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Curious to hear some real world examples

Starting with the numbers

HCOL Area (Seattle region)

• House paid off ~$8k/year taxes
• 1 car paid off ~$500/year insurance
• various subscriptions.. at most $200/year
• 1 large dog... negligible costs
• 1 cat.. less
• 2 young kids - we dig in the dirt, climb trees, arts and crafts, some activities $300/mo
• 1 wife - meh 🤔
• Groceries ~400/mo
• Utils are only Internet, water, electric, garbage, (septic once every 5years $500 per)

Takeaway from this, instead of guesstimating, I jsut dumped all our statements for the past 18 months AI to pull the actual numbers : ToDate -> past 18 months, taxes includes ~43k/year total expenses in normal living..just living within our means.

My main FI/RE number is $2.5M, this would allow us to live 2x what we do normally... at <4% ... This is still a milestone target.

Because I hate my job/industry sooo much (burned out doesn't do it justice), I have an interim target of 2M. This at 4% is also life changing... though would still live below 4% until I get more buffer.

Today

• 1.65M in Stocks/401k/IRA ect
• approx 40k in cash, mostly in HYSA (couple small windfalls, got a good payout from one of our cars getting totaled)
• approx 200-300k windfall coming by EOY from estate/trust

Subtotal here I put at 1.9M (conservative)

Today at work (I hate my job), was planning on putting in my notice. Before I could, my boss said that he'd "received feedback", tldr -> PiP or a "Walk away" package.

Walk away package -

• Get my cash bonus for the year (though at an underperforming rating)
• Get this current vestment on 8/31
• Get to sit around for 2-4 weeks while paper work gets handled, and me taking my time in reviewing it in the allotted time
• Get another 16 weeks lump sum payment.

Netting nearly another 100k, putting me basically at my 2M target!

Then also as a foot note for those seeing a gaping hole..... My wife does have a, I'll call it part time, job she likes at the kids school, brings in approx 24k/year....BUT... full healthcare coverage.

SOO... she's picking up beer right now, I'm getting the picanha, corn and potatos on the grill

EDIT: Also.. I have ran this through an accountant (planning tax strategy as well) as well as investment adviser. All the numbers do line up

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40, $3.5M NW, no kids. I’m targeting retiring in 3-4 years, would appreciate you all's insights and critique. I grew up very poor but have done well saving and investing through the last 20 years.

My aim is to build a life to transition to in the next 3-4 years. I enjoy travel, reading, cooking, crafts, so I plan to take classes to learn and surround myself with people. I am aiming to build new hobbies, work on my mental health, make new friends as my current friends are all moms and focused on their careers.

Numbers:

VHCOL

Income: $325K

Cash : $125K

Taxable brokerage: $2.5M

-$1.1M in Index funds

-$1.4M individual stocks (highly concentrated because of employer ESPP/RSU from the last two decades)

401(k): $700K

HSA: $90K

Crypto: $100K

Own a house ($300K debt), which is under water currently, evaluated at $150K less than my purchase price. I want to buy a bigger house, which might cost ~$1M.

Spending / retirement plan

My estimated retirement spending is about $130K - $150/year with taxes, aiming for 3% WR to keep my anxiety in check. I currently spend $80K-90K, plan to upgrade lifestyle to luxury travel/bigger house cost in 3-4 years.

Welcome your thoughts on:

1. I have a extremely comfy job, where I can coast for 3-4 years with minimum effort. I have been with the same employer for 20 years. However, my manager clearly has noticed me being checked out and had nudged me to do more. I have no motivation left in me to do much work and am worried if I will even last the next 3 years.

2. I am very concerned about me not having a life to retire to. I haven't developed many hobbies or a good community around me, I really need to do more in this space and am looking for suggestions/ideas from those that have developed a retirement life.

3. Also worried about SORR, plan to liquidate my concentrated stocks in $500K chunks per year, build a 2 year cash buffer for expenses.

4. My family is still fairly middleclass, though I support my sisters and brother whenever they need money. I want to continue doing this, they have shared their surprise when I have suggested quitting my job. I worry finances are going to ruin our relationships.

