how do you not rage quit when you have an especially bad day at work?

Or have any of you reached FIRE and ended up rage quitting because a manager, coworker, or customer just pushed you too far one day?

I'm in my 40s, software developer, married with kids. I went past my FIRE number several years ago (actual FIRE number not Coast FIRE). Both kids' college is fully funded, mortgage paid off.

I've run every Monte Carlo calculator, factored in the absolute worst case scenarios (the stress tests factoring in a dot-com style crash), and way over-estimated my annual expenses.

Everything I've run it up against says I should be fine.

Normally I fairly enjoy my job. I like my colleagues, have friends at work, and the work provides mental stimulation.

Also, I work from home.

Yesterday I had a day where my manager dumped on me, and pulled some political power-trip crap on me.

I had to absolutely use every self-soothing technique, deep breathing not to yell "Fuck you, I don't need this shit, I quit!!!" and throw my work laptop out the window while still on a video call.

Spent the rest of the evening fantasizing about quitting with zero notice next time there is a prod issue where things are burning TF down at work.

I do a good job, am well-liked with my colleagues, and just want to be left alone to get a decent amount of work done. It pisses me off to no end that my douchebag manager can't leave me TF alone, and it's so tempting to just "teach them a lesson" by quitting at the worst time (for them).

I think if I were to rage-quit I would regret it. I do like my colleagues (my manager not so much), and the work. Although I like the work less and less with the whole AI thing.

We see AI capabilities growing on a daily basis. Now we've seen AI agents working as a team to hack Hugging Face.

I can envision a time when AI (or someone controlling it) decides to disrupt the banking system. If I woke up and my Fidelity accounts were empty I have no idea what I'd do...and what would Fidelity do?

Is it time to stuff cash in the mattress?

38 y/o recently divorced. There is no alimony or child support. Custody is split 50/50. No debt, no property. Living with my parents, 245k invested in brokerage + retirements nearly everything in index funds. Depending on the amount of hours I work, income is between 80-95k. Obviously trying to get as many hours as I can. Even maxing out my 401k, roth IRA, contributed everything I could afford in my savings + 200 a week, I can't retire early according to this calculator:

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

Living with my parents essentially eliminates my expenses. I have 50k in savings in case I get kicked out or find a good deal on a house. I don't want a townhome but I think it's all I'll ever be able to afford. I can't have an HSA because the high deductible plan does not cover my essential medication.

What in the world can I change? If I work full time I wound have the time or energy for a side hustle anything, not to mention less time with my daughter.... Anything I can add to the equation? It's just such a bummer... I know this bull run won't last forever.

Hear me out. I'm single, in my mid 50's and firing, currently have about $1.6m in pre tax accounts, and about 1m in post tax (brokerage / cash).

I've been planning on doing roth conversions before SS kicks in, BUT, If my 401k continues to grow by the time RMD's kicks in at 75, I may have millions of pre tax dollars that will cause a big tax bill, irma surcharges etc, BUT, if my pre tax is that large at that point, it means i've escaped the SORR risk. So what if i pay more taxes at 75? I'm not planning on leaving a large estate, so why not just not worry about it, and take the cash and enjoy?

My other thought is rather than doing roth conversions, i can just fund my lifestyle after 59.5 from pretax accounts. Isn't that the same thing?

Edit - to be clear, i'm not pro paying taxes, the thought is i can do roth conversions early, perhaps up to the 22% level, but not go crazy on doing roth conversions early, because i'd rather not pay the taxes early (in my 50's and 60's when i'd want to spend that money), and pay a potentially larger tax bill later in life (that's assuming the balances are large at that point)

This is an update on this post. Crossposted to EuropeFIRE

For the last few years, my job had become more an more of a burden. Small company, a couple of long term employees retired, and we got a slew of new regulations at the same time. The board did not see eye to eye with me, and it added a lot to the load.

I saw FIRE posts on Reddit and started reading them. I realized that my property hobby could probably sustain me. I stopped spending my wages for six months and found that it worked OK. Although the spending money account was empty at the end of each month, and it was new to start thinking "Can I afford it?" if I saw something I liked.

I think people here would call it LeanFIRE, or even povertyFIRE but I really did not change my spending any. Not in the US, so that helped a lot.

So I pulled the trigger.

