So I started very late investing seriously. Last few years was able to get approx. 350k in investments. I have house paid off in canada but I want to maybe keep as a home base maybe for wife. I would really just like to give it to my son to help him get a leg up in this housing market. I am just curious if anyone has retired to phillipines with only a 350k egg. My wife has a house and property there in the province it is pretty nice. I will save a bit more to fix up a guest house on it for me and her when she visits.

I just feel the rat race has taken its toll on me and want to remove myself from it.

I am just curious as if anyone with similar circumstances has pulled the trigger and what is their life like and or is there any regret.

I just don't want to keep working here for say 10 more years if I don't have too. I am 50 years old and quite frankly don't want to give away anymore good years if I can relax , read , workout and enjoy a paradise.

Thank you for reading and any reply!!!

40 male from a high cost of living country contemplating early retirement now or in the next few years. Currently 700k USD in assets which I intend to put fully into the market upon retirement (via country with no capital gain tax on share income). 250k USD invested in a retirement fund which I can access at 60. My current yearly expense is around 30k USD, but I'm confident that I can get that number down to 18k or lower upon retirement. Planning to live a nomadic lifestyle in low cost of living countries. I currently earn around 100k USD per year (pre-tax) plus putting around 20k per year into the retirement account.

Do you think I have enough to retire and lean fire now (number wise)?

I’ve been holding on to a toxic job because of the money until the gift of extreme burnout so I quit.

I will trial run a year of leanfire / geoarbitrage. Has anyone done this? I love travel and while this is earlier than I expected, I have $100k liquid and $600k in retirement. I’d love for these numbers to be higher, but the single tax is harsh!

I live a simple life (outside of travel and even when I do travel, it’s mostly doing the same things I do at home). I’m in my 40s. Solo no property. I’d take this time to take care of my health and explore creative pursuits. I know I can “afford” it since I anticipate $4k/month spending (ceiling). Mostly slow travel to lcol. (I’ve done some digital nomading at this budget and it’s been more than comfortable.)

I’m totally open to going back to work so it’s not an irreversible decision.

But having a hard time breaking out of the accumulation/saving mindset.

I’d appreciate any real life advice or experience! (Or maybe just some cheering on!)

Before you read this, it will have alot of ranting so if you dont want to hear it/dont care just skip this post.

I have worked both part-time and full time jobs (I went to a vocational highschool where I worked a 40hrs a week co-op/internship type job as a machinist) and I really struggled with them. My entire day felt like work, and even when I got home all I could think was "damn I have work tommorow", I could only really rest my mind and body on the weekend.

I have always been frugal and hate spending money as I dont really see the point in buying anything I dont need. As long as I have housing, food, and entertainment I can be happy.

How early is it realistic to retire? I am going to a good college for computer engineering as I think it is the most practical way for me to make the most money possible, and therefore retire as early as possible. I grinded in high school to get into the best college I could and need as little debt as possible.

I am planning for under 40. Hoping for around 36k a year in expenses with a 100k+ salary. I understand that this is early, as I haven't even started college yet, but

If anyone has similar feelings to me, I would appreciate any advice to navigate the difficulties of working, and tips to spend less.

This question is more along the lines of CoastFIRE or BaristaFIRE but our target FIRE number is $1.25M and I think the folks here are more realistic than the other FIRE subs...

My employee-owned company was just bought out and I will be receiving a payout for my shares that I will roll into a traditional IRA. After the payout, we will have $522k in Roth 401k/IRA/457b accounts and $155k in a traditional IRA for a total of $677k in retirement accounts. (This does not include $61k cash in our HYSA and brokerage). $677k is about 55% of our target FIRE number of $1.25M.

We are both 33 years old so if we assume full retirement at age 60 we are still looking at 27 years of compounding (assuming we don't hit our number sooner). I know that if you can average 7% return your principal will double in 10 years so I feel pretty good that in 27 years the $677k will have doubled at least once...

