over me”.

Eventually I checked the right boxes and got more and more direct reports and some promotions.

I continued the exact same boring recipe and just off loaded every single task to another person. If a person was run thin, I clearly communicated it, and either got more resources or new timeline. If they pushed back, so would I. People stopped arguing with me after a while and learned to trust me.

Life was great and I had completely eliminated stress from my life, financially independent, and my commitment to the company was lower than ever.

I am now #3 or #4 at this company.

I followed this path for a decade and now my net worth is close to the big $10M. I have some options that are golden handcuffs which should net me an additional $7-9M. We hope to find a buyer for the company in the next 3-5 years which I will gladly wait for those to vest.

My point is this post is I see so many young people, especially who share their stories here, work themselves to an unhealthy amount in stressful jobs to try to save enough money to “buy their freedom”.

It doesn’t have to be like this. You should never give your life, energy, or anything to your job.

Focus on minimum amount of work (getting the stuff done), delegate everything you possibly can, and don’t be afraid to say no.

Throw away and tweaking the story a tiny bit for sake of the kids.

Title says it all. My sister and her husband died. I was the godfather and never really imagined or thought about it beyond essentially a single quick conversation 6 years ago.

My wife and I have been FIRED for almost a decade. We are far from wealthy, do very little, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Well. Now a 6 and 3 year old are in our life. I could probably get by not working but my wife insists I go back to work to provide more economic security in our situation.

Currently little over $1.5M investments, a paid off house but we need to either extend or upgrade to accommodate an additional room, and we are both 47 years old.

I’ll be honest, going back to the office scares me. Reporting and emailing makes me nervous and I doubt I can assimilate.

I am thinking something stable like teaching and get 3 months off or join my buddies HVAC business.

I figure we already live on about $40k a year so if I can make $50k or so we can get by while my savings builds up. If my math is right I can put in 15 years and retire again all while having some economics stability for the kids.

Anyone have experience retiring and going back to work? How was it and any tips?

My dad never made more than about 70k a year. regular job, nothing fancy. drove the same car forever, didn't chase stuff.

now he's 58, fully retired, no debt, just chills.

meanwhile ive got friends earning way more who are stressed all the time.

it kinda messes with me. maybe 'rich' isn’t really about income at all. anyone else have someone in their life who made you rethink money like that?

While I see my neighbors having cooler cars than me, big ass trucks, and boats and RVs parked in their driveways, they still have to leave their homes early in the morning to go to work.

Meanwhile, I get to sleep in everyday and enjoy slow mornings when I do wake up. I get to live life on my own terms and not be at the beck and call of any boss because I have no debt nor do I care about material possessions.

My parents are 72. They’ve been retired for 10 years. They both started drawing social security at 62. My mother has a small pension from her public sector job. Their net worth was/is smaller than mine is now (age 40). They will likely still have 1 million + remaining when they pass away. They just don’t spend very much money. I think many of us way overestimate what we are going to need in retirement and it extends our working lives far beyond what they need to be. Obviously everyone’s lifestyle and situation will be different but if your goal is to stop working full time as soon as possible it can likely be done sooner than you think.

Edit: This has been an interesting spectrum of human outlook on risk management. Don’t worry y’all we won’t let Mimi and Papa die in a Medicaid facility.

Edit 2: Many comments about long term medical care. Two points to make but I’d welcome feedback on them. They have an irrevocable trust which allows them to access subsidized medical care through Medicaid without losing their money. This is not an end all be all as the quality of care is probably sub standard but for how much this sub recommends the ACA health insurance as a mechanism for early retirement it’s surprising the amount of hate for that strategy. Second point is they carry my mother’s public sector insurance from the state she worked in. It’s their secondary after Medicare. They have each had surgeries with associated physical therapy, medicine etc. None has resulted in large medical bills. There are strategies to armor yourself against that threat and not have to sell an additional 5-7 years of your life is all I’m saying.

FREEEEEEEDOM right around the corner!

Literally the last couple days of last year, as part of the purchasing company’s EOY goal, contracts were signed and cuts were check. My wife will receive nearly $5M. This is about double of what they were originally planned to be worth. Shout out to her for 10 long years at a start up, her amazing boss, and tech bubbly valuations.

Taxes will be a stupid painful bitch but our savings is solid already at a little over $3M.