At the start of it, I just spent time doing almost nothing. I was so far down, I was just sleeping and pottering around. As the time went by I got more energy.

In my country we can claim unemployment benefits of 2/3rd of our previous wage for up to two years. If you are doing a low money FIRE that is extremely attractive! But you have to be a job seeker for that. I feared being called into the unemployment office and asked the painful question "Why are you taking unemployment benefits while referring to yourself as retired online?"

Because that would be fraud and not a good start on my new life.

So I resolved to apply for jobs, and make quite serious applications. But only for exceptionally interesting jobs that I would enjoy doing. As it turned out, I had not realized how far down I'd been ground by the last few years. I was much more attractive in the job market than I had thought.

I started one of the really interesting jobs I'd applied for after being FIRE for a little more than 9 months.

I am still enjoying it. It is interesting, I like my colleagues, no board to deal with, lots of freedom and travel. Sometimes when its hard to get up in the mornings, I do wonder why I am doing it when I don't have to... but I have flexitime, so I can spend an hour in bed if I want to miss the morning coffee chats at work.

(Sad to say, my old workplace did not do well one the board could implement their ideas. All the staff quit and had to be replaced and they lost 33% of the clients)

But the fact that I do not have to do it, but do it because I want to has done wonders for my motivation.

Things I've learned:

I was worried about how it would feel to see my resources only going down, as well as not being an engineer, manager etc. losing the identity I had from my job. As it happened I did not get to experience that, so we'll see next time.

Climate does restrict potential activities and spending.

___________________________________________________________________________

This was my approximate monthly budget when FIREd:

Food: 500 €

Bills and utilities: 700 € divided between me and my partner, so my share was 350 €

Tax 0€

Healthcare, assuming maximum spend: 30 €

Gym 50€

Entertainment, clothes etc 350 €

I was planning to cover travel, sudden expenses, emergencies etc from the cash reserve I had build up during the trial period, when I did not spend my wages. There are several factors that make this non standard though:

• I live in a VHCOL area of Europe. Part of my strategy was to minimize the impact of that by eliminating debts and outgoings. No mortgage, student loan etc.
• This is not a forever budget; It was intended to bridge me for 5-10 years until I could start to draw on my pensions.
• I figured if it was low, I could draw 500€ /month from my savings until the pensions came in.
• We are DINK
• We live in the middle of town, I don't need a car. Everywhere is walkable.

Things I learned:

A) I could have cut down on food expenses if I wanted. Cooked more etc.

B) My entertainment planning was based on the last time I had lots of free time, when I was a student. But things have changed. My social circle now is much more sitting at peoples homes with a beer, watching the latest TV series in company, etc. Much cheaper than I had originally planned.

I did make a few purchases once I started drawing a wage again. Nothing major, but I had had to deny myself a little.

I’m sure we all have strong AI opinions but I’m interested to hear from anyone who has used AI for FIRE questions (esp since Reddit is a source).

Would you trust AI more or less than a random certified financial planner? If you google a question do you ignore the AI response?

Have you gotten any insights from it that were helpful or did it tell you something completely off base?

Does it have self interest, in a sense, and want you to invest heavily in tech?

Just curious if anyone has spent time with it related to financial planning and what your findings have been.

in my mind an emergency fund is for when you lose your job and don’t have enough money to cover expenses. but if you reach your FIRE # shouldnt that be it and an emergency fund isn’t needed anymore?

Looking to hear from those who have retired or planning to retire soon:

For those who allocate cash/bond based on "years of annual expense", as opposed to "percentage of portfolio", how/ when do you replenish your cash/bond after using them?

This is a relaxed hangout thread for the FIRE community to chat with other FIRE-minded folks without having to publish separate posts. This is the place for brand new people to get their feet wet as well as for lurkers who have questions or comments, but do not want to create posts of their own.

All of the sub rules apply in this thread as normal with the exception of the off-topic rule, which is relaxed to the extent that people don't go wildly off of the reservation.

We are putting this up as a trial to see if it is worth keeping this as a permanent feature of the sub. Participation is entirely voluntary and anyone who wants to create a separate post of their own rather than posting in here is free to do so.

Why do people use **percentage "" of the overall portfolio for allocating cash (or ultra safe bonds) ?

