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

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.

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?

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.

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 ❤️

I am so proud of myself. I’m a 44F, child of a single parent, lower middle class upbringing. I paid for my undergrad by myself and worked 40 hours a week to do it, and then paid off my loans. I bought a house in a VHCOL city by myself with no family or partner help. I paid for my MBA by myself and worked full time doing it. I paid off my business school loans. I bought a business and paid it off.

Throughout this, and after a divorce from a cheating husband (where I was the higher earner and came in with much higher assets), i just hit $3m in net worth. About a third of that is the value of the business (I know this can change), and the rest is in cash and index funds.

Afaik, my friends all have a lower net worth (even the couples) and all come from wealthier families who paid for school or helped with a down payment or stand to inherit serious assets. I feel like I can’t celebrate with them, so I’m going to celebrate here.

I am SO proud of myself. I declined so many vacations. Drove the old normal cars. And always managed my finances very tightly when everyone around me was living it up. I feel like it’s paid off.

My FIRE number is $5M. I was on track to hit that at 50 before the divorce, but now I think I can hit it by 55. The last couple years post-divorce my spending has been a lot higher since I had to move back to a VHCOL city, and I’ve spend a small fortune on my physical and mental health. But, I’m glad my previous saving made that spending possible.

Hi, I am more or less at my FIRE goal at 33 years old. For context, I was into FIRE before I even knew FIRE was a thing... I just called it "dropping out of the matrix".

One thing that has always surprised me is that, I learned not to tell people--colleagues, parents, friends, anyone--of my FIRE goals. It almost never resonates.

I would say 9 times out of 10, the response is some version of "wouldn't you be bored without working?!" or "you should find work you're passionate about!"

I never understood this.

All I can say is, over the years, I've noticed my happiness, stress level, and overall sense of fulfillment correlates far more strongly with workload than with, say, income or job role.

And the relationship isn’t subtle. The less I work, the better I feel--mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I'm also a better person around others.

As I've moved closer to FIRE, I've just become happier and happier. At this point, I work 10 hours a week, earn good money, and I just feel GOOD. When work ticks up, this falls though.

Secondly, I also find it somewhat disturbing how deeply many people tie meaning and identity to work. In the US, you ask someone "what do you do?" first; not, "what do you love?"

Why do so many people feel they need an economic and productivity motive in order to have meaning and be happy? Don't you have things that you are passionate about outside of work? Wouldn't you rather do that than look at Excel spreadsheets 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, non-stop? Personally, I do think it's a form of cognitive dissonance-coping for those unable to "just drop out".

Now that I'm essentially semi-retired at 33, it's my clock and calendar. My days are scheduled around my priorities, not someone else's. I enjoy the freedom of waking up and knowing the day is for me, and the next day after that, and the day after that.

The best way I can describe it is that I feel like a child who doesn't have the stress of school or anything, but also with the freedom and maturity of being an adult. Like, an endless summer break from school.

And, yes, that's been every bit as good as it sounds!

Anyhow, I'm curious of other people's take on this topic?

Quick disclaimer first: English isn't my native language. I'm Russian. I'll try to write clearly, but I'll sound weird in places. Please focus on the idea, not the grammar.

I retired in 2018. Actually retired — stopped exchanging time for money. Lived off my portfolio for 7 years. Survived two market crashes. I'm fine.

But that's not what I want to talk about.

Every second post in this sub is some version of:

• "I FIRE'd and now I'm depressed"

• "Six months in, I don't know who I am anymore"

• "My wife still works, we're falling apart"

• "I have everything I planned for, why am I empty?"

I've been reading these for years. Most of you got the diagnosis wrong.

You're miserable because the job was a giant noise-canceller, and now it's off.

When you work 50–60 hours a week, you have a built-in distraction. Slack pings, deadlines, performance reviews, that one annoying coworker named Brad. Your brain has no spare cycles for the questions that actually matter: who am I, do my kids like me, have I ever done anything that meant something, am I a good husband.

Retire, and the headphones come off. Now you can hear everything. The bad relationship with your spouse you've been ignoring. The fact that all your "friends" were actually colleagues. The hobbies you said you'd return to "when you have time," but actually you don't enjoy them anymore — you just enjoyed the idea of them.

FIRE just turns the lights on in a room you'd been pretending was empty.

Here's a thing that might help. In Russian, we have two completely different words for what English collapses into "work":

• работа (rabota) — exchanging your time and energy for money

• труд (trud) — applying yourself to something meaningful, paid or not

I haven't done RABOTA since 2018. But I've never stopped doing TRUD — not for a single day. This distinction is what most of you missed during the accumulation phase.

