For me, it didn't click until 40. I was buried $50k in debt, living paycheck-to-paycheck on $80k. Tha k god my employer enrolled me in my 401k years earlier with 1%increas eeachnyear but ither than thae 401k i was ill prepared for the future.
Then I crunched the numbers on maxing my 401k + index funds… boom, projections showed FI by 50. No side hustles, just steady contributions and keeping spending at reasonable levels. That "aha" moment was seeing compound interest at work in a simple savings calculator. It changed everything. I paid off debt in 2 years, automated everything, and hit $1M soon after. .What about you? What age did FIRE go from "dream" to "plan"?
The one habit/book/tool that made it real?
Biggest roadblock you're smashing right now?
Share your story below—I'll reply to as many as I can! Curious how many are targeting sub-50 early retirement.
At what age did you realistically think early retirement was possible—and what flipped the switch for you?
byu/Misterash131 infinancialindependence
Posted by Misterash131
27 Comments
Always thought 65 because that is when Canadian CPP is advertised to start. Now with investing I am thinking it is closer to 55.
early 20s. Seen too many friends and family laid off at the worst times. I’m on this journey as a means of security for me and my wife.
Always planned to retire at 55 if possible. At 48 I was pretty sure I could retire then if forced to but tight, I worked to 56. That made a big difference.
22. I got a job out of college, started saving and did math.
27. Middle of Covid, I got serious about paying off my debts and found FI. I’ve always worried that money would just dry up one day and I’m pretty risk averse so this seemed like a great way to eliminate risk.
6 years later, our portfolio gains surpassed the most my parents ever made while working.
I always said I would work for 30 years in my technology career. I started getting more interested, educated, as I approached the last decade. When the company I worked for went stupid I left a year ahead of my goal.
I was an pothead SWE with unstable mental health until I was 28. Spent everything I made and took long breaks in employment, meaning I was flat broke.
Eventually I got completely squeaky-clean sober, changed my diet, and became determined to find a way out of the corporate grind.
Found r/leanfire and set a plan based on projections to get to $600k, which I figured I could live on forever, and got to work. I started saving every single penny that I could. I read books like Your Money or Your Life, The Little Book of Common Sense Investing, and started frequenting FIRE spaces.
Now, 4.5 years later I’m at $750k invested and a paid off $100k condo. All I had to do is work, save, and shove everything into index funds. I’m still amazed at going from near-homeless less than 5 years ago to being essentially able to retire whenever I want.
My parents taught me about money and the importance of starting early. I remember opening my first bank account when I was five and always loved bringing money to the bank. As soon as I started working (babysitting in middle school), I always put at least half in the bank. When I was in college, my Christmas gift was $50 monthly to a mutual fund. My parents kept that up until I was working full-time. I’ve never not been a saver and always wanted financial independence.
Back in high school. Read some stuff about it and it was mentioned in math class and it all seemed very logical and doable. So started contributing as soon as I got my first real job out of college.
I was never one of those people who tried to save every possible penny to retire as early as humanly possible, but it’s always been a goal. I’m a big believer that there needs to be a balance in enjoying life in the present while also being mindful of the future. My original goal was early 40s but a bad marriage had a big impact so now it’s at 50.
I wasn’t thinking about FIRE until COVID woke me up from my work fever dream
I retired at 35, now 43. I was already saving as much as I could in my teens/20s, then I came across MMM in 2013. That helped me solidify exactly what I needed to do and ~5 years later, I was done.
Around a year ago when my net worth went from 150k to 350k in 2 years from age 26 to 28. This optimism may change if the stock market crashes though
Yo this math ain’t mathin.
My parents had six kids, provided us a good home, and got all of us through college on a very modest income. We never had anything fancy but we also didn’t have to worry about anything. Other than the house (Which they built long before I was born and lived in for >40 years until my father passed away) so far as I know they never borrowed money for anything. I hated their vehicles when I was younger but I’ve since come to understand why they drove what they did.
My dad still managed to retire my freshman year in college at 64. I have a younger brother who was still finishing up high school at the time. I know that’s not early by this sub’s standards but I recognized that being able to retire with a kid in high school and another in college meant they’d done something right.
They also tried really hard to drill those values into my siblings and I. My dad always used to say things like, “It’s not what you make, it’s what you spend.” and they taught us the value of saving early on. When an aunt or grandmother or whatever would give us $5 when we were really little it all went into our savings account. Eventually, when we were old enough to want to be able to spend money we had to save at least half of anything we got. I remember going to the bank with my mother with my birthday card money and my little savings book. That carried through to when I got my first job in high school. And because I was used to saving money and didn’t really feel like I needed to spend much on anything I saved way more than 50%.
That’s good because they made us pay for our first year of college ourselves. I was able to mostly do that with the money I’d accumulated to that point. The idea was to make sure we understood what college was costing so that we would take it seriously. I understand that it’s not realistic to pay for a year of college on a few years worth of part time high school and a couple of summers of full time work anymore. I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to navigate that for my own kids…
So I finished school and already had a habit of saving. “Paying yourself first” really works. Lifestyle creep is easier to keep at bay if you never see the cash in your account. I wasn’t able to max out my 401k right out of school but I’ve always saved a solid percentage of my income and built up to maxing it out by increasing contributions by most of my raises every year until I got there.