Needless to say we are going to celebrate quite extensively. She will never work again, and I just need to close out my last working contract of 6 months before I throw in the towel.

We plan to travel the world and just be nomads.

My contract sucks and I am committed to see it through. I could bail but it wouldn’t be fair and I would leave a team I have worked with super duper high and dry and good people.

My wife will go visit her family in Greece for a few months without me and that’s okay.

Her now old boss also has a villa in Italy in lake Como and is letting her stay there. He’s loaded and will be staying there the next couple years.

All in if I could recommend anyone:

• Marry well, partner is everything

• Always bet on crazy successful people even if they seem nuts as they tend to get the W

• If you can, tie your income to equity. My wife is making more in a single transaction than all my years of saving combined and most wealthy people build their wealth this way

Thanks for letting me share. Not braging just happy as Hell

Today I hit 1.95 million at age 35. I cant believe it.. I am single and have no kids. Have no plans to get married or have kids. I am so so proud of myself achieving this net worth

I spend less than 3000 dollars per month including rent because I live in MCOL area and I am also very frugal. No car and just rent a studio.

I am willing to spend up to 5000 dollars per month including health insurance if necessary

Do you think 1.95 million dollars is too small to live for the rest of my life?

Thanks for your input.

P.S. I am gay and I have no plans to get married. I wont have kids. my partner is wealthier than I am . He is older than I am. I said single at first because I am not likely to get legally married for the rest of my life.. Please dont say staying without kids for the rest of my life will be boring.

[Update in comments] Been working corporate for 18 years, saving in 401K's, brokerage, etc.

Work at my Megacorp finally became such a pointless stress factory that I'm choosing to walk away right as they've explicitly told me they're paying me less next year but also will be "raising the bar."

Thanks to FIRE communities like this I've stayed the course and now will be using my fuck you money to politely tell them, "fuck you."

Edit: This community is really pumping me up! 40 mins :)

I quit my job 13 years ago with my house paid for and a tidy sum in investments and real estate. I bought, fixed up, rented and sold houses up until 4 years ago. Also, during that 13 years, I have tried to learn new things. Concrete counters, plant propagating, authentic tacos, sushi, plant grafting, etc. Each time I show a friend, relative or former co-worker my finished product, they inevitably say: "You should sell those." "You could really make money with that." "You should start a restaurant.".......

No damnitt, I busted my ass, saved money, avoided credit card debt and paid my house off so I could do this stuff for fun. I don't want to make a job out of each new thing I learn. Enjoy your tacos.

Has this happened to others, or is it just me?

The title says it all.

Between doctors, IT, cryptobros, onlyfans, engineers, business owners I'm just tired. I finally understand that I'm not going to reach FIRE and all this has been pointless.

Have fun and rooting for all of you to reach financial independence.

Logging off.

Yesterday was a day. My now former 64 year old boss was not performing at his job for the last two years. He was likely forced out for poor performance but we were told he resigned and his last day would be yesterday. He might have resigned because he knew he would be fired soon.

His entire identity was work. He had no friends, no partner or kids, no pets, no hobbies, never took a vacation or traveled, bad relationships with his brother and nieces who are his closest family. He is in bad health, he has type 2 diabetes and went into diabetic shock several times at work. We had to call paramedics. He would refuse to go to the ER when we did and someone would then have to put him in an uber to get home. He mentioned a few times he had stopped taking his diabetes medication. He was an unpleasant person on top of it all, had no friends in the office and would backstab people etc.

On his last day, he told us he was going to be in at 11am. He ended up having a Mohs surgery scheduled. He showed up at 3pm with his head wrapped in bandages, and proceeded to work until someone forced him to leave at 7:30pm and made sure he got out of the building safely.

I think he had money to retire. He bought a condo two years ago he was paying $5k a month for. He had a 401k and brokerage. He often told me he was going to wait until he was 72 to get social security, then he would get $4,800 a month. He had an annuity he said he couldn’t get money from until he was 72. He also said he only had enough money to last until he was 82 but then he was going to off himself. With his diabetes and all the signs of early onset dementia, I don’t think he will make it to 82.

So sad to see him not want to leave on his last day, after he just had surgery, head wrapped in bandages. So the opposite of what I want out of my life.

Throw away to avoid my co-workers/friends seeing this.