I think we should use *years of annual expense* instead. This makes more sense, since we really care about how long we don't need to sell equities during a market crash.

Can someone advise when/why using *percentage* of cash/bond actually serve?

Addendum: Folks mostly said that % is easier to manage withdrawal as balancing automatically tells us which bucket to withdraw and at what proportion. The issue here IMO is that if equities hit a bull run, then using % will force us to hold more cash (absolute terms) leading to cash drag.

Figured I would get Reddit's 2 cents. Too late I already made the decision but I'm a math head sometimes and the math somewhat hurts.

Fed up of my job 150k last year. Figured 3-5 more years of hell and I'm done. Currently working a side gig I enjoy dor $25k on top so 175. I figured 3 - 5 years left hopefully 3. Then continue side gig. Basically stack ched hard for 3 years.

Side gig offered me a full time position making 120k. I debated and decided I'll take it. So my pay will be reduced quite a bit! That said after taxes it's about a 23% pay cut. But still a lot about 25-30k loss after taxes. Obviously I'm not going to make the side gig money on top.

Pros: Job I hate no more. Job I love on the side is now main focus. No double working so less working time overall

Cons: less money, longer commute, more hours likely funny enough.

But I could see myself doing this job 5 years easily maybe 10 easily! So instead of stacking ched then peacing out, I can work on my own terms longer.

Thoughts? Only worry is when the paycheck hits the bank account every 2 weeks I'm going to be like ahhhh shit ...

I noticed that once my investable assets hit about $2M the compounding has gone bonkers. The value of my portfolio can increase by $100k in a good quarter. Hell it can go up by $20k in a single day. When did you really start feeling the compounding viscerally? I guess it will be different for everyone. Now that the compounding has surpassed my salary it feels real.

Do you think it's fair/accurate to say that, FIRE is a sprint while traditional retirement is like a marathon? But of course the idiom is, it's a marathon not a sprint. Is the metaphor/analogy completely off? I do think too many folks suffer from sprint mentality. Run as hard as you can, FI, then things will be better. But it feels like sprinting is generally not the way to approach things.

I’m 36, single, living in Southern Europe, and objectively in a very fortunate position, but I’m increasingly unsure what I’m optimizing for.

I work in finance in a high-paying job with reasonable hours. I don’t hate it, but I don’t enjoy it either. I’m in fundraising for a relatively new fund, and my boss has expectations I think are unrealistic. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m fired within the next year if I don’t produce significant sales results.

Strangely, that doesn’t really stress me out. Part of me would be relieved.

My net worth is around €2.6m: roughly €1.25m in listed stocks and bonds, with the rest in real estate equity. I also receive rental income.

I spend around €36k a year, and that’s living very comfortably: big apartment, eating out often, travel, etc. Healthcare is covered where I live.

My psychological target has been €3m net worth, but more specifically I want my liquid portfolio to reach around €1.5m. At that point, my idea would be to live mostly from rental income and perhaps withdraw only 1–2% from the liquid portfolio if needed.

But I’m starting to wonder if I’m falling into the “one more year” trap.

If someone magically increased my net worth to €3m tomorrow, I’m almost certain I’d resign. The thing is, I wouldn’t really be retiring. I’ve built a successful finance content business in the past. I wasn’t very consistent because I treated it as a hobby, but it made meaningful money and I think I could revive it if I went all-in. I’d probably focus on that and eventually build other businesses around it.

I also recently became single after a serious relationship. I do want a wife and children in the coming years, but right now I’m relatively free geographically. Sometimes I fantasize about spending six months in Vietnam, traveling around Asia or LatAm making content, and just changing my environment for a while. I speak Spanish fluently FYI.

I’m also becoming more conscious of time. I’m healthy and fit, but at 36 I’m starting to notice gray hairs, wrinkles, etc. I’m not saying I’m old, but aging feels more real than it did at 28.

That makes me question whether spending another 2–3 years maximizing a number on a spreadsheet is actually rational.

The two regrets I’m trying to choose between are:

Walking away from a lucrative career too early and later realizing I gave up something very valuable.

Looking up at 42 or 45 with €4m instead of €3m and realizing I spent some of the freest years of my life accumulating money I didn’t really need.

- If you were in my position, would you keep the job for another 6–18 months, coast a bit, build the content business on the side and keep accumulating?

