I FIRE’d one year ago today. I’m a long time lurker on this sub and posts from people who have already FIRE’d have really been inspiring to me so I decided to share this (even though I’m a little nervous about being judged).
Background:
I’m 45M (wife, kids 16 and 12). My FIRE journey really started around twenty years ago when I first started investing. I made tons of mistakes in the beginning chasing individual stocks. But I eventually discovered the Bogleheads style investing philosophy and was also strongly influenced by JL Collins. And then later on I discovered Mr Money Mustache and his article on the “Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement”. That article really spoke to me and helped realize this whole thing is possible. I’m not your prototypical FIRE person (not a tech bro, live in MCOL area, but did work at a fairly large MegaCorp for many years).
Numbers:
From that point on, at the end of every month whatever was left in our account (we never had any kind of formal budget) we bought as many shares of VTI as we could (our first purchase was at $42/share). I increased my 401k contribution as well and put it into a similar fund (couldn’t access VTI there). We eventually added some BND to the mix, VTI has always been the backbone of the portfolio. I never added any international exposure, so maybe that’s a mistake.
Our monthly expenses are around $8k per month. My original target was $3 million. We hit that goal a few years ago, but one more year syndrome kept me working. A year and a half ago my company announced a reorganization/round of layoffs and I volunteered to leave with a generous severance (they actually offered me a promotion to stay, but I was too burnt out at that point). My wife was actually in the hospital recovering from surgery during that time which helped me realize that enough was enough. At that point with the crazy stock market gains of the last several years our portfolio had increased to $4.8 million. The market has continued to do very well even though it’s been a bumpy ride with the tariffs and geopolitical instability. This morning we crossed over $6 million. Once you reach a certain point, it’s amazing how fast it can snowball with good luck.
At this point in time, we have about $4.4 in our post tax, and $1.6 in various retirement accounts (401k, Roth). The last year or so before FIRE we started to boost the bond part of the portfolio and now VTI (and equivalent) makes up 75%.
Confession (my sin):
When it came time to FIRE, I found that I was unable to pull the trigger and sell the shares of VTI to fund our expenses. I ended up moving a chunk of our bond funds to a fund called QQQI. This a covered call fund that distributes a monthly dividend. Together with that and the VTI dividends, and bond fund dividends we actually end up with a cash flow excess on a monthly basis. I’m fully aware that this setup is sub optimal and that QQQI will underperform its underlying index. If you exclude QQQI, we have a “Core Boglehead approved portfolio” of $5.2 million, which is 87% VTI.
Post-FIRE Life:
This has been amazing, but I still feel like I’m still settling in to this new life. The year has gone by really fast. We still have kids in school and sports so that limits traveling. My wife is actually still working (her choice) since she is very close to qualifying for her full teacher pension. We have health insurance through her work, and will continue to after she retires which of course is a huge benefit (it’s $600 a month). For the first six months I was still work dreams/nightmares about having some unfinished work to do or some presentation to prepare. I got sick once and I kept thinking that I needed to let someone know that I was going to be out haha. Day to day I try to keep the house somewhat clean, do all the grocery shopping and cooking. I try to make really nice dinners every night. Everyone really seems to appreciate that. I love to play the guitar so I’ve really embraced that. I play every single day and it’s a joy. People keep asking if I’m bored at home, but I’ve found that my time tends to evaporate because I’m having so much fun! Before I know it my kids are home from school and we are heading off to practices and games! Once the kids are done with school and my wife is also fully retired (in roughly 6 years) we plan to travel extensively.
Last thought, If you have not read the Safe Withdrawal Rate series by ERN I highly recommend it. It’s contains lots of great analysis on sequence of return risk (SORR), and a great spreadsheet for running your own personalized calculations. Over the years I also heavily used the FICalc website. Thanks everyone!