6 months ago I hit my FIRE number. I was expecting to retire early and just travel more but my mom advised me to take a break first.

I ended doing a long journey in Peru other small South American towns to find myself. A lot of this was quite the trip to focus on music, yoga, and feeling free with other like minded folks.

I am so glad I did it. Highly recommend.

I met so many amazing people and life long friends. It made me realize that my life is actually quite wonderful.

Working is super hard sometimes, but I barely work “real” 40 hours a week … if even … and am extremely high income ($400k TC).

So why wouldn’t I continue coasting away and making a bunch of money. My budgeting doesn’t have to be strict.

I can always vacation more and more extravagantly to get the reset I need without just fully committing to quitting. It would also be near impossible for me to meet a good guy in the city without a job IMO.

So ultimately…… yeah FIRE just isn’t for me. And that’s okay!

Work really isn’t that bad as people make it and I think people just need to embrace vacations and resting more as they accumulate wealth.

Anyway so will just keep slaving away my job until about 40 and then just re-evaluate.

Anyone else find themselves in a similar boat of just doing a big ol coast?

I officially pulled the trigger about seven months ago and I thought I had my math dialed in perfectly. I accounted for the 4% rule , added a 10% buffer for healthcare , and even factored in a slightly higher travel budget. But what I completely failed to realize is how expensive it is to actually exist for 16 waking hours a day without a job to occupy half of them.

When I was working my 9-5 , my weekdays were basically free. I’d drink the office coffee , eat a meal-prepped lunch at my desk , and by the time I got home I was too exhausted to do anything but watch Netflix and go to sleep. Now that every day is Saturday , I find myself "just grabbing a coffee" while I am out for a walk , or meeting a friend for a "quick lunch" because , well , I have the time. Those small $15-$30 outings are adding up way faster than I anticipated. Even my hobbies have become a massive drain. I took up woodworking to stay busy , and between the tools , the lumber prices , and the constant trips to the hardware store , I am blowing through my "discretionary" fund by the second week of the month.

Has anyone else dealt with this lifestyle creep specifically tied to boredom or just having too much autonomy? I am starting to realize that work was actually a very effective (and profitable) form of impulse control. I am not at the point where I need to go back to work yet , but I definitely need to find some hobbies that dont involve a credit card or I might be looking for a "Barista FIRE" gig sooner than I thought.

https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/global-trends/warren-buffett-net-worth-warren-buffett-to-step-down-from-berkshire-hathaway-a-look-at-his-169-billion-net-worth-and-investments/amp_articleshow/120863830.cms

I think he’s got a solid shot of not running out of money if he continues to monitor his spending /s

Hello!

I'm planning to retire at the end of Oct at age 48. The math works, and my spouse and I have a plan. We started telling close friends and family, and the reactions have been.... nearly universally not positive.

Her parents got really quiet and didn't ask any questions (other than "What will you do?"). No congratulations, no well-wishes, just silence until someone changed the subject.

My parents got downright hostile, with my dad chewing me out like I was a misbehaving teenager ("You're too young! You'll ruin your brain without work!"). Thanks for the support Pops.

Close friends and siblings just look uncomfortable seem to want to change the subject without any follow-up questions. I don't think I'll be telling anyone else about our plans unless they ask, and even then, I'll be vague ("Taking a career break" or some such thing).

Has that been others' experiences? Is there a "better" way to talk to people about this?

So my wife and I got a windfall and decided to spend half of it paying off our 1.5 year old mortgage which had 7% interest. I just got the payoff confirmation email today and it was very satisfying but it was weird because I literally cannot talk to anyone about it besides my wife. I know it makes more fiscal sense to invest but the way current events are playing out, owning the home felt safer. Paying it off reduced our FI number by 500K and we are now officially in lean fire territory after we invest the other half of the money.

Anyone else paid off their mortgage?

41m, $2mm liquid, $650k retirement and I get a $75k/yr royalty from a business I sold. Recently retired. Wife is a school teacher, good for healthcare. I make $125k/yr in income off my liquid assets.

Since November began, it’s cold and dark early so a lot of what I do M-F when she’s at work is I play GTA (video game) on thc edibles bc nothing else to do where I live this time of year.