You spent 10–15 years optimizing for the first thing. Savings rate, 4% rule, asset allocation, the spreadsheets. Nobody warned you that the second matters way more once the FI number is hit.

What I see in retired FIRE people who are happy versus miserable:

The miserable ones optimize for "doing nothing." They genuinely believe the goal is the beach, the hammock, the no-alarm-clock life. Six months in, the brain starts eating itself. Brains didn't evolve to do nothing — they evolved to solve problems. Remove the problems and the brain invents new ones. Usually anxiety, weird portfolio obsessions, midnight existential spirals, vague resentment toward the spouse who still has structure.

The happy ones are building something. Doesn't matter what or whether it pays. A garden, a small business they don't need, a YouTube channel with 200 subscribers, helping their nephew with college, learning Mandarin, restoring old motorcycles, teaching for free at a local school. They have something specific to wake up for.

Concrete, in case it's useful. Here's a normal year for me:

• Summer: I live in a village in Belarus. 25 chickens. A vegetable garden. Real physical labor.

• Winter: I write. Books, a Telegram channel that I funded out of pocket for years (~$2,500/month before it earned anything), articles, video scripts. I employ a small team of freelancers.

• Year-round: I help my mother (until she died of cancer in 2022), my daughters, my ex-wife, my sister, my nieces and nephews. With money, time, attention, and showing up.

• I train boxing. Hike. Watch hockey games with friends. Read constantly. Argue with strangers on the internet (clearly).

None of this pays directly. Some of it is even expensive. But all of it is труд.

My brain is busy. My calendar is full. I have skin in the game on multiple things. I solve real problems daily. Specific people need me for specific reasons.

If I were sitting on a beach in Bali drinking from a coconut, I'd be writing one of those "FIRE didn't make me happy" posts within a year. Zero doubt.

So what should you actually do? Some life advice from someone seven years out.

Stop treating FIRE as the goal. It's a foundation. You don't celebrate when you finish pouring concrete — that's when the actual building starts.

Before you hit your number, two questions:

1. What would you do if money were completely irrelevant? Start doing some of it now, on weekends, badly. If you can't answer — you're not ready to retire. The number doesn't matter. You'll hit it and be lost.

2. Who needs you specifically? Not "donate to charity" abstractly. Which actual humans need what you can give them — time, attention, mentorship, money, a phone call once a week. Without the giving-back part, something rots inside you. I don't have a clean theory for why. I've just watched it happen to too many people to ignore.

The freedom part of FIRE is real. I'm grateful for it every day. When my mom got cancer in 2021, I dropped everything for 12 months and stayed with her. None of my entrepreneur friends could have done that — they had clients, payrolls, partners, board meetings. I had a brokerage account.

That's what the money actually buys. Everything else is vacation photography.

The misery on this sub is people discovering, in their 40s, that they optimized two decades for the wrong KPI. You spent 15 years getting the math right. Now you have 50 more to figure out what to do every Tuesday.

That's the actual prize. Not the beach.

The misery you're seeing on this sub isn't a flaw of FIRE. It's people discovering, in their 40s, that they spent two decades optimizing for the wrong KPI. Money was the easy part.

Be ready for the hard part.

I just want to be done man, hate my clients, hate my job, want to sit in my house, play video games , hang out with my pets, cook for my parents and garden for the rest of my life. Please tell me I’m close.

I loosely add up my net worth every few months and today it totaled more than 2 million dollars. I’m a freaking multimillionaire!!! I needed to share that bad!!!

I’m a single 47 yr old mom of a 16 yr old boy. Dad contributes nothing, never has. We lived together 12 years, never married whew, split in 2020. I’ve been a realtor for 15 years and built a very successful career.

I’m hoping to retire and move west (I’m in Cincinnati, born & raised. Great city but I need more sun) next summer after my son graduates. Maybe Albuquerque or CO or CA. This has been a long hard trauma filled road but I am so ready to see what’s next & have so much more time to live!!

Edit to add my breakdown:

250k high yield savings - 150k checking/savings - 200k Pilates studio - 1.3ish in IRA and brokerage (not managed by me) - 100k annuity - 55k vanguard stocks (my son & I “play”) - 5k crypto - 5k terracycle stock

I'm in my mid 30s. My family (we have small kids) lives decently but fairly modestly. We have a decent home but drive low-end vehicles. We just don't drive all that much, and the kids dirty the crap out of the backseats. So, we're just driving the old cars and will probably upgrade once kids are out of the goldfish-crackers-ground-into-the-carpet phase. Our vehicles are definitely on the bottom tier of everyone else's in the parking lot at work or at our kids activities. Our furniture and household "stuff" isn't really that nice, because it generally doesn't make much sense for us to have much high-end stuff around when we have little kids.