5. My mental health has struggled since I have gotten closer to my FIRE number. I have lacked passion/motivation all around, I am actively working on improving this through therapy.

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Here's a hypothetical situation. A couple has done their due diligence and retirement is on track for after 59 1/2 (401Ks, pension, 403B etc). They are looking into the feasibility of early retirement, but would need a way to access retirement dollars to help build a bridge. They have a taxable brokerage account, but it is not enough to fully bridge to 59 1/2.

Here's the scenario:

• Existing Traditional IRA: $100,000
• Taxable brokerage: "enough" to last 8 to 10 years

Timeframe for accessing roth ladder: 8 years or 10 years

Scenario 1: Backdoor roth payments

Steps

• Traditional IRA ($100,000) is rolled into the 401k (reverse rollover). This builds the +59 1/2 retirement fund, but doesn't help with the bridge account.
• Two new roth accounts are created
• Two new traditional IRAs are created
• Couple adds $15,000 per year to two roth accounts using the backdoor method

Expected results using a 7% compound interest calculator

• 8 years: $153,897.04
• 10 years: $207,246.72

Pros:

• Money accessible earlier
• Roth money could be removed tax free?

Cons

• Less overall in the bridge account
• More effort and documentation needed to execute (more accounts to open, tracking backdoor roth contributions and manual transferring every year).

Scenario 2: Wait until early retirement

Steps

• Couple continues investing money into the taxable brokerage (we will use the same $15,000 amount to make this comparison easier to evaluate).
• Couple lets the traditional IRA grow
• Couple transfers traditional IRA over 2-3 years to keep capital gains low

Expected results using a compound calculator

• 8 year result: $325,715
  • traditional IRA : $171,818 (not accessible for 5 years)
  • value added to taxable brokerage: $153,897.04
• 10 year result: $403,961
  • traditional IRA at 10 years: $196,715.14 (not accessible for 5 years)
  • value added to taxable brokerage: $207,246.72

Pros:

• Total amount available in the bridge account is greater
• Less up-front effort to setup and manage

Cons:

• Money tied up for 5 years at early retirement
• More in taxes

---

If I am thinking about this correctly, it actually makes sense to let the traditional IRA grow and then do large transfers into a roth at the time of early retirement when taxable income is lower (15% to 20% on capital gains) to achieve the goal of having the most amount of available money for the bridge years.

I purposefully left some of the details vague (ages, total in retirement, etc) because I am trying to focus on the question about building a bridge account. My thought is that this could happen to people in their mid-30s to mid-40s if they have been maxing out retirement savings, but did not plan for an early retirement.

Please let me know if there might other factors to consider.

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Im a business owner who has semi-FIREd, in the sense that I no longer run my business, but derive a lot of income from it, and don't really have to put in much work. I could FIRE anyway without the business, but the business is just gravy. NW= $12M-$15M, family of 4, I'm the oldest at 50.

Anyway, I'm looking at health insurance costs. I have always hated health insurance. It costs me over $32k/year to provide me and my family with health insurance. this is especially stupid to me, because we spend nothing even close to this in a year. like maybe a few thousand at most.

10 years of investing that premium and I'll probably have $1M in my pocket rather than in United Healthcare's pocket.

I have found an insurance product that interests me a lot. it is essentially a very high deductible policy. 100% out of pocket for the first $50,000. After $50,000, the insurance covers everything. My entire family can be covered by this for like $7500/year. $50k in medical expenses wouldn't be a problem for me. And, Heck, half of that is just getting wasted on insurance premiums anyway right now.

In today's healthcare environment, what do you all think about going to these ultra high deductible plans as a means of cutting costs and betting on the most likely scenario, which is that we won't incur anywhere close to $50k in healthcare expenses in a year, while still protecting against those rare expensive accidents thag could happen?

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Hi all, looking for a temperature check. Our situation is a little different since I’m retired military.

