r/financialindependence

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Original

Update 4 months later

I received a few messages on the side so I thought I'd update.

Quick summary: 2 years ago, I was getting burnt out in big tech. FA noted that we can retire. I had a hard time pulling the trigger at the time. Almost 2 years ago, I started a job with a large non-profit and for a while our income and spending ended up being equal so no need to disburse anything from our accounts. Not pulling from our retirement and some insanely strong couple of years in the market helped us compound and grow our net worth from $7.xM to $9.xM.

tl;dr; So, the big question... 2 years later...am I retired? Nope. I think I just like building things and needed work that was worth doing rather than permission to stop.

Has it all gone according to plan? Not quite...

Planned...my wife is a nurse and has been getting burnt out for a while so she decided to go per-diem (think substitute teacher). It keeps her toe in the water without the stress of working full time every week. Some months she works the minimum shifts and other months, she works almost full-time again. The biggest challenge is predicting unpredictable income.

Planned...some amazing trips. With my wife's expanded flexibility on time off, we have been attacking some of our bucket list extravagant trips. When I run out of PTO, I just take unpaid time off. I thought my employers would have an issue with that but they really haven't so far.

Somewhat planned...my in-laws' health took a bit of a turn. They lived a 6-8 hour flight away so we ended up selling our house to buy a larger house so they could move in with us. We knew this was likely to happen so were psychologically prepared for it. Ironically, we sold our old house for the price of the new house. Location location location, I suppose. Only real downside was that the mortgage rates have been high for the last year so we ended up doubling our mortgage payment. This necessitated a slight draw from our retirement.

Unplanned...my boss laid himself off after a reorg. Yes, non-profits have reorgs and layoffs. I realized that they were expecting me to now do two jobs and deal with the politics that my boss had largely shielded me from. It was feeling more and more like a piece of big tech...without the salary, stock options, bonuses, etc. So, I waited for my boss to leave and then I resigned. I fully intended to retire.

So what happened? I ended up connecting with a great guy who is building a mission-driven non-profit tech company. It had finally grown beyond something he could do on his own and he needed to make some hires. I became employee #2. 95% engineer, 5% leader...building a product to help a very underserved population. Exchanged another pay cut for fewer meetings and politics and getting back to building things that will do some good.

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Last year: https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/s/hcUKoosdmt

This year felt sluggish. I want to move to a company with higher income, but I have to wait for my wife to find a job (she's still doing her postdoc) before I know where we should move to. We're grateful for what we have, but the biotech market has been brutal for fresh PhDs.

About us

• Me: 35, scientist in pharma. Same job, minimal change in salary.
• Wife: 30, postdoc, $62k
• Kids: None. Still just the cat, who continues to contribute nothing financially.
• Still renting, still no house.
• We still live apart (Connecticut vs. New York)
• Other assets: the 2017 Corolla

Numbers:

Numbers

	2025	2026	Change
Cash	$40k	$35k	−$5k
Me	$10k	$10k	—
Wife	$30k	$25k	−$5k
Roth IRA	$63k	$80k	+$17k
Me	$37k	$52k	+$15k
Wife	$26k	$28k	+$2k
Individual stocks	$181k	$280k	+$99k
Me	$91k	$145k + $15k RSU	+$69k
Wife	$90k	$120k	+$30k
IRA	$153k	$247k	+$94k
Me	$143k	$221k	+$78k
Wife	$10k	$26k	+$16k
Total	$437k	$642k	+$205k (+47%)

~$15k in RSUs that fully vest next March.

The jump came from three things — stock appreciation did most of the work, and the rest was aggressive saving and keeping spending low. No inheritance, no job change, no raise worth mentioning.

The big expense this year:

I have spent ~$38k cash to build a new house for my parents in Vietnam. I've wanted to do this for a long time but kept delaying it, since it would slow down my own progress. Then the government decided to take part of their land for a highway, and we'd need a new house/place anyway — so it's time.

They're both 62 with no income. Better to build a nice house for them to enjoy the rest of their life while they are still on earth.