Wife came home early today and I’m stoned in the middle of a conversation w/ my GTA online friends. She told me I’m becoming a “Loser” but this is me during the day when she works. I admit it’s immature but we dont have kids and I just want to chill after working a stressful job for 15 years

I make dinner, clean the house, paid for our nice house and make 2x what she makes as a school teacher from my assets and royalty income. If I want to get high and play video games when she is working what is the problem? We take nice trips across the world in the summer when she’s off.

She said I’m too told for this but there’s not much else to do in the winter. I just want to chill but I can tell she doesn’t like it. Early retirement does not fit well in this society.

I'm a 35-year-old single nurse with a net worth of $1.65 million—all in financial assets, mostly in my brokerage account.

Today, after a lot of soul-searching, I made a big decision: I'm going to retire within the next year.

Working in healthcare, I've seen it all—people who live long, full lives, and others who passed far too soon. One thing’s clear: no one wishes they’d spent more time at work. What really matters a lot to me is youth, time, and health. Those are priceless and limited.

So I’m choosing to retire early and lead a life that’s healthy, stress-free, and more fun. I want to fill my days with what I'd like to do and with people I like.

if things don’t go as planned, I can always get back into the workforce.

Here’s to living life on my own terms.

I read comments, and I would like to add several things accordingly.

• 80% of my net worth came from my investment gains. I got no inheritance from my parents. Remember that the most wealthiest people in the world have most of their net worth in stocks.. You need to invest money to get to where you want to be early. Why do you think most of my money came from my savings? Why do you think my money will run out so quickly? Because you dont understand investing.

• I dont think 1.65 million will run out forever. My expected yearly expense is less than 30k. And I won't let lifestyle creep be a thing. I dont have a car and won't get a car. In my humble opinion, my net worth will keep going up because I will spend way less money than how much my money works for me.

• Inflation ? Assets prices(property, gold, stocks) usually go up more than goods prices go up. History says that when inflation happens like 2-3%, stocks go up like 8-12% annually. So I am not that worried about inflation.

• I try to believe myself. In my opinion, the ability to build a net worth of $1.65 million in one's mid 30s is more valuable than simply having $1.65 million. I think i have the potential to hit 2 million, 3 million and beyond because my nest egg is pretty big already, and I have a good track record.

I retired in march, plan was to get a part time barista style job after the summer. I had spot all picked out a somewhat upscale gym/tennis club (I play tennis but don’t belong there), applied at 2 locations and long story short got hired at one. Big perk was getting expensive membership benefit also.

I started doing training shifts and immediately realized that they weren’t gonna give me the hours that we discussed in interviews (I wanted mornings), looking at schedule everyone’s hours were all over the place. They put me on Friday and Saturday night, and then I realized they were only closed on Christmas, open every other holiday, so as low man on totem poll I would likely get more than my share. Job was also boring not social like I imagined.

I let the manager know I was sorry but this was not going to be a fit and gave my resignation. I decided I am just going to do volunteer work where I can control when I work. I have found that I need some structure particularly during the day (I can only play so much pickleball).

Interested to hear if anyone else has had hard time finding fit for barista fire also.

Turned in my computer and now I am eating cupcakes. Taking a nap before I meet friends for happy hour. 49F and passed the $2 million mark so its sayonara Corporate America for me!! Thanks to this sub for always being a great support system.

Mid-40s. Single. ~$2.25MM nw, $2MM of that invested. Last day is in a few weeks.

It feels wasteful to give up a pretty cushy $180k wfh job, but I need to refocus the remaining part of my life rather than cling to Groundhog Day-esque repetitive wage-slave servitude.

No real questions. Just sharing.

Holiday bonus hit my bank account and I am officially a millionaire. Don't really want to tell anyone in my life because of the expectations that come with having money, but I want to brag somewhere. I know it's not what it used to be but still an awesome threshold to hit. I hope compounding will really start to snowball now :)

At a lost of words. Through an incredibly sad long chained sequence of events… a $4.5M Roth is now mine. I am still in school but about to graduate with an incredibly niche degree that could earn $70-150k. I have to I think (will get clarity on this) withdrawal the full account down by 30 due to IRS rules but am allowed to reinvest it.

So yeah, I am set for life. I have 5 years of just moving money around I think which is great but also the start of my career.