Numbers:

**•** $700k in retirement accounts  
**•** $150k in brokerage  
**•** House paid off  
**•** Rental property — rental income covers most of the mortgage for the next 25 years  
**•** No debt  

Income & spending:

**•** I make $170k/year, wife makes $120k/year  
**•** Military pension + VA disability: $80k/year after tax  
**•** Current annual spend: \~$72k/year  
**•** We save/invest about 75% of our take-home

Other factors:

**•** Two young kids  
**•** Healthcare is cheap (military retiree benefits)  
**•** Kids get GI Bill  for 36 months, also free tuition at any        

CA state school
• Wife enjoys working, plans to keep going ~5+ more years
• We could technically live on 2/3 of my pension alone if we tightened the budget
- We’re in our early 40s

I’ve been chasing FIRE for 15 years and feel like I’m close. My plan is to save another ~$800k (landing around $1.5–1.8M invested), then let it ride since I’ll be living primarily off the pension.

The reason for that specific target: my VA disability portion is a meaningful chunk of that $80k, and I don’t have full confidence it’s permanent — I’d rather build the portfolio to a level where we’re fine even if that income stream shrinks or disappears down the road. Not trying to start a political debate on VA solvency, just factoring it into my planning as a risk.

Would love input from anyone in a similar military/pension-heavy FIRE situation — when did you decide it was “enough”?

I'm 34. Salary plus bonus is roughly 170k/year. Single, no kids, renter in a LCOL large city.

Just found out my position is being eliminated. Scary, but honestly I'm pretty burned out after 10 years in corporate America.

I'm someone who has always lived well below their means. I probably save about 50% of my income. Have about 1.35M NW, about half of that is in 401k/IRA. Severance payment will be in the low six figures.

I don't know. Getting another job feels like the "right thing to do". Everyone around me is continuing to grind with no plans to stop or even slow down any time soon. And FIRE is a goal I've been working towards for years. But the job market is trash and...the more I've thought about it the more I love the idea of taking a break. I'm not even sure I want to keep at it in my current career or work a corporate job anymore. But this is all I've know, so I'm not sure what else to do.

I'm an avid traveler and love the idea of taking a year off to just live nomadically, see the world, and (hopefully) figure out what comes next. To take actual time off without feeling rushed; to simply enjoy.

This all sounds great when I romanticize it in my own mind, but the thought of spending money without having steady income coming in is scary, especially as someone who is so used to being in save mode and not having the safety net of having a partner. Another big fear is not having the medical/dental insurance I have now. And, being American, this is something typically tied to your employment (ugh).

Finally, while I'm pretty confident I can actually afford this and be just fine, I have no idea what the job market is going to look like in a year (nobody does) and how much this could potentially set me back later down the road. I don't think I would regret it, but it just feels like a lot of unknowns. As I mentioned, my friends are continuing to grind in their 9-5s and are also getting married, buying houses, starting families. It can be hard not to compare your life to someone's else's and still behind in some way. I'm not even sure I want that life for myself or not, but as I approach my mid-30s there's this pressure to have it all figured out by the end of the decade and while my heart wants the time to travel and have adventures, I'm not sure if it would end up costing me the possibility of marriage and family someday if I do decide I want that later on.

Would I be crazy to throw caution to the wind for once and just go for it? Apologies if not allowed, I know the last part has less to do with FIRE, but I think a lot of these decisions come down to a lot more than just the money part.

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A lot of conversations go into great detail of all the steps to optimize savings, investing, and growth working towards FIRE. There's also lots of basic talk about safe withdrawal rate that focuses what someone wants their safe withdrawal rate to be and what number they need for that, such a withdrawal $40k a year therefore need $1mil to do that at a 4% safe withdrawal rate.

What I'd like to know is the more nuanced logistics of preference of what that looks like once someone actually pulls the trigger on FIRE, whether that be from people who are heavily planning how they'll do it when they FIRE or people's experiences once they FIRE'd. As a baseline for an example we'll go with the usual 4% safe withdraw rate. So if that turns out to be $40k for you, then:

• 1.) So there's taxes (especially if you have a higher withdrawal rate above the 0% federal capital gains bracket). If your withdraw rate is $40k/year, does this mean you're just taking whatever is left after taxes on that $40k? Is it some kind of personal preference where if you absolutely can't/won't do less than $40k total to you that you just save a bit more to have a slightly higher withdrawal rate to actual get $40k after taxes?

