I meant a 50% savings rate. One of the rules of thumb is to have 25x your desired expenses invested. That's equivalent to a 4% withdrawal rate. So, the savings rate helps you think about how long it will take from the beginning, but I think switching to looking at that expenses vs investments multiple makes sense once you're further along the journey.

"Helping engineers with FIRE" is more like convincing new grads that they have a good job and a path to early retirement even though they can feel hopeless about finances and have a bleak outlook. Showing a compound interest calculator, explaining the free money in the company 401k match, that kind of thing.

Percolation is how I would describe the front-loading of Coast FIRE.

https://www.gocurrycracker.com/percolate-your-portfolio-guest-post/

I know it from Finance, but if there's a deeper meaning in chemistry or other fields, similar to autocatalyis, I couldn't say.

I do think the MMM chart has a weakness related to expenses. If you did ERE and cut your expenses to sub $10k or $7k your retirement number would be completely off. Unless you planned to continue living that frugally.

For me that was the chart's strength. Since I use spending plan allocations, I just need ranges to set up the allocations. If I expect them higher at retirement, I can make them higher and the allocations are simply different. One set for the savings years and one set for retirement.

Those allocations first go through Profit First for work and business.

So, that's an income account: then moved into the Profit, Taxes, Owner's Pay and Operational Expenses accounts.

Then Owner's Pay moves into Finance for the People allocations: Fun & BS, Bills & Life, and Future & Goals.

How do you picture the expenses at 50%? 50% savings rate or 50% into the FIRE journey? We have a ton of great FIRE groups in Colorado, but unfortunately not the Cities I've lived in. I haven't been able to connect with others on their processes and approaches. Maybe, later into the FIRE journey the chart would break down?

You help engineers with FIRE?

What do you mean by percolation?

"Coast FIRE" is when you have enough invested that compound interest alone will carry you to FIRE without more contributions. Then you can take a lower paying job that just covers living expenses.

When I say the MMM chart breaks down:

Showing someone who hasn't thought seriously about retirement the savings rate vs working years chart and a compound interest calculator can seriously change the way they think. It's a great starting point. I've done that for several early career engineers.

But, like that MMM article says, that chart's only accurate if you're starting from 0 net worth. It isn't really worth checking once you're already on your way. 50% savings rate has different years remaining for 0x, 10x, or 20x annual expenses invested.

It sounds like percolation. I've heard of coast fire, but I thought it was something coastal 😂. Like it began in Seattle or San Francisco. I have it and another version of FIRE to look into on my pkm.

What do you mean it breaks down?

I look at this calculator pretty often while daydreaming about coasting vs full FIRE:

https://walletburst.com/tools/coast-fire-calc/

The MMM savings rate one seems like it makes sense when you're just starting, but breaks down if you already have a decent nest egg.

Congrats and GFY!

Realizing you're at 25x and having the option to quit, take a sabbatical, or just call it quits sounds like such an incredible relief.

Roth conversions have a 5 year lead time, so if you have some MAGI headroom, why not help future you out?

And I'm just going to tell myself that the flattish market is a buying opportunity, then zoom out and still see it up quite a bit for 6 months and YTD.

I have been trying to start my own FIRE blog.

Already got the domain, but I was going to use the email for another project. I'd been requesting a public record from a disposable (public) email address and the email messages keep getting deleted. What's strange is this kept happening on a new email. So I'm thinking the City did it. Thinking of using that blog email for a request, so I can catch them doing it on a dummy site.

I've been using Profit First for a year and it's been great. Highly recommend it if you have a business or do freelance. Even for regular work I think it's great. I learned about it in Finance for the People which is another great book.

I personally prefer knowledge over capital. So I was realizing a blog would be the best way to showcase that if my consulting grows. Also planning a news offshoot site. There are stories the news doesn't cover and I was pulling public records and doing data analysis on them and realized other people might have deeper stories.

I got one related to towed vehicles and City Insurance Pools (nationwide). Then a new one related to Crypto since my State began taking crypto from Coinbase accounts sometime recently. Each story is done completely. If you're familiar with Thinking in Systems, these stories don't have the usual boundaries. The gap I wanted to fill was lawyers and journalists saying things weren't related, when I was finding these things are very related. I don't think they realize they are making systems collide by ignoring them in mass.

I think there are easy problems to showcase and even solve that would make FIRE easier for everyone.

This month is Huntober for 100Devs.

I'm studying and seeing if I have a 100 hours project for some of these coffee chats. Looking to get a Senior Software Engineer position around March 2027.

Here are the approaches I utilize the most.

https://earlyretirementextreme.com/day-1-finding-a-place-to-live.html

https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/

https://www.gocurrycracker.com/percolate-your-portfolio-guest-post/

Alongside Weekly Finance Time from Finance for the People and the spending plan.

