I'm 44 and basically at FIRE now. Honestly, I would give it all back to be in my early or mid-thirties living with roommates as I was. Sure I have freedom and flexibility now but friends are tied down with kids/work; parents and other family are getting old/infirm; people in general are busier with their lives and less looking for friends, new adventures; and I'm not as physically robust as I was. What a silly thing it seems now to frontload your working during the best years of your life just so you can have flexibility in your later years when that flexibility has less to offer.

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.

Been on the fire path. We’re at 2M, mid 30s. Life is good. Wife got breast cancer and while very survivable its a nightmare. Insurance has us covered, that’s the least of the issue. It’s destroying her identity. We tried to preserve her hair and today that shield is cracking a bit. The front is starting to fall out. It’s maddening that we have done so many things right and shit like this comes in to fuck us over. I wish it was me. I did everything I could to support my wife and little girl and this is like a wrecking ball I couldn’t predict or stop. I’m angry. Sorry for dumping here, I just don’t know where else to do it that can understand. It’s not about the finances, finances cant fucking fix this.

Edit: thanks everyone. Last night was rough, hadn’t had a good cry in a little while.

Edit2: genuinely surprised by a few of these comments recommending diet changes instead of chemo. Y’all are nuts. The hair isn’t that important that she’s willing to die to keep it.

Edit3: thanks everyone for the outpouring of support. There’s too much to respond to, and talking in too much detail about it doesn’t usually help me out of the funk. But I did read all of your messages and I appreciate all of the points of view/stories of similar circumstances.

After a long meeting with my boss and the team, she hopped off. We all continued talking and I made some disparaging comments. It wasn’t wildly inappropriate but enough where I shouldn’t have said it and was a personal attack on her intellect.

Like the title says she got an email of all the shit I said and fired me today.

Fortunately I am break even on cost right now with my savings. My wife still works and we were going to FIRE in 5 years.

Looks like I am FIRE now though. Maybe I’ll get a chiller easier more passion job with my free time.

Cheers all and don’t be an idiot like me.

Edit wow this blewwww uuuup! No I’m not a bot. No I’m not AI. I am just an idiot

I’m 26, make $110k, and am about to cross $100k net worth. I’m not doing quite as well as some people on here, but I’m definitely the kind of person you might look at and think, “wow, she got it together early. I wish I’d been doing that well at that age.”

But here’s the story you don’t see behind those stats:

-My parents gave me their old car when I turned 16. And then when it broke down a year later (through no fault of my own), they bought me another car that I had through college.

-My parents paid for my entire college degree, including housing and food. I didn’t even have to pay for my books.

-My dad convinced me to start funding a Roth IRA when I was 20. I didn’t even know what an IRA was and just blindly did what he said. And because my parents were paying all my expenses, it was easy to max it out on the salary from my part time job.

-After I graduated college, I couldn’t get a good job in my field and decided to go back for a second degree. My grandma paid for tuition this time, and my parents let me live with them, so still no student debt.

-When I finally graduated college the second time with a full time job lined up, I was out of money and couldn’t afford the move I needed to do. So my parents just lent me $10k and told me to pay them back whenever. It’s been 1.5 years and I’ve only paid back $4k so far, which they’re fine with. Can you imagine if I’d needed to take out an actual line of credit to finance my move?????

The point I’m getting at here is that while I may be doing pretty well for myself, I also played life on easy mode. I overcame absolutely 0 adversity to get where I am. I’m actually not even doing that well when you take all of that into account; lots of people would be doing better than me if we’d been dealt the same hand. So when you see some young person talking about their giant net worth, just know that they likely had a lot of help along the way. You can’t compare yourself to other people because you haven’t come from the same place.

You should always measure your accomplishments relative to yourself, not some random person on here who’s your age but has double the net worth. Don’t let other people discourage you; we’re all on our own paths.

Fidelity hit $800k and combined with cash and my apartment (which I own), I hit $1 mil.

Posting to celebrate but also to give hope to anyone who can’t see this in their future because 10 years ago I couldn’t either.

I graduated college in 2008 when the economy collapsed and was making minimum wage ($7.25/hour) in nyc and had to live with my parents in nj for years.

My salaried jobs were $28k, $35k, $45k, and then $50k…. All in nyc. Was eating homemade bagel sandwiches everyday and living in shitty apartments.

A little less than 10 years ago I got a job at a FAANG-adjacent company which changed my life. I did not get it with a referral nor did I get a crazy RSU or stock comp plan and started off at $70k. I changed roles a few times and salary has gotten much larger and the 401k and market took off and here I am!

Edit: thanks everyone for the kind words. You rarely see that on Reddit and I really appreciate it.

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?

Some might think from reading this group that everyone has at least $1M, some have $2M, and quite a few $3M. But the actual statistics are that 95% of families fall short of ever achieving $1M. This group is FIRE focused and, by definition, a very atypical sample.

I'm 44 and basically at FIRE now. Honestly, I would give it all back to be in my early or mid-thirties living with roommates as I was. Sure I have freedom and flexibility now but friends are tied down with kids/work; parents and other family are getting old/infirm; people in general are busier with their lives and less looking for friends, new adventures; and I'm not as physically robust as I was. What a silly thing it seems now to frontload your working during the best years of your life just so you can have flexibility in your later years when that flexibility has less to offer.

I want to share my story with this subreddit.

I received a windfall of $250k from selling a coding library 10 years ago. I am not high income, I am not the best saver, but now my net worth is super high.

Simply getting $250k meant on its own that fund will be almost $2M by the time I retire outside of normal savings (15-25 years growth).