What's next

Mostly waiting. Once my wife lands a permanent role we'll know which market to consolidate in, and I can start looking seriously at a move for higher income. Until then, keep saving and let the accounts do their thing.

Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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I'm struggling with the tradeoff between investing a lot now vs. being able to spend on experiences while I still can (Die With Zero, etc.), and I'm hoping to get some outside perspectives from the community. This is where I currently stand:

Personal: 30, unmarried (not planning to), no kids (not planning to), currently renting and living alone, HCOL area

Income: 96k from main job, about 8k from irregular side hustle. I basically operate as though my income is only 96k and treat the side income as a surprise bonus that all gets invested after accounting for self-employment tax.

Expenses: About 35k

Debt: None (no mortgage, no car, no student loans, always pay off credit cards)

Assets: 332k in investments, all intended for FI/retirement. Additional 16k emergency fund (working on building this up slightly higher; it's lower than usual because I recently moved across states). So, total net worth = 348k.

Inputs to assets:

• Maxing out 401k (24.5k)
• Maxing out Roth IRA (7.5k)
• Maxing out HSA (I contribute 3.1k, employer contributes 1.3k)
• Employer contributes 10% of my salary (9.6k) to my 401k. This is a contribution, not a match, so it's independent of what I put in.
• I contribute whatever is leftover at the end of each month to a taxable brokerage account. This varies, especially because my side hustle is lumpy, but it comes out to around 10k for the year.
• Total annual inputs to assets: 46k guaranteed, plus maybe an additional 10k-ish (see above)

Here's what this means for a typical month, if I ignore my side hustle income which is hard to plan for:

• Gross pay: 7.4k (I have 26 paychecks a year instead of 24, and it's easier to budget for the amount I actually receive most months rather than treating this as the 8k it technically averages out to over the year)
• 1.4k in tax including state/local (I try to adjust my withholding throughout the year to account for my total tax burden including side income, and this is the best average that I can currently guess)
• 2.9k in expenses
• 2.9k to my 401k, Roth IRA, and HSA
• This leaves essentially $200/month that I can reliably count on for anything "extra" I might want to add to my budget, like eating out or saving for a vacation. The exception would be if it happens to be a lumpy side hustle month or a magical 3-paycheck month, but I usually try to plan large irregular expenses for those months anyway, so I'm never seeing huge sums of money leftover.

With around 9x my expenses invested at age 30, I've been feeling like maybe I can afford to invest slightly less, in order to allow myself to spend just a little more - not a ton, just like a few thousand more each year going to discretionary spending instead of savings/investments. I haven't really been on a proper vacation since I was a kid, and I'd like to be able to do that, but that doesn't feel very within reach given how much I'm currently investing. It would also be nice to occasionally go out to eat (instead of pretty much never), or to replace some of the clothes I've had in my closet for an embarrassingly long time. Would it be a stupid financial decision to pull back given my momentum, or is that a reasonable thing for someone in my position to do?

Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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I had a heart attack on my birthday. I was 42. Took me a while to reach the cath lab as it was in need of repairs and I wasn’t high priority enough to transfer. So I spent that day, nearly two days, fully conscious, nothing much to do than research and overinterpret population level data on stents and 5 year survival rates.  

That bit is all a bit of a blur, but the bit I remember more clearly is just after being told I could go home. I watched a sitcom and it was just so funny, i was too wired to even doomscroll waiting for the op. But now the jokes were so much funnier I had to muffle my laughter out of respect for the ward

I had been hardcore saver. About 95% of my net worth was stashed away, never spent anything. about 5% of my net worth to housing for context. But after the op I still didn’t have any really sense of what I did want to spend it on. But I knew pretty clearly what I didn’t want to do .

I didn’t want to manage people, i didn’t want to miss out on my kids growing up, i didn’t want to stay up till 3 in the morning working on ways to adapt to AI challenges. I just wound down everything as fast as I could. And now i’m on the otherside, making lunch from homegrown veg and generally living a more simple natural life.

