r/leanfire

My husband (33) was very obsessed with FIRE. He had an entire plan for us to retire early by our early 40s. He saved every penny. We both worked excruciating hours; our dream was to spend many years traveling once we retired.

One morning last year, we had breakfast, he kissed me goodbye and said he’d see me for dinner. He died in an accident later that morning. He never made it home for dinner.

He had been saving like crazy his whole life. He worked brutal hours for this FIRE dream. Luckily, in the year or so before the accident, I’d finally gotten him to spend some money. We went to the Alps, we went to the beach, we had nice dinners, we got a new camper. I’m so glad we did those thing

Hey everyone! My wife and I recently shared our monthly budget on YouTube and thought you'd appreciate seeing the real numbers since we're living proof that leanFIRE actually works.

The basics:

• Retired at 39 with just over $1M saved
• Living outside Indianapolis (chose low COL area on purpose)
• Monthly expenses: $1,241.80
• Annual spend: ~$15k

How we keep it this low:

• Paid off our house in 11 years (no mortgage = game changer)
• Drive a 2005 Toyota with 200k miles (still going strong!)
• Zero debt of any kind
• Cook at home 99% of the time when we're in the US
• Both have $0 health insurance (Medicaid + ACA subsidies)
• Don't give a damn what the neighbors think

**Biggest mon

I’m 31. Wife is 29. We just paid off our house. Don’t have much else in terms of assets, but we are 100% debt free.

Just wanted to share.

After the CEO requested us all to go back to the office 5 days a week. We have been WFH for the past 6 months and it was enjoyable. Today was the first day back, and I have been dreading it for the past week. It felt like I had escaped prison, but were now to be put behind bars again. My anxiety and stress were through the roof, my eyebrow twitched from the stress and caffeine, I simply couldn't take it.

So I quit. I was planning on toughing it out for 4 more months and then leanFIRE, but honestly, I am now in a position where I still have around 800-1000 dollars after expenses from my passive income. It was tough telling my manager, who is a great guy, but it had to be done. And the feeli

Last Sunday I got in a terrible car accident with my fiancé — a driver had a seizure and hit us head on. Car behind us hit us as well and we spun out. My car caught on fire and we both jumped out.

We were in my first car, a family heirloom, ‘91 Alfa Romeo Spider convertible which is now totaled.

Thankfully we are both ALIVE and well. No serious injuries.

Why does this matter here? I have been too obsessed with money.

I have recently been thinking about switching to a job I’d hate to make a little extra cash to retire a little earlier. Not going to do it.

I have been thinking about starting another side business, but whenever I dig into a new business, I sacrifice my time and headspace a

I got into FIRE about 13 years ago on the Mr Money Mustache forums and other early adopter blogs. At that time, it was a movement that seemed to be focused not just on personal finance, but an entire philosophy surrounding waste, consumerism, environmentalism and a kind of rejection of unbridled capitalism.

It seemed to be a way to exist in a world you couldn't change, but still be able to own your time.

Now I get downvoted on the FIRE forums for calling out consumerism. People will call me judgemental or tell me not to worry about what other people are doing.

It seems to me that this movement has become just another "make as much as you can and buy lots of shit," sort of anti philosophic

Retired at 39, ten years ago now. No $2M, no pension, none of that. Just wanted to share what actually happened because a lot of what people assume about "the number" is just wrong, honestly.

I had about $700k when I retired. Not $1M, not $2M. And when I told people that number I could literally watch them doing math in their head, and it usually ended with them feeling bad for me. Took me a long time to figure out, that reaction was never really about my number. It was about theirs, some figure they picked up from an ad, some guru like Suzie Orman, or a calculator and never actually questioned.

Never made six figures in my life either. Best year was $75k. Wasn't married through that time,

Talk about a hit to the guts. They were with the company for years, one of the earliest employees in the department. They always worked late, took extra work, rarely took vacation, etc. Was generally a phenomenal manager, never over asked, always respected work hours, encouraged training, huge on work life balance. They even stayed in the city instead of moving so they could go back to the office after covid...

Personally it was a sober reminder that in the end its just a job. A company will dump you the first sign that there are better prospects out there. There is no such thing as company loyalty and that FIRE is the only way to make sure you can care for yourself in the long run.

First of all, thank you all so much for a warm welcome to your subreddit with my post the other day! I have basically been chasing FIRE my entire adult life, but only recently learned about the label. Your replies to my post were all very well-received and helpful. I had dozens of people reach out and ask for specifics on how I got to $5,000. I'll enjoy sharing this with anyone interested in reading it, as I almost never discuss this with anyone in real life for fear of being a show-off or making them feel bad about their financial situation. Here is the exhaustive report:

I got a business degree at an affordable 4-year college. At times, I got incredibly frustrated at how many classes or a

I'm 22 years old and I started working at a small Health Insurance Tech company near my home in a HCL area in New England exactly one year ago on August 10th, 2019. My salary is $55k a year before taxes and I get a 100% match on my 401k on up to 5% of my income. I have about $7,000 in my roth ira and about $20,000 in my roth 401k, with a few thousand in cash that I don't count because it's for emergencies. The craziest part is that I never really felt like I was killing myself to save. Besides a $2,000 (for me) vacation I was going to take with my family that got canceled because of Covid, I never felt like there was anything I wanted that I didn't get myself. I'm sorry if this post came off

Reposting cuz Financial Independence took the post down

Didnt know who to share this with, felt like it was strange to tell a friend and didn’t want to make anything weird so resorting to internet strangers haha. This community has been really helpful in the journey.

Started freelance digital marketing out of college and when I had enough business to cover rent I spun up an LLC and started routing all work through that. Acting like I was way bigger than I was (we, us, the team) etc and slow and steady continued to churn out quality work in a specific niche. It's grown a lot since, up to over 7k in just recurring passive income and about 40-50k in invoices monthly.

With the extra incom

Today I found out that a friend of mine died a few days ago. He was 59. I met him 10+ years ago when we were both just starting out traveling full time. Me while working and him after FIREing.

He spent the last 10+ years traveling the world visiting dozens of countries. He is a published author in multiple well known mainstream publications, and an award winning photographer and travel/retirement blogger.

None of the above would have been possible had he not gone down the FIRE path. If he'd stuck to traditional retirement, he'd never have retired at all - and might well have died earlier as he had a crazy stressful job.

We were supposed to have met last year in Europe but Covid got in th

I just posted a video about this, but figured I’d throw the numbers up here too. I know people in this sub are always interested in what an actual LeanFIRE portfolio looks like 10 years after pulling the plug.

I retired at 39 in 2016 with around $700k total, including a paid-off house. No pension, inheritance, trust fund, etc. Just savings/investments and a pretty low-cost lifestyle that allows us to travel for 5 months every year.

Quick clarification: In a previous post I said “$1M,” which was a rounded all-in estimate that included the house and fluctuating market values. That was me rounding a rough figure for a casual conversation. I went back through my records, and about $700k is the