This High Agency read is pretty good too. A Huntober homework assignment.

https://www.highagency.com/

Hi, I just found this community. This week it was crazy to watch a year of expenses disappear in a couple days. I need to stop checking my accounts daily. I'm just nervous because I will take the first non-dividend money out in January. I have 2 years of expenses in bonds and still about 8 months in my HYSA, but am still nervous.

I've been trying to figure out if just doing small enough roth conversions to keep the ACA subsidies is worth it for now. My Trad IRA isn't that large but I have 37 years for it to grow until RMDs. My spending is projected for 25k-30k for next year and having a Magi just over the medicaid limit would save me about $6000 in premiums. I also don't know how long I'll spend in the US next year so paying a bunch for health insurance while I'm abroad and can't use it seem silly.

I've been thinking a lot about how few years I've comparatively saved versus how much money I have. It's pretty crazy.

By calendar years, I've been aggressively saving for early retirement for closing in on 12 years now. I'm effectively FI though would like to build a bit more before fully RE. However, over the years I have often aggressively cut back on savings for other goals. So actual max savings years have been much lower.

1. I discovered the concept of FIRE at the end of 2014. I obsessively read about it for roughly a month before funnelling most of my savings into investments on Jan 1, 2015.

2. By May 2015 I decided my current career was not conducive to my goals. I ended up quitting my job and going back to school. At this point, I had ~$45k saved. I did not add anything to my savings for the next year. I did pick up some minor paid work via internships that covered my ridiculously low spending.

3. In 2016, my gamble paid off and I got a job making 3x what I had in my prior career. This is when I really started aggressively investing and maxing out every tax advanced space I had and then some. My pay was $70k and I was living off $18k.

4. In 2018, I decided I should start saving for a house fund for sometime in the next 2 years. I stopped contributing to my taxable and started aggressively funnelling money into a HYSA to cover a 20% down payment. My initial goal was to be able to buy a house in March 2020. Luckily we hit our savings goal early and found our dream house in November 2019.

5. Shortly after buying our house we got engaged and started wedding planning (yes this was backwards). Instead of ramping savings back up we were putting down payments on wedding expenses. Also, due to COVID furloughs, our income dropped to 60%. We continued maxing out pre-tax accounts to the best of our ability. Frankly, we were slightly in the red every month. We did take advantage of the record low mortgage rates and refi-ed to a <2.5% 30 year mortgage. This was basically hitting the lottery.

6. 2021 was when we finally had our wedding ceremony, after it was delayed for over a year due to COVID. Not much savings due to all the payments going out in the months leading up to the wedding. All in all, we spent roughly $20k on the wedding.

7. From here on out, we were mostly able to ramp our savings back up. Though we definitely experienced lifestyle inflation with adopting a dog and travelling internationally at least once a year. Spouse had a large workshop built on the property. I got serious about my expensive sport. It feels like many months we didn't contribute much to after tax savings.

8. Fast forward to now, spouse is facing changing work conditions for the worst. We added up our combined savings and expenses and we are exactly at 25x. Spouse, who was always a skeptic about the ability to RE, is going to quit in a month. They hope to find another job in the future, but it's not necessary. I'm going to keep working for a bit, as the economy makes me nervous and I would prefer to have more than 25x to be able to weather anything. We should be able to mostly live on my salary and take minimally from investments. This should allow the investments to grow to a comfortable level without adding more. At this point I will only be investing the company match on my 401k but don't expect to have funds for much else (maybe HSA as well, tbd).

So I guess the TLDR is that of the 12 years I've been actively investing, I've let up the gas for at least 30% of that time. Yet I've still reached FI in what feels like record time. I know a lot of it is the crazy stock market run up, but I've been a solid 3-fund Boglehead for this entire time. It really feels like this works if you stay moderately consistent.

Today marks a decade since I started full-time employment at my current company. In that time, I've had 8 managers and soon to be 5 job titles (all doing the same thing). 3 of those managers were over the past 18 months and all were laid off.

I'm tired, boss.

On the plus side, my net worth has 20x since then. I met my spouse. Bought our dream house. Adopted a spoiled dog. Travelled to 6 countries. And restarted my hobby sport. Life has definitely been good for this past decade.

I guess this is why it's important to remember to live your life while you're in the boring middle. When I think about my job, it sounds miserable. But otherwise this past decade has been the absolute best 10 years of my life.

I'm up, and it's making me nervous because that it doesn't make sense to me.

Spreadsheet day! I haven't been following my portfolio too closely this month. Every time I checked the market, it seemed like it was in the red. I expected to be way down this month because that was the vibe I got from the market.

Turns out I'm way up from last month. I guess the lesson is that the news always makes things sound more dire than they are in actuality. Also, indexing is the way to go.