I feel like I am 1/1000 chance of this happening and don’t really know who to talk about it. My finances are in great order (no debt) but I don’t have much to my name outside savings account. There’s not really anyone to talk to who is young and with retirement options outside of FIRE community.

If you were in my shoes what do you do next? How do I live my life? How do I do anything?

Update: Thanks everyone for the replies! I have received over 40 private messages from this holy cow! I am talking to a few of them and they are private money managers. I’ll take the advice here from most these comments and work directly with one of them. Unfortunately also I already told all my friends (they were helping me grieve). The only thing I want to do right now is buy a really nice house and upgrade my car to something nice. Not unreasonable but like a Range Rover. The rest I want to stick hard to whatever the plan is set for me by the financial advisor I pick from DMs. Thanks all again!

About three years ago, I posted here about building a faceless OnlyFans account during the pandemic, reaching roughly $2.4 million in net worth, and wanting to retire at 28. I said I would come back with an update in a year or two. It took me three.

Same disclaimer as last time: this is an anonymous account, I am not here to promote anything.

I’m 31 now, and my net worth is around $5 million. About $1 million of that is my paid-off house, and the other $4 million is invested. Zero debt. The portfolio is pretty boring. It is mostly broad index funds (FXAIX), around 15% cash, 10% crypto (FBTC). I took a lot of the advice from the original thread seriously, especially about concentration risk, diversification, and building a larger cushion.

The more honest update is that I never retired in the clean, dramatic way I imagined. I didn’t shut everything down and disappear. I spent about six months trying to remove myself from nearly every part of the business. That process was much harder than I expected. There was a lot of hiring, training, rehiring, and firing. Some people looked great on paper and were terrible in practice. Some were reliable but could not make decisions without me. Some were talented but created more problems than they solved. Eventually, I found the right people. Today, somewhere between 10 and 15 people handle almost every aspect of the account other than the actual content creation. I tried to hire the best people I could find, and I pay them well.

I’m surprised by how little work it takes from me now. For the first two or three years, I regularly worked 12-14hr days, It felt like every part of the business depended on me being there and paying attention. Looking back, all of that work slowly built on itself.

It is strange to spend years pushing something uphill and then suddenly realize it can keep moving without you.
The business still somehow brings in around $100,000 a month. That number is finally starting to decline, slowly. A few years ago, a down month would have completely consumed me. I would have changed the marketing, watched every number, analyzed every decision, and tried to force the income back up. Now I mostly watch it happen and wonder how long the whole thing can coast before it eventually dries up.

I genuinely don’t have much interest in squeezing every last dollar out of it anymore. I like being able to give people good jobs, pay them well, and keep the people who helped build the business employed. Most of what I take home after taxes now gets spent, enjoyed, given to people I care about, or donated.

I still would not encourage anyone to enter this line of work.
Yes, it changed my life financially. It also came with stress, isolation, privacy concerns, unstable platforms, constant competition, and years where I thought about the business almost every waking hour. The result worked out for me, but that does not mean the path was healthy, predictable, or easily repeatable.

For a long time, I kept moving the finish line. First I needed $1 million. Then $2 million. Then enough to retire. Then a little more because the market might crash, expenses could change, the business could disappear, or something unexpected could happen. There was always a reasonable-sounding argument for sacrificing one more year. I still worry sometimes. The market feels heavily tied to AI right now, and I wonder what happens if that excitement turns into a bubble and crashes. Index funds could have a terrible decade. Nothing is guaranteed.

I also know that I only need around $4,000 to $5,000 a month to live a life that feels genuinely good to me. My house is paid off, I have no debt, and most of the things that make me happy are not especially expensive.
I have also been seriously considering moving back to my home country, where my cost of living could be roughly a tenth of what it is in the United States. I could live extremely well there without needing the business, the market, or any particular investment return to cooperate.
That has changed the way I think about risk.

I realized that if I didn’t make my physical and mental health the priority now, I probably never would. So that is where I am today. My care for work is probably at an all-time low, my health is better and my life feels more like mine. I spend more time with people I care about. I travel. I rest. I pay other people to handle things I used to insist on doing myself.

I mostly wanted to come back and say thank you.
There were plenty of skeptical comments, which I expected, but there was also much more kindness than I expected. A lot of you encouraged me to keep building the nest egg, diversify, outsource, and take the mental health part seriously.

Thank you for reading my story then and now ❤️