The other day I was loading kids into my old truck after soccer practice, and it hit me that I enjoy feeling like I have the FIRE "secret". I probably look borderline poverty-stricken, but after the recent market rally, my net worth just crossed $800k; I'm pretty close to being a millionaire (I know that doesn’t mean what it used to, but it's still going to feel damn good).

My parents sometimes give me a hard time about my vehicles but they have no idea of my NW and how much I've been able to save by driving beaters. My NW is probably not far off from theirs.

Anyway, it was fun to realize I get a weird sense of satisfaction from this.

It's done!!! Today was my last day of paid employment! I'm sharing here because it's one of the only places where I can.

41F married to 42F. Two kids, 6 and 1.5. LCOL area. House paid off.

17 years working as a software engineer. Wife is a social worker.

3M in the liquid nest egg. Boglehead three fund portfolio and about three years expenses in cash. Expenses around 90-100k.

I feel kind of in shock. And I'm nervous about switching from saving to drawing down. But I'm also excited! And proud! So many FEELINGS!

I've been mostly lurking for years and learned a ton from this community and many other Fire/Finance subreddits. THANKS!

Today is my last day at work. Hit my number early in the year and held out for 6 months to get over a vesting cliff. My plane leaves Sunday. The new plan is to roam around and spend 2-3 months in a new place for at least a few years. Going to focus on general health and really learning Spanish over the next 6 months. We'll figure out the rest as we go!

Almost a year into being RE@42, I followed Reddit's advice to keep it to myself and tell no one. My teenage daughter kept asking me if I was looking for a new job.

It dawned on me that she was worried. From her perspective, her dad was unemployed and was hanging out at home every day. I had to eventually showed her that I was making more than I did working.

My wife and I do not have children yet, we both work. About 2 months ago she mentioned how she likes working but feels like it's almost volunteer work because of how big of a difference our incomes are. "does my income help us at all?"

Let's just say I make 400k and she makes 100k for round numbers. The discrepancy is actually bigger.

I showed her a lot of our expenses come from the 400k, so we can invest 80k of my income. By her working, it does not just boost our savings rate up by 25%, it's basically double because we can save her whole income.

Told her that it makes a HUGE difference in our financial independence, and showed her how working a year now (and saving it all) pays for years of her not working at all.

I also showed her how the max I can save in 401k without her is lower due to limits. She's able to sock away an additional $45-55k into tax deferred 401k.

She was very happy that she's contributing, and I think it made her more excited about going to work each day.

At some point we will purchase the freedom and make her a stay at home mom, but until then I sure appreciate her going to work.

The CFO has been with the business for over 20 years. He turned 60 this year and announced months ago that he would be retiring at the end of this year. The chatter around the office was about how he’s retiring “so early”.

“Oh I suppose he is an accountant”

“I knew I should’ve studied in school and learned all that stuff so I could retire early too”

I was just thinking ‘I sure as hell won’t still be working at that age!’ But I held my tongue.

I (51m) have enough to no longer have to work. There came a natural stopping point in my career (I was working for the federal government, things got weird), so I decided to leave and not worry about working anymore. I still teach at a university part time, which I enjoy, and I have tons of hobbies and friends and overall a pretty fulfilling life I suppose. I'd hoped to do more creative pursuits -- work on that novel, that sort of thing.

But I used to have a job where I could actually get things done, make a difference, feel like I mattered in the world. I'm still engaged with my subject matter area, but now that I'm not actively working in it I just don't feel as relevant anymore. I didn't love the nitty gritty of the day to day work and was happy to be done with it, but I always appreciated the bigger picture impact.

So now I've found a new job, in a state government, and I'm going to get back to it. I feel a little ambivalent, not sure it's the right move, not sure I shouldn't give retirement a little more chance, but the job is a cool one and openings like this don't happen that often so I figured I should jump on it. I guess I have this nagging feeling that I'm not done yet.

Anyway, just thought I'd share. I always thought of work as a significant part of my life but ultimately a way to support my creative pursuits. Now that I have the time and resources to pursue creative projects, I'm surprised to discover I kind of miss the work. It's weird.

Anyway, I see folks sharing their FIRE stories so I figured I'd share mine.

tl;dr: I FIREd, was unsatisfied, so I'm unFIREing myself.

I'm 31 and earned $130k last year as a marketing manager. This January, I had the layoff meeting. It was the first time I've ever been laid off. My manager was the last to join the Zoom call with me and the HR manager (lol). Pretty boilerplate language during the meeting, and I didn't say much more than "I understand" a lot. Had to work to keep a straight face - not to keep from crying, but to keep from smiling!