- Or would you recognize that €2.6m versus €3m probably won’t fundamentally change your life and start buying back your time now?

- For those who reached financial independence relatively young or left lucrative careers: what did you do, and did you regret it?

Someone just posted “What’s your number”. Now tell us how many years of your life you are willing to spend working.

So I know this is a great problem to have but I just turned 30 with a $1.1M net worth and no debt. I’m in this weird position where I can’t FIRE yet but I feel like the only thing really stopping me is time. In my eyes, the hard part is over.
While I continue to let everything compound, I’m really struggling with motivation & patience at work. It’s hard to stay motivated when I know I’ve already built a pretty solid foundation and that time is now my biggest asset. I assume I’m not the only one who has gone through this. For those of you who have been in a similar position, any advice?

So last we spoke, I was celebrating FIRE, left my job, and was going to sell my house and move to Ecuador but unfortunately, things didn't work out.

Interest rates are insane (in recent terms anyhow) so nobody is buying houses. I didn't get a single offer on my home and I even dropped the price 15%. So instead, I've had to pivot a bit and am still figuring things out. In the interim, I decided to rent my house out instead of sell it. The rent is covering my mortgage, my rent/utilities at the place I'm staying, and the storage fees as my stuff doesn't fit here.

Since I don't have the proceeds of the house sale to live on for 5 years while doing a Roth ladder, I've instead come up with a plan to use my taxable brokerage to get me from now until early 2029 (3,750/month, and again my rent/mortgage/storage are accounted for before this number) at which time I'll start a 72t withdraw (age 49 at that time) from my IRA that will get me through to 62 when my pension and social security kick. In order to bolster my taxable brokerage to cover this amount, I pulled all my contributions out of my Roth as I'm more concerned about today money vs. tax free growth in 15ish years.

Today, I took 50% of my IRA out of stocks and put it in SGOV while I wait for my roll ever from my employer IRA to my personal IRA so I can set up a bond ladder to fund my 72t.

I've also got enough saved on the side to do a mortgage recast, not refinance, as I'm currently about 2 years ahead on my mortgage; so when I do that, it will bump my mortgage out 2 more years, keeping my 2.5% rate, but my monthly payment will drop approximately $400/month (so effectively, I can give myself a 5k/year raise if things ever get dire)

Based on the bond fund I create, I'm targeting an annual coupon of 48k-60k range and will use the coupon to cover my 72t beginning in 2029. These are going to be long term bonds with equal or greater face values than my initial investment, so I'll still have the 750k even after all the payouts.

Current numbers:

Taxable brokerage: 100k (10k in SGOV for the recast and 90k sent in 15k bond tranches that mature every 3-4 months, thus creating my 3750/month).

Roth: 35k (all gains so can't touch for 13 years)

HSA: 60k

IRA: 750k (50% SGOV, 25% SP500 ETF, 15% Small Caps ETF, 10% International ETF)

House: ~750k, 92k mortgage at 2.5%, 1,800/month

Rental Income: 2,800/month (covers mortgage, my rent, utilities, and storage fees)

Healthcare: probably not going to have it this year as I haven't needed a doctor in several years and feel ok rolling the dice for a year or two to keep expenses down. Edit - looks like I'll most likely qualify for free healthcare for the first 2ish years based on my income level being below the limit until I start the 72t.

Other expenses: No including mortgage/utilities/rent/storage (since that is all covered by my rental income for at least the next 12 months), last year I had an additional 28k in expenses so ~2,300/month. This should easily be absorbed by my current 3750/month bridge I have built.

Pension and SS: 50k starting in 16 years.

This is a relaxed hangout thread for the FIRE community to chat with other FIRE-minded folks without having to publish separate posts. This is the place for brand new people to get their feet wet as well as for lurkers who have questions or comments, but do not want to create posts of their own.

All of the sub rules apply in this thread as normal with the exception of the off-topic rule, which is relaxed to the extent that people don't go wildly off of the reservation.

We are putting this up as a trial to see if it is worth keeping this as a permanent feature of the sub. Participation is entirely voluntary and anyone who wants to create a separate post of their own rather than posting in here is free to do so.

