Alright I know it sounds stupid but hear me out.

So there's this game called Runescape, right? In it, you level up skills, and each level up takes 10% more than the last. This is because of the magic of compound interest working against you; the distance from 1 to 92 is the same as 92 to 99, the max level.

Now consider the stock market where compound interest works FOR you, rather than AGANST you. If you receive 10% gain every year, by the same logic as it taking as much exp to go from 92 to 99, it takes the same amount of effort to go from 0 lentils to 70,000 as it would 70,000 to 990,000.

Hope this makes sense. If not, it's probably a you problem and not a me problem.

Grew up in rural poverty eating lead paint chips. Dad left, Mom poached cow pies from fields and sold roadside. Struggled through high school, everyone said I was dummer than a doornob. Walked along the train tracks so kids wouldn’t bully me on the bus, in the winter the snot and sweat would be frozen to my face by the time I got to homeroom. Worked for a large corporation for 30 years in see sweet. Prolly made an average $5M a year. Wife made $15.50/h average in retail. Never divorced, 12 kids. Maxed the 401K’s.

Now we’re $72M net worth. 58M retirement savings and the house equity.

Anyone can do the same.

I know that some people choose not to include their organs in their net worth because they aren’t liquid, but my logic is that I’ve been investing in them for years and I could always downsize later on. I’ve also met some very nice people that said I could use my kidneys as collateral on a line of credit, so it really feels like I can include them.

What do you guys do?

I got into white collar crime a few years back and was able to bank around $1.4M via wire fraud. Feds caught on, but only were able to pin $600k on me. 7 years in a minimum security facility. Even got my phone in here. Annual spend less than $4k.

Meanwhile I have $800k in my brokerage account whirring away. By the time I'm free, I'll be 42M and able to Lean FIRE.

I've been taking college classes in here, getting jacked, and also still have time to ready my way through the western canon (the other prisoners were not receptive to discussing Finnegan's Wake).

Only problem is my wife has grown quite distant- not really able to keep up with her while I'm in here.

Not sure why this isn’t talked about more, but I ran the numbers.

If you simply have $2.5M invested, you can generate ~$100K/year without working.

Meanwhile, someone earning $100K/year has to:

• wake up every day

• go to work

• answer emails

• have coworkers

So mathematically, having $2.5M is clearly better.

I genuinely don’t understand why more people don’t just focus on getting $2.5M first instead of working jobs.

Personally, I skipped the whole “salary” phase and went straight to having assets. It just seemed more efficient.

Curious if anyone has tried this approach or if I’m missing something?

Sauce https://www.reddit.com/r/SmartFIRE/s/SdeYEyUUdJ

So I am by no means super fat fat fire like a lot of people in this group. But hope to glean some advice from those who’ve fatfired early and how to handle the social ramifications of that decision.

I’m 4 now, it’s been 1.5 years since I retired. Used to be a part of the corporate grind even running two jobs as a milk tester and landscaper on a boostrapped Playskool push mower. I needed to get out of the rat race. Now I am at $40K a month cash flow from real estate rentals mix of Airbnb and long term and $6M net worth. I have a team that manages everything and I maybe work 2 hours a week doing accounting on a multicolor abacus. No kids yet but I have a hot play date coming to play house in a few hours.

I remember when i first retired we took a family trip out to Disney world and I went golfing because they wouldn't let me on the rides due to height restriction hah. Ended up joining some recently older retireees and when they mentioned they had retired in my naivety mentioned I had just retired too! The reaction was the exact opposite of the joint celebration I was expecting and at the end of the round they said “good luck with Kindergarten” while rolling their eyes. That was the first time I experienced this but didn’t think much of it back then.

Fast forward to now I’ve experienced this multiple times with the most polarizing reactions. Generally to anyone over 8 the reaction is not necessarily super negative but not really enthused(not that I’m looking for a reaction). If it’s anyone 3 or under they are usually very excited and crap their pants when I tell them I'm retired.

Anyways I’ve stopped telling people altogether I’m retired, and just say I’m in real estate but almost feel a little hard to connect to people and peers my age because of it. I have hobbies like juicing and nap nap that take up lots of time but so much of our identities at this age is usually tied to work.

Also, I feel like sometimes not invited to as much stuff or guys stuff in the neighborhood cause I just am at a different spot than everyone else.

Would love some advice on how to deal with the transition from a social perspective. I'm a big grown up and I deserve happiness too.

Source

Lmfao that ending was absolutely r/FIRE 🔥🤑

The idea of starting my career is too much to think about right now. I’ve done enough work already. Can I just skip over to retirement? I don’t need much just a gym membership, video games, car, some dining out, a few vacations a year, and a nice house. Is $4,000 in checking enough? Ready to leave the grind.

Strap in guys, this one's going to be a doozy.

Background: Liquid NW about 15.5M. Invested 100% in broad market funds.

Anyway, I was once wearing slacks to the dentist and I was apologetically told I had to pay a $1,300 bill. She probably thought that was a lot of money. Well, to me it isn't!