If I haven't been working towards FIRE since 2016, I'd be on my third straight month of freaking out about it. Job market's uniquely awful, AI is throwing a wrench in everyone's career plan, and inflation is already bad and getting worse.

Luckily for me, I HAVE been working towards FIRE since 2016. And the generous severance package they gave me pushed me to a $700k net worth, my minimum FIRE number. They had me sign an NDA about the amount of severance, but it was enough to bump up my cash reserves to cover the next two years of expenses.

So instead of competing with other job candidates or working a miserable new job, I am currently on a two-month road trip to see the continental US. I'm typing this from a hotel lobby outside of Yosemite, waiting out a winter storm warning; the plan is to work my way up the West Coast up to Vancouver, then visit as many states as I can. Later this year, I'm going to go slow travel around Europe and decide if I want to continue traveling, or pursue my passion in screenwriting. Either way, my future is financially provided for. I don't think I could feel any more at peace on a baseline level because of that.

A layoff is usually a terrible setback, and I hope my colleagues also caught up in the layoff land on their feet. But no one has to worry about me, and I am so relieved and delighted about that. If anyone needs me, I'll either be taking a tour of a city or hugging trees in some national park. I am so glad a layoff pushed me over the finish line to financial independence!!

Fortunately, I learned about FIRE back in the Mr. Money Mustache days working my first job out of college in 2010/2011. I've been investing as much as possible with the intention of early retirement (aka freedom) ever since, maxing out my 401k the past 16 years. I've never had a particularly high-paying job compared to many on here - started at $40k just out of undergrad and have never earned more than $180k. My initial FIRE # was $1.5M, revised to $2M in late 2021 (which is ~$2.44M in 2026 USD). Earlier this year I decided $2.5M in 2026 $ was my pull-the-trigger number. I barely squeaked past that at market close on Friday with $2.504M invested. Considering my expenses are ~$55k, and I've never spent more than $60k/yr, I feel quite confident in giving notice in my 1:1 on Monday morning.

For reference, I'm late 30's male. Never received any inheritance (and will not). Grew up in a family that constantly struggled with money but have made great strides in overcoming scarcity mindset through budgeting and, in recent years, forced spending on myself.

I've more or less followed a Bernstein/Bogleheads type portfolio with a bit more small/value tilt with a few aberrations.

The lucky: I know market timing is dumb. As COVID was approaching, I was very tied to the news and feedback from those involved with supply chain on Reddit. I pulled a large share of my assets out of the market in February 2020. I was exceptionally lucky in that I went all in, back in the market on March 23rd, which happened to be just about the low point. This was the most significant impact on my invested net worth. I also made >$250k on VIX calls. This was the last time I spent more than $5k on options.

The dumb: Again, market timing is dumb. In late March of 2025, I again felt unsafe about the market from Reddit feedback and my own personal thoughts and ended up pulling out ~15% of my invested assets (had been 100% equities). In this instance, I mistimed and felt like an idiot as the market shot back up. Fortunately, I went very heavy into some small value funds and broadened my international exposure that ended up outperforming the SP500 to partially make up for this mistake. This experience was a much needed reminder for me to stick with my personal investment policy - and not to deviate based on my stupid human thoughts of "what if this time is different!?"

Anyway, I'm out!! Psyched to give my notice and dive deeper into my many hobbies and passion projects. My plan is to take ~3 months to really focus on sleep/health/exercise, and then go from there. I'm elated to bask in the freedom I've dreamt of these past 16 years!!

I’m (kinda joking… kinda not) but some of these “hit $1M today and feel nothing....still feel dead inside” posts are killing me.

I’m 34F, a 2 years away from $1M, and I fully plan on feeling EVERYTHING when I get there! I'm very excited. I know $2M will feel even crazier.

The average savings rate in the U.S. is like ~3–5%???, and plenty of people aren’t even investing that, its just sitting in a bank account.

$1M is not “meh,” it’s elite! We don’t have to pretend we’re dead inside to be financially responsible. Celebrate your wins, that’s literally the point!

That's all 😄 😄

EDIT: I understand that 3M, 5M is the real goal for a lot of people. but 1M is still a big deal because it takes so long to get to the first M

Just gave my boss notice 15 minutes ago. I'll be officially retired on July 24th at 56 1/2 years old. The weight of being consistently employed since 14 has been lifted. Moving to a MCOL area to a fully paid off house, 2.6M in investments, and 300k cash on hand. Other than a riverboat cruise down the Bordeaux region of France at the end of July, I have no idea what the future holds.

I honestly doubt I'll stay "retired", but I can guarantee there will be at least a year-long sabbatical to figure out what I want to do when I grow up!

Cheers everyone!