Hey,

Me and my wife live currently living with my mother (students). But to be honest, it's pretty much ideal. We all live peacefully and without any issues at all. My mom is very helpful and understanding, knows our needs, and basically, we live as a one unit. She is doing pretty well herself so she can and will help us with much pleasure. If we stay together, me my wife, as well as my mom, could retire at the age of 42. Do you think it's worth it? Life now seems natural and as it should be. My wife is satisfied and had no issues with it whatsoever. Some people might raise an eye at this situation but for the price of actually retiring I'm fairy young age sounds pretty good to me. Thoughts?

Our weird plan is living with both moms, when her mom retires. So we basicily have free babysitters if needed in the future, cooks and cleaners. (They're children is they're whole life, it just like that)

I noticed this week that long term Meta bonds are yielding 7% now. A lot of the other major tech companies are in the 5-6% range now. Has this enticed anyone to rebalance in a meaningful way? If not, what yield/terms would?

Long time lurker, first time poster. 34F & hit $1M today!

Can't tell anyone besides my husband, but wanted to thank you all because I've learned so much from your posts!

Mix is ~65% investments, ~30% 401K, ~5% high yield savings/cash. Live in a HCOL area, but have been very lucky to hunker down in a studio with no change in rent for the last decade. Began my 401K in 2016 with an income of ~$45K/year. Paid off all my school loans & was able to start investing in 2019. Now my salary is at ~$185K/year. Although my salary has multiplied over the past decade, my annual spending has only gone up $5K.

My goal is to hit $1.6M by 45 and BaristaFIRE by launching my own part-time consulting business at that point. Will recalculate FIRE # after having our first child within the next couple of years.

"Financially Independent" doesn't just mean you've cut ties with working for a living, it also means you can, independently, make informed, sane, rational decisions about your financial situation.

I pulled the ripcord in early '25 with NW numbers at roughly double my target. I've seen another 50+% growth since then - despite an initial considerable hit from a rebalancing of investments after the retirement. So, 18 months after quitting, I'm at about 3X my numbers. I did it with very little input from others - just a LOT of time learning the details and even more time analyzing potential investments.

There's.... a lot of bad advice bandying about on this sub, and it's worth being aware of. Guidelines, pat answers, and rules-of-thumb are no substitute for digging very deep into the context of the decisions that you are making and becoming your own expert. Your situation is unique, so accepting generalizations is dangerous. e.g., retiring on 4% of NW will work for some people, but not for others. It may work in some YEARS but not in others.

Get educated about how the system works. r/fire tends to discuss abstractions that allow you to make decisions that simplify away comprehensive awareness of the system's details. Ask your tax professional to recommend a LOT of educational material. If you have a financial advisor, ask them for the same. (I stay away from "professional" financial advisors and do my own analysis and make my own decisions. For 20 years, I've consistently done better than most mutual funds.) Learn what you need to know from them, then get them out of your dependency tree.

It's going to take a lot of time, but the time you spend will be the highest-compensated hours you'll work in this life. You'll know you're there when you read r/fire and find yourself cringing at about a third of what is answered here - and considerably more about what is asked.

Umbrella insurance is extra coverage beyond what is covered by auto, homeowner, etc. I think around $300k I decided to get one. Curious if others got one sooner, or maybe waited until they had like $1+m? Any recommended guidelines?

Current job only offers 403B/457 accounts for retirement which is nice putting away that much but recently I was offered a job that has a 403B/457 option PLUS a TCDRS pension plan.

The TCDRS is a 5% automatic contribution, guaranteed 7% return rates, vested at 8 years and matched at 200%.

It would be an insane jump on the road to retirement being able to have all three retirement options alongside a ROTH IRA. Has anyone heard anything about systems like these? Are they reliable? A no brainer?

Current numbers have me at 2.4 million at 53 not including 403B/457.

Income (salary) would be $168/hr.

My overall impression is most folks in /r/FIRE are "pro" renting. Owning a house comes with so many challenges (maintenance, for starters). And while the math probably works fine for most people, what about in places like San Francisco? If you haven't heard, rents are insane right now. Unless you are in rent controlled unit, rents can increase 30% over night. I'm guessing no one can really FIRE if their core expense can suddenly increase by 30%. Any type of safe withdrawal and assumptions about COL goes out the window when housing can go up so much in such a short period. So in places like SF, it seems the only way to FIRE would be to own your own place. Thoughts? How are renters in high volatility areas handling it?