Also didn’t want to end up like my dad, working into late 60s to save up money that ended up just paying for a slightly better care home for 3 years. 

I’m still awaiting the higher purpose, the ‘optimum’ goal to have in early retirement. But I have a fair chunks time tied up figuring out what ‘not’ to do.

Anyway not sure why i wrote this today, just realised i’d never shared this ‘publicly before’. Feels okay.

Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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It's still not real yet, but it's clear I need to take steps to protect myself financially at this point. Seems things are amicable at this point but I'm not sure they'll stay that way while we untangle everything.

37M (me), wife is 34F. About $110k/yr income each. No kids.

House worth 700k-750k, owe 500k

401k - 340k (me), 143k (her)

Trad. IRA - 32k (me), 21k (her)

Roth IRA - 17k (me), 0 (her)

Shared brokerage 44k total

Checking etc combined 15k

Shared vehicle 25k, no loan

"Sellables" (excavator etc) about 20k, no loans

We've been on our way to this point for a while now, but of course all came to a head right after closing on a Friday. So I haven't contacted a lawyer yet but I intend to. Any particular kind that is more well suited to this than another?

Changing passwords on my accounts now.

What else are the gotchas or key details? I read / hear all the time that divorce is one of the biggest hits your FI plan can take so I'm really scared I'm going to miss something huge. My mind is spinning, if there are resources as to how to to about this with FI in mind, please point me to them. Thank you.

Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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I'm in my early 40s and I'm an attorney. Married with two young children. I live in a VHOL city.

It's a stressful job, but I generally find it sufferable. I don't love it, but that's what the money's for. I'm at a position of extreme growth to my compensation, but I've already hit my FIRE number.

For reference, my approximate compensation for the last few years are:

• 2020: $500k
• 2021: $615K
• 2022: $750k
• 2023: $885k
• 2024: $750k
• 2025: $1.1mm
• 2026: $1.3mm (est.)

I grew up lower income--I had free subsidized lunches growing up--so I feel particularly grateful/blessed to have a position that makes life changing money for most people on an annual basis.

I set my FIRE number in 2020 (pre-COVID shutdown) and I had assumed that I would not make partner and my income would actually decrease from my 2020. Instead, partially due to the post-COVID boom, I was actually promoted to partner and my comp has substantially increased.

I hit my number about a year ago ($5mm liquid) although, again, that number was assuming that my compensation would be going down from 2020 and assumed that we would be moving out of our VHOL area.

Has anyone knocked it out of the park and then revised their FIRE number upward? Or, more interesting, has anyone knocked it out of the park and managed to stick to their FIRE number?

I'm find it very hard to hold myself to my FIRE number when my compensation keeps going up like this.

Nothing necessarily new here that you don't already know, just another anecdote about the value of "time in market beats timing the market." But what did catch my eye was how we hit $2M household net worth in 2024 and just now hit $3M without any contributions since then. The snowball effect is real.

Quick summary:$500k in cash/brokerage and $2.5M in me and my wife's 401ks. Pretty much all index funds.

We moved to a VHCOL city and I've been beating myself up for stopping contributions for the past few years. But, the crazy stock market these last few years really made up for that. I don't think this is sustainable and I fully believe there will be a correction. So, I still need to get back to regularly contributing to investments.

My biggest regret is that I wish I had contributed more to the brokerage accounts. Most of our money is generally locked away unless we consider any of the various approaches (Roth ladder, SEPP, etc.) For so long I was focused on lowering taxable income that I didn't really value having money in the brokerages. Need to really take a hard look at the finances and figure out how I can restart contributing to brokerage and cash accounts.

It's taken 23 years to get to this point. Time really flies. So for anyone reading, please start socking away as much as you can early on. I know it's easier said than done considering the cost of living compared to 20+ years ago, but you get old before you know it. If you're savings/investments have been on autopilot - not matter the amount - you'll have done yourself a solid.

Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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Looking for a fee for service financial planner that is very familiar with the Fire concept - and I haven’t worked with one before but I assume many will work remotely. Just looking for a pro to sanity check my plan.

Thanks in advance!

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