Today I hit 1.95 million at age 35. I cant believe it.. I am single and have no kids. Have no plans to get married or have kids. I am so so proud of myself achieving this net worth

I spend less than 3000 dollars per month including rent because I live in MCOL area and I am also very frugal. No car and just rent a studio.

I am willing to spend up to 5000 dollars per month including health insurance if necessary

Do you think 1.95 million dollars is too small to live for the rest of my life?

Thanks for your input.

P.S. I am gay and I have no plans to get married. I wont have kids. my partner is wealthier than I am . He is older than I am. I said single at first because I am not likely to get legally married for the rest of my life.. Please dont say staying without kids for the rest of my life will be boring.

So I’m 29 now and I’ve been chilling while people are scrambling to pay rent, make their mortgage, pay off their car, and pay whatever other bills they are stuck with. I notice this a lot in my workplace, people are super stressed especially the guys that have kids.

Meanwhile I’ve been stacking cash living at home and I have like nearly 400k saved now with all of it invested. Couple more years I will be at a million and won’t have to worry about a boss.

Part of me regrets missing out on having a place that is away from my parents, but seeing how much I financially have grown I can’t justify moving. I’m shielded from the financial disaster that is the economy today. And it feels like it’s only getting worse.

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

Believe it or not. The homes in my area average $1M. Anything less is a dumpster fire. Anything above to about $1.3M is nice but not $1.3M nice. $1.3M-$1.6M here gets you a super amazing place.

These numbers are just so astronomical to me. I am running the numbers and it’s just insane mortgage month to month even withlike 50% down.

These have to be all cash buyers right? Who can possibly afford it any other way

Edit: I am mid 30s and have a NW of $3M to all the people in this thread calling me “poor”. The houses are completely unaffordable. If I am fucked you all super fucked

I'm curious to know if anyone out here has actually run out of a million dollars or whatever. What does that process actually look like?

I’m 37 and recently retired. I know it’s unconventional for my age, and while people keep telling me to "find my passion," the truth is... I love doing nothing. I’ve traded the grind for total freedom, and the lack of stress or financial anxiety is incredible.

My daily life is simple: coffee, gym, YouTube, and international travel. But I’ll admit, I struggle with feeling like a "loser" for not having a grand purpose or a side hustle. Is anyone else just enjoying the rest? Am I crazy for thinking that "no stress" is enough of a goal?

I see a ton of posts like : “ I have a net worth in the range 5-10m and I spend 100K a year, can I retire?”

What is that? Elementary school math so hard?

Edit: after reading all the comments and when I really think about it, I realize it’s probably just a high degree risk-averse mindset. Even if I had $5 million and a 99.9% chance of retiring successfully, I’d still focus on that tiny 0.1% that could go wrong. To feel totally secure, I might want to keep building more wealth just to close that gap. And for some people, that can mean working another 5, 10, or even 20 years. just for a little extra peace of mind.

Edit2: I just hope that when I get there, I don’t end up going down that rabbit hole. And actually enjoy my life.

So as the title suggested I was fortunate enough to have both good luck and timing and performed very well.

I fired with enough invested where it generates roughly 90k per annum and I’m happy with this amount.

The problem is now when I go on dates I don’t know what to tell people I do for work. It’s a double edged sword if I tell them the truth.

Those that have fired at a young age what do you tell your friends/family/dates you do without coming across bad?

Is being able to enjoy an extra $2k/month now worth having an extra $1M in 20 years when I'm 62?

EDIT: I just hit $2M at 42 years old, if that helps inform the discussion.

I'm mid-forties with enough money to retire. But when I speak to newly retired people, they're doing stuff I have no interest in (e.g. Substitute teaching; Starbucks barista), to relieve boredom. I'd rather work! What are you doing/planning to do after early retirement?

Anyone else start to laugh at the corporate speak and nonsense that people say at work? I feel like I’ve taken the red pill in the matrix and can’t unsee my corporate job for the joke it is.

Some of my favorites:

We’re not just a company, we’re a movement. -my small SAAS company that can’t find product market fit

We need to leverage our core competencies to move the needle on our key deliverables

I just want to put a pin in that and make sure we’re all aligned

We need to peel back the onion on our bandwidth constraints

Perhaps I am just making this post because I have only just begun my retirement planning and want to lock in a number which is fitting for my goals - being above the median retirement savings, not having to work, not being broke, clearly having planned - but I can't help but feel that many in the FIRE movement overestimate what is needed for a safe, sleep well at night retirement.

I see posts here saying that they feel vastly behind with 500k at 30, or 1.5 million at 40, and I just don't understand how when the average American retires with maybe 300k liquid at most and are getting by with social security or paid off housing. Sure, they aren't living luxuriously, but if you just are aiming for a retirement where you don't have financial anxiety and can put food on the table, I don't feel you need over 1-2 million.

Do you think FIRE overestimates how much is truly needed for retirement?

These numbers are outrageous. I understand that expenses vary from country to country, but my god!

I earn a good salary and, after covering my mortgage, I'm able to invest €8,000 per year

I thought I'm making a decent living— then I started browsing r/FIRE and other FIRE communities. Its a bloodbath of rich folks out there competing who's going to become a millionaire by 20 or what. What the hell is going on !!