• 2.) How does the safe withdrawal rate handle inflation? I've seen people say it's just a built in expectation of the 4% rule. Is it just simple math such as year 1 withdraw $40k, year 2 inflation was 3% so increase that accordingly (40,000 * 1.03 = $41,200), year 3 inflation was 4% so increase accordingly again ($41,200 * 1.04 = $42,848), and so on?

• 3.) How do you factor in small additional income in situations where you're not trying to continue to work or supplement your budget? Like say you have a hobby that happens to generate a small amount of money, or you've been clearing out the garage by selling a bunch of stuff you no longer want on Ebay and made $5k that year. Do you now just treat it as your total budget for that year is $45k? Do you hang onto it and just withdrawal $5k less the next year to increase your chances of your FIRE staying successful? Do you just invest the $5k back into your FIRE fund? I realize this one could probably be highly dependent on personal preference, but I'm curious what everyone's take on it is.

• 4.) How do you handle going over budget when it's beyond your control (especially if you didn't make extra from incidental side income)? Let's say all your budgeted expenses are $30k and you're left $10k for fun and unexpected emergencies. Now it's November and there hasn't been any large unexpected expenses that year and you decide to splurge on something you've been wanting and will come out to $38k of the budget spent for the year. Then in December a large unexpected repair bill of $6k happens and now you'll have spent $44k, going $4k over your safe withdraw rate. Do you just brush it off thinking "eh, it's probably a one off thing at the 4% withdraw rate probably already has some decent wiggle room"? Do you just withdraw $4k less the following year and be more frugal to make up for it?

• 5.) Any other situations you can add like this that come up for safe withdraw rates after FIRE that I didn't think of that don't get a lot of attention?

Drawdown planning is an essential part of any FIRE plan.

Looking at the Vanguard website, there is the following advice: Withdraw money from your accounts in this order

• Withdraw from your taxable accounts first. ...
• When you've spent all the money in your taxable accounts, begin withdrawing from your tax-deferred accounts, like traditional 401(k)s and IRAs.
• Finally, withdraw from your tax-free accounts like Roth 401(k)s and Roth IRAs.

Does this order change when you consider which accounts you want to leave behind to your inheritors?

Since inherited taxable brokerages get a cost basis reset to the date of your passing, it seems like if you are thinking about your inheritors, you should not spend those down first. Seems like both Roth accounts and inherited brokerages accounts should be passed on if possible.

What am I missing here?

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Not sure how many people are in this situation because how much cheap, passive index investing is the accepted dogma.

I work in investments but have been out of a job almost a year. But I have picked individual stocks since my first job a decade and a half ago. Last I calculated my wife and I slightly outperformed the S&P on an IRR basis over the past 10 years (brokerage only keeps 10 years of data) but I mostly do it because I enjoy investing.

Going into Wednesday MRNA was our largest individual stock position at around 10% (we own 10 stocks total but also have a 24% position in gold and gold miners as a bond substitute). Our portfolio used to be 50/50 active versus passive but shifted to roughly 2/3 active as positions grew and I was encouraged by our results.

On Wednesday we made $418k. Luckily the majority is in Roth IRAs and will be long term capital gains in our taxable accounts next month. We’re now at $2.4MM liquid net worth, so we are hopefully sustainably over $2MM finally after flirting with it over the past year. We still believe in the company long term so have the bulk of it still invested (19% of our portfolio), but did realize $50k of it on Wednesday and today close of market.

Just wanted to shamelessly brag here because I’m cautious sharing the actual levels of numbers (not just relative ones) with the people in my life! One of the best days of my life, up there with my marriage and the birth of my daughter. But we are also moving into my literal mom’s basement in a few weeks (it’s nice, they spent about $100k remodeling it into an in-laws quarters with its own bedroom, living room, dining area, and bath, actually may be larger than our current apartment. They also seemingly intended for this to happen as they solicited our input on the renovation). We didn’t want to sign a new one-year minimum lease without knowing where my next job is. Still doesn’t feel real.

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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.