How are you storing cash? Savings, HYSA, checking?

Currently toying with the idea of baristaFIREing to ease my transition to full FIRE.

There are a few Arts& Enrichment part time positions available near me to teach kids/elderly about random topics. This seems like a pretty exciting option as someone who likes to deep dive down rabbit holes on some of the listed subjects. Not sure how easy it would to land a job like that with no direct teaching experience though...

Even my parents generation I think my moms dad loaned them money to buy a house back in the 1950s. So this has been going on a long time.

Dropped my 401k contribution today to start building up cash reserves, assuming my spouse quits their job towards the end of the year.

After combining our total invested numbers, it turns out we are at our FI number already so we don't really have to invest further before retiring. However our cash reserves are quite low (< 1 year of expenses). It makes sense to only contribute to the company match, but dang does it feel strange to not max it out. I'm going to have to ratchet down gradually, because I emotionally couldn't process the thought of only contributing to the match.

Sorry, I just noticed your reply....

Frank Vasquez from Risk Parity Radio has been pushing for helping the younger generations early instead of waiting until after death. It has helped me to get reevaluate how I interpret young adults getting help from their parents to buy a home.

My spouse and I have always largely kept our finances separate due to generally different investment philosophies. They've always been of the mindset that they'd work forever.

Well after some changes to their employment in the last week for the worst, they are ready to walk. We crunched the numbers and actually looked at their spending and savings numbers. Turns out that as a household we are basically at RE numbers today. They might be a little low due to a large percentage that's invested in crypto, which I'm inclined to ignore the value of completely.

So instead of me retiring sometime in the next 4 years, market willing, and my spouse working for however long they want; spouse will quit as soon as they they are kicked off their current insurance (likely November) due to already maxing it out and I will be able to retire in the next year or so once our cash buffer gets to a level I'm comfortable with.

I guess I'm in the final stages and didn't even realize it! Now I just need to crunch the numbers to make sure everything works, especially re: healthcare.

Update: My job is safe for now. Spouse (works for the same company in a different division) is likely to be sent to a staffing agency and contracted back to the company. Hard to say as they are currently on short term disability so are completely out of the loop.

This sucks since they had hit their out of pocket max for health insurance and still have lots of medical appts and rehab for the rest of the year. With a new employer they'll likely have a new deductible/max unless they can do COBRA. Here's hoping their surgeon and rehab facility are still in network at least.

My company scheduled some last minute town halls with a bunch of high level people not included on the invite. Panic has ensued. Curious to see what the outcome will be, but it seems concerning.

I'm at the point where if I'm cut, I'd have to do some serious number crunching to see if I need to find something else or not. I'd prefer to have at least $300k more saved and more cash savings but I think between severance, PTO, and unemployment I might be ok.

Fun time playing around with Fidelity's retirement calculator today.

Based on their calculations and my data, it estimates I will have somewhere between $350k and $16m in today's $ when I die at 99 if I retire in a couple of years. When I update it to the age I plan to actually retire, it says I'll have between $2.5m-$24m at 99!

I think I'm on track, guys! Especially since it is highly unlikely I reach 99.

It's now been a full week since my spouse shattered their ankle in a freak accident. We were supposed to leave for a camping trip in the PNW this week. Instead, we are waiting for their surgery to be scheduled.

Thankfully, due to pursuing FIRE, we have plenty of savings and aren't financially stressed from all the medical bills we are about to be hit with. It would be nice to be fully FIRE, since I'm finally coming down from the stress of last week and all I want to do is sleep. It'd be so nice to not have to worry about work presentations that are likely to conflict with surgery.

What do you think are signs someone has made it?

Their time is their own and they have no issues about housing, food or health costs.

for me I "retired" at 40, adopted a frugal lifestyle and reinvested my surplus from having that lifestyle and that compounded over the decades. I've changed lifestyles along the way (off grid small mud brick cottage in the forest, high rise condo on the beach, now a small house on acerage on the edge of a small town) . I'm now 60

i boomerang travel back to Australia (my base) which is a quiet place on edge of a small rural town, with clean air and lots of outdoor activities, for 4 months a year and travel SE Asia for 8-9 months. I would like to add Europe into the mix next year as well.

The other day I was listening to the radio. They were discussing "signs someone has made it." The top responses were apparently: owns an expensive watch, designer handbags, indoor sauna in their house, and an outdoor pizza oven. To me, all these are conspicuous consumption and not things I consider as having "made it."

My list would be: not stressing over a 4+ figure unplanned expense, speaking up or even walking away over bad policies at a job, creating a charitable foundation to inject money to causes they care about, etc.

What do you think are signs someone has made it? Do you agree with the items listed on the radio show?