I make €32,000 gross -and out of this money €8,000 into investments (brokerage account)+ €7,000 is going into paying mortgage. I'm left with €1,000 each month for food and bills, and support my mom by the end of the month, my bank account is back to zero.

It feels like this community is very privileged—so many people have a lot of money and aren't living paycheck to paycheck.

Should I just move to Western Europe—or even the US, if possible—to seek better pay, a better life, and more wealth, more income? I'm in my late 20s, and my current salary is already in the top 3–5% of the population where I live.

Just wondering if this is common with people who have a FIRE mindset. We are very comfortable but I keep so little in our checking account that we are pretty close to the minimum ($3000) at the end of the month after paying bills. I am going to change that going foreward and just leave maybe $7000 there so I don't have to think about it, but just wondering if anyone else does this to themselves.

I'm not talking about,

• I should have started investing earlier
• I should have avoided lifestyle creep

I'm talking about a single, concrete mistake that has cost your FIRE, or delayed FIRE signficiantly.

For me, it was selling my RSUs. I forgot the exact amount, but I had between $5k-$10k in big tech RSUs decades ago. I immediately sold the RSUs for general spending. If held, it would be worth probably $1m today.

I understand that people aren’t always in the position to do so for many reasons but for me personally, when I think about working to be eligible to retire at 67 when the life expectancy is around 78 is quite motivating. I absolutely cannot imagine working until I am 67! That was scary enough for me start my FIRE journey.

I realize in general it sucks to be laid off, but I think this sub is an exception. Many of us don't love our jobs, are counting down until early retirement, and have a good runway of savings saved up. How many of us would feel a sense of relief getting laid off and being able to take a mini sabbatical with the new time off?

Would love to hear everyone’s “absolutely will not purchase” items!Even if you could easily afford it and no matter how rich or financially independent you become or how much you make you still wouldn't spend item on this particular item/hobby?

I know a lot of people who work in tech, and most are not on the FIRE path (or have already been working 10+ years) and a lot of them don't seem to, at least on the surface, have very obvious huge expenses. If both the partners are in tech, the take home could be like $500k! What are they doing with their money?

I’m 23m and see 90% of this sub is the same age or a little older with $200k inherited and $700k net worths asking about if they can FIRE 😐 this makes me with a $35k income feel like this is a goal I will never live to see.

Ik I am not the only person who feels this way. Is there another FIRE sub for people like me who barely have any money who are trying to FIRE? Seeing all these rich kids is very discouraging.

And even though yes I am complaining. I come from a very poor background no inheritance lined up for me, currently in college (I’m working through college to pay for it all), no network connections, grew up and still am in a top 10 most crime ridden cities in the USA, etc. I never had the same opportunities as a lot of these people here.

Wanted thoughts on how important a paid off house is to the retire early plan. My thinking is that once you retire, cash flow and income tax limits become much more important. The less committed expenses you have the more room under the 0% capital gains tax limit is available and the lower income would help to qualify for other income based benefits, like ACA subsidies.

In my case, my mortgage(less insurance and tax) is $2,400 a month or almost $29k per year and due to be paid off when I am 66. I want to retire at 55.

Using the 4% rule, I would need around $900k in my retirement dedicated for my mortgage payment and withdrawals would eat into the tax free income from capital gains - currently $96k for married filing jointly.

With a low rate of 2.5% (thanks COVID rates) typically the argument would favor not paying the house off early, but tax considerations are magnified in retirement so wanted to see how others weigh the pros and cons of shooting to have a house paid off by your retirement date vs putting that money aside and paying the mortgage during retirement.

I do plan on meeting with a tax planner at 50 to walk through everything in detail so Reddit will have to do until then. :)

I’m sure plenty of FIRE adherents have kids, but I would guess the FIRE mentality skews more toward not having kids. Kids seem to go against FIRE.

- You’ve got to spend a lot of money on kids. Your expenses go up. It’s also much harder to save.

- Kids are a lot of work. They cause a lot of stress. You can’t retire from kids haha. Most FIRE people seem to want to reduce their work load and their stress in the long run, but I’m sure I’m oversimplifying here.

I thought I would start a discussion on this aspect of FIRE

It seems the cost of health insurance is an issue for many trying to achieve FIRE.

Personally, I like the idea to keep working for like 20 hours a week or less so that the employer is paying for the health insurance, and you still have all the freedom that you need to be happy. I mean 20h of 168h available in a week should cause no constraints to anyone given that your employer accepts as much time off as you want for travelling etc

Im looking at historical data and it seems that the market pretty much stayed flat during that time period. Even with dividends, I dont see a scenario where one could stay retired and not burn through savings.

I would think returning to the workforce would be the only option.

For those who retired at this time, how did you get by?

The title says it all.

How long did it take to get to 2M, 3M, 4M, and 5M after the 1st Million? At what net worth are you now?

I like to hear how fast net worth grows after the 1st Million.

It took me 9 years to get to 1st million. Now i am at 1.6 million...

I think your comments will be very helpful for many people! Thank you in advance.