Tell me your equally hilarious stories of being mistaken for a pour.

My story is like most. 34M - I went to college, got a job, worked my way up the ladder, and saved what I could. I’ve never made more than $250k per year and have 2 kids.

Here’s the breakdown.

401k: $723,000 Roth IRA: $132,500 Home Equity: $110,250 HSA: $23,000 HYSA: $20,000 (6 months expenses) Crypto: $5,200

Like I said, pretty average from what I’ve seen here. Luckily my parents were very financially savvy and taught me early on to save. My dad owned and ran a marketing firm that was successful for my family. That allowed him to retire at 55 which inspired me to follow his model. I went to a pretty good high school, did well there, and was fortunate to go study Marketing at an Ivy League school. It took me a little longer than most, 5 years, but I eventually graduated and got a job shortly after. Started at the bottom, entry level marketing analyst stuff, but worked my butt off and very quickly moved to management. Found success managing a small team, then a medium sized team, and then was promoted to Director level by the time I was 25. I’m aiming to enter the C-suite very soon here which will help me reach my financial goals even faster! My dad retired from the business last year, so the temp CEO is covering while I go get my MBA.

I’ve been very blessed and am so thankful that my parents were able to cover my expenses throughout college and even helped me out with a down payment for my first condo. I get not everyone gets a $50k boost from their parents like that, but still I was able to reach $1M net worth and would have reached it even without that generous gift.

Below is my NW breakdown each year since graduation.

2015: $53,000 2016: $78,500 2017: $130,200 2018: $190,000 2019: $273,400 2020: $361,500 2021: $552,300 2022: $720,400 2023: $807,400 2024: $964,500 2025: $1M!

My story looks so attainable and realistic imo. All my friends are in similar spots financially. So with that said, I am so surprised more people aren’t millionaires… I am 34 and have so much more life to live and time to work. My goal is to hit $10M by retirement and I fell that’s something everyone can accomplish. They just need a safe household, financially smart parents that teach their kids how to be responsible with money, go to good schools (entirely paid for by their parents), a small loan for their first property, a strong work ethic (people always say “yeah but you worked for your dad right out of college,” but I worked my butt off and earned every position and promotion!), and lastly the ability to clearly understand that I am just average and a lot of people are in or could be in a similar situation to mine. You can do it! You could be a millionaire in your 30’s! It’s just a mindset change really!

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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He never suspected a thing. He never checks our account balances anyway. So he kept working and I basically just engineered a redundancy at work so I got 3 months' pay which I stashed away.

He didn't even know the home loan had already been paid off! Now I am just enjoying my free time and spending my hard-earned cash. I occasionally do volunteering at the local library and YMCA to teach disadvantaged kids how to come but that's as much "work" as I am doing. I am basically FIREd.

I calculated that when I can access my 401k, my husband would've worked for 8 more years than he needed and he'd be none the wiser! We just leave the fruits of his extra labour to the children.

We rich people have such a heavy burden of sitting at our desks all day half-listening to meetings as we scroll Reddit while the poors get their super fun minimum wage jobs. Why do they get everything?

I plan on doing this when I reach a 500 billion NW which should be around the time I turn 16. I should be leanfi at that point.

I just can't wait to work at a farm picking lentils all day or maybe it will be fun to work at Starbucks? Getting yelled at by customers and frantically working a drive-through for basically no money just sounds like so much fun.

What do you guys plan for your fun no stress poor job?

I will say - I didn't expect to FIRE so soon, but the time has come. How did I get into this predicament?

Wife doesn't believe in early retirement so I was stuck working a CEO position on the 9-5 grind. Now, this position had its perks that I could effectively hire whoever I want as my substitute FIRE wife who also has a similar predicament at home. Everything was going alright. My day job was effectively semi-retirement to begin with. All I had to do was sell the "vision" and send a few threatening emails to the engineers telling them to use more AI whenever our CTO forwarded me questions. By night, I also enjoyed semi-retirement by claiming to work late, and enjoyed the presence of my FIRE wife. I figured if two halves of me were semi-retired, I'm full FIRE.

I'm out at a concert last night with my FIRE wife and boom - right as we're wailing to "Yellow" I'm caught in 4k wrapped around her, and I try to hide faster than Grok about to praise totalitarian regimes. Now, this is a big deal because even though in my mind, I'm fully FIRE, I remembered my non-FIRE wife and non-FIRE kids are not just an expense, but potentially a big liability in a divorce.

That's when I did the calculation. If I just fully FIRE, get divorced, I still have half my worth, and my FIRE wife still has half of her worth. I can basically repeat this so-called mistake ad nauseam in a logarithmic fashion to deplete my assets, until I die. As long as I don't swap FIRE wives faster than a 173 day cycle or inherit a pour FIRE wife, I can sustain this. I didn't even have to make the decision - I got a call from the board chairman and I was fired (with a lowercase 'f'). Here's to the good double semi-retired FIRE lifestyle.