I have a similar trajectory to you. I didn’t start thinking seriously about my finances until I turned 40 and started looking for resources online to figure it out. It took me about a year to get over the feeling of being so financially behind and to really start on a plan based on my own income and spending. It turned out I would be leanFI at $1MM and I was in the good position to get there by 50. It turned out that the bull market got me there by age 45. Now, at 51, I’ve massively overshot that original target and still am not mentally ready to retire. Now my plan is to start “building the life I want” as they say around here. When work starts to get in the way of that life, I think I’ll be ready to retire.
The day I read Total Money Makeover. I know most people on Reddit don’t care for Ramsey, but he helped guide me to a multi million dollar retirement status that I don’t think I’d have been able to achieve without reading his book and following the baby steps.
It was 39 for me. I’d been interested in personal finance for a long time and had some good foundations established, but around then I stumbled into the FIRE corners of the internet and started to learn about what was possible. Tanja Hester’s book “Work Optional” resonated with me quite a bit. I shared the principles and some back of the envelope math with my spouse, and they were quickly on board. We didn’t set a number right away, but agreed to just start chucking extra money into savings while maintaining a standard of living we were both comfortable with. We figured, worst case, we would have more resources to deal with any misfortune to come our way. Now we are on pace to retire around 50-51ish if all goes according to plan.
38 or 39. I had randomly gotten hired at a family office type hedge fund and was making spreadsheet models all day. I didn’t like the job or the industry and was struggling with whether I should stay and try to make lots of money, which would take several years to get there, or go back to engineering which I liked much more. I modeled the two paths on a spreadsheet using different assumptions for my salary trajectory and found that it was only a few years difference to FI between the two careers despite the huge difference in terminal pay. I already had a little nest egg going and by the time I would have been making the big bucks in finance I would have only had a few years left to grind. Plus, taxes ate up a ton of it, lol.
In the end, I figured I would be able to retire in 8 years if I went the finance route, which used some optimistic assumptions, or 13 years in engineering. I didn’t realize it could be done so quickly. I could not imagine eight years of misery in finance so I picked 13 years in engineering which yes was work and yes was a job, but a lot more tolerable. I am now back in engineering for eight years and we have exceeded our target, but I haven’t pulled the trigger on RE yet.
P.S. moving out of VHCOL helped a lot. I’m not a SWE and my industry didn’t pay much more in the bay than it does in my current MCOL area.
For financial independence, around 18. Early retirement closer to 25. I had been following a lot of finance content creators, and around 25 I finally started seeing the positive effects of saving and investing aggressively.
I started planning as soon as I started my first job out of college. My original goal was to retire at 50, but I ‘failed’ and couldn’t retire until I was 53.
I did two things that I think got me there:
1-Maxed my 401 contributions so I always got the full match.
2-Once my wife and I got financially stable we locked in our standard of living and invested all of my raises. Managing lifestyle creep was probably the biggest success factor. Sure I never got my 911, but my freedom was more than worth it.
It’s been almost six years now and I’ve never looked back.
Maybe 30. I stumbled across Mr Money Mustache about the “shockingly simple math”. And realized it isn’t complicated, just need discipline.
Also the post about build the life you want then save for it left a big impression as well.
It clicked for me at 27. Prior to that I was following the life map of go to school, get good grades, go to uni, get a job, get married, buy a home, have kids, raise a family, work until 65.
Then I read Rich Dad Poor Dad (I don’t agree with everything in the book, but it put me on the path of accumulating assets) and eventually MMM and FIRE and the shockingly simple math of early retirement. If things go according to plan we will reach FIRE in another 5.5 years. I’m not sure if my SO will feel comfortable enough to RE though, even though I would quit tomorrow if I could lol.
It was when I read [The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement](https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/). I was 23 at the time, but I think I would have responded similarly if I’d read it at a different age.
I started saving and living beneath my means on day one after graduating from grad school.
I had a widow maker heart attack at 51. That was a not so subtle signal that I should retire.
I am grateful that I had the financial means to retire and not have to change my spending at all.
My mom went blind around 40 with a genetic disease. I assumed I’d have the same, so from college on my goal was to be able to retire by 40. Obviously blind people can work but I wanted that option. I’m past 40 now and not blind, and working. But I could retire if I really hated my job. NW close to $4M, not 50 yet.
I have to ask how you went from living paycheck to paycheck to paying off $50k debt in two years, and how you then magic’d up $1M “soon after”. I assume that the missing secret ingredient is “got a new job for $500k/year” or something similar.
I knew it was possible bc my dad retired in his 40s. For me it was necessary when I got tired of masking my ADHD at work in my 40s. Now I could retire but enjoying my high paying job while my kids start college.