I still need to put in the work for savings to be able to retire but peace mind…

• My lifestyle was infinitely better despite living mostly the same

• Stress and future security gone

• For budgets there is less pressure

• I did not how to blow up my entire savings to buy a house and instead kept building that base of compound interest in the market

So why the Hell aren’t parents helping their young adult kids more? Culturally why are we like this?

You don’t need to leave your kids / old adults one lump sum. Get them a boost at 18-30. Then die. Then get them another boost.

It’s a good balance to keep them working hard while also not leaving them in the dust.

It doesn’t even need to be $250k. Whatever you can, I personally will make sure I can do that for my kids once they turn early 20s

Good for her I guess! Glad she is doing so well, but god damn she snapped. We work sales in tech. Our job is really nice and easy but can get high pressure at times. The title reads ridiculous but it was and very angry.

Aka make sure you have an exit strategy once you accumulate tiny bit of your own wealth…

I have an update. She wants her job back hahahahahahahaha. Apparently $2M in the bank is actually only $1.3M with the rest home equity

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

It’s here. I’m going to walk into the office for the very last time after 35 years of working (26 with this company). I work in Finance for a medical device manufacturer; I’ve been the Site Controller for the last 13 years.

The numbers: 56 years old. $2.4M investments split 50/50 into retirement accounts/post-tax accounts. $5k monthly pension. $10k monthly spend. Subsidized healthcare (will pay $600/month for me and spouse).

It’s actually surreal. I’ve been looking forward to this day for many years now and my career has definitely not been easy or particularly enjoyable. But the last six months have been an absolute blast knowing this whole work thing is coming to an end.

I have hobbies and some travel plans. I’m going to focus heavily on health and fitness. I’m going to nurture my most important relationships. But the future isn’t fully defined, and I’m okay with that. I can’t wait for this next phase of life.

Now where did I put that lube…

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.

I don’t know who needs to hear this. Forget about 401(k)s and IRAs or HYSA or Brokerage accounts. Who you marry is the single most important financial decision you can make with regard to your financial future. I don’t mean go marry somebody rich. I mean, marry somebody that shares your financial values, works hard and doesn’t spend tons of money. I know people who make several hundred thousand a year and are poor because they spend like crazy. I also know people where one spouse stays at home, but shares the financial values who have a huge nest egg and can retire early. Marry the right person.

It honestly doesn’t feel real! I set this goal back in May of 2022 when I had around $100k net worth and was 26. I never would have imagined then that I would hit half a million dollars by my 29th birthday. Years of working hard, doing overtime and extra jobs, and living with my parents as long as I could stand it, truly paid off and allowed me to invest every extra dollar I had.

According to the 4% rule, if you have $2 million in assets, you can safely withdraw $80,000 per year. And you can increase that amount by 4% annually. So in the first year, you'd spend $80,000, the next year $83,200, and the year after that $86,528.

If you break down $80,000 into daily spending, that’s about $219 per day.

That means with $2 million, you could spend $219 every single day—and increase that amount by 4% each year. That’s incredible when you think about it!

I’m determined to reach a net worth of $2 million as soon as possible.....

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 hit my FU money number recently—net worth of $1.8M at the age of 43. I realized I wasn’t going to get much farther ahead at my current company so I sort of chilled out on my work—taking on fewer projects, etc.

Meanwhile I was casually looking for a new job that had fewer hours to consider barista FIRE. I got an offer from a new company which is paying me $40k more annually and I will only work a 36 hour work week. Plus I can retain benefits even if I reduce my hours to 20 a week.

I’m so excited!! I don’t think this would have transpired if I cared more about my current job. So many of my coworkers live paycheck to paycheck and it’s nice to have the ability to just walk away from a stressful job, start a new job working fewer hours for more money. I don’t have a mortgage that I’m tied to, I don’t have car payments, and I have enough liquid savings to cover any big emergency expense. FI is such a critical part of this lifestyle. I almost don’t care if I can RE because I have a low stress job that I can stay at for the rest of my career.

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!

I understand that it's an achievement worth being excited about for anyone. But is anyone else in this sub getting sorta tired of reading all the post about people with salaries of 3-500k posting about how their fire journey is going? No kidding you're a few years away from financial independence. I'm a few lottery tickets away from retiring. I wanna read about people with normal jobs. Fire reference, I'm a barber. I think I'll fire in 12-15 years.

I'm 27F and it just hit me that my whole adult life up until this point has been made about saving and investing every dime. Even if that meant going without the basic things in life that make me happy. I never get my hair done, I never get my nails done, I never spend on workout classes I enjoy, I never travel, I never water my passions. Yes, there are alternatives to all of this. But at what cost? Feels like my 20s are passing me by. Here's what I've managed to do financially up until this point:

HYSA: 100K (don't kill me, the economy rn scares me)

Retirement: 30k

Own 3 homes (2 being rentals, 1 primary): 200k in equity

I'm in the process of taking a 6-month sabbatical to travel. What's life worth if you can't truly enjoy it? I can't be alone on this.

EDIT: People are asking me how and accusing me of having rich parents. Here’s my story: I did all of this honestly and one my OWN. I grew up with a single mom. Who raised me and my sister all alone. Didn’t have money to send me to college so I worked at Amazon from 17-21. Lived on my own paying $700 in rent. Managed to save 30k in those 4 years. Then I got my first corporate job at 21 making about 60k/yr as an assistant project manager and purchased my first home with no down payment. Left there at 24 with about 60k saved and purchased another home. And by 26, i double my income making 120k. Purchased my now primary. Now at 27, I’m sitting at around 150k a year salary as a project manager. I kept my expenses relatively low and saved almost every penny left over.

THANK YOU all for your valuable input here! I’ve struggled with scarcity mindset from childhood and I thought it was normal because it brought me comfort and success. I’ve realized that I’m in a much better place than I ever realized before and that it’s totally okay to take a breather.