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Weekly Discussion: 2 November 2026 (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 days ago by to c/fire@lemmy.ml
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[–] 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

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.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 hours ago (1 child)

    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?

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  • [–] 1 point 16 minutes ago

    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.

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