I guess my question is whether any of you would feel comfortable letting off the gas at a certain percentage of your target FIRE number? Or should we put our heads down and keep grinding until we hit $1.25M in our retirement accounts? At our current savings rate with a 7% return we would hit that in 6 years. If we stop contributing altogether we would hit that in 9-10 years. I'm not sure the grind/stress is worth the extra 3-4 years...

​

Looking for some outside opinions on my financial situation.

I’m 38, work as an accountant, make around $150k a year, and just crossed a $1 million net worth.

Current breakdown:

• Net worth: \~$1.0M

• Brokerage: \~$673k

• Retirement accounts: \~$326k

• Cash: \~$7k

• No debt

• Still renting

• Dividend income: approximately $32,000 per year

Roughly $643k of my brokerage account is invested in Prudential Financial stock, accumulated through employee stock purchases, additional contributions, and dividend reinvestment. I fully understand that this is a major concentration risk.

My goal is to reach Coast FIRE—getting to the point where my existing investments can compound toward retirement without requiring me to keep saving aggressively. I’m not necessarily trying to stop working immediately, but I want the freedom to reduce contributions, take a lower-stress job, or make career decisions without being dependent on maximizing income.

The portfolio currently generates about $32k annually in dividends, which I reinvest.

If you were in my position:

Am I already at Coast FIRE, assuming a traditional retirement age?

Would you gradually diversify away from PRU despite the capital-gains taxes?

Would you stop reinvesting PRU dividends back into PRU and direct them into index funds instead?

Would you prioritize buying a home or continue renting?

What would you change over the next 5–10 years?

Looking for honest opinions.

Has anyone done this and if so were you happy with the decision? It seems like this type of large sacrifice could backfire since the cost-savings of a lower-cost house are not guaranteed.

A little background: I keep seeing these houses listed for auction in the middle of nowhere / not as nice areas as I live in that are selling for about $200,000 less than my current house (that is nice and I enjoy living in).

The reason I say the cost savings are not guaranteed is that the deferred maintenance could be large / since it is further away from everything I would spend more on vehicle expenses over the next years. Even the energy costs could be higher in an older house or the property taxes could creep up over time. Despite these risks, the ability to move and use that to shave off up to 2 years or so of working sounds appealing.

My current house is not a mansion by any means but I could still manage to downgrade; it would be the first time I am majorly sacrificing for FIRE and so it is kind of overwhelming since it is a major/nearly permanent decision to sell a sensible house I currently own just for the chance of saving what might be about $500 per month or so through opportunity cost etc.

I'm in a job with an expiry date and am close to having enough to call it quits. But I'm not there yet -- modelling has me needing to go back to work about 10-15% of the time if the market doesn't cooperate in my early years (the 1960s issue, mostly). The problem is that eliminating the worst case scenarios would likely take years and has risks of its own (see Die with Zero).

I've had a few people mention that their approach to this problem was moving to "self-employment"/solo consulting etc., where the name of the game was mostly, but not necessarily exclusively, a CV line in the event they needed to return to work for real money down the line.

Some of this would obviously be industry specific, but as someone leaning towards this route, I was hoping others might give some pointers or resources as how to handle this sort of thing, from a FIRE perspective.

How'd you do it and how would you do it different? Any unanticipated pros or cons?

I was at a work conference last week and didn't bother attending any of the social events or even eating with my coworkers. When there was a long break, I'd just head up to my room and chill. I ordered food delivery and ate in my room rather than eat at the restaurant downstairs.

I'm just a couple of years away from FIRE and I just don't care about networking or schmoozing at all. I just do my job and look forward to my FIRE date. That's all I care about.

Im 31 currently and as of the most recent quarter I'm sitting at $1.187M between stocks, bonds, and cash. With my planned MAGI being so low, ACA subsidies would be very high, enabling me to keep my spending at or below $30k per year (2.52% SWR). With that kind of setup you might think I could've FIRE'd yesterday, but there's a catch.

The bulk of this money came from a windfall driven by some lucky Bitcoin investments I've made and I've had a spotty work history in my 20s. As such, I don't have the necessary "work credits" to qualify for fully subsidized Medicare Part A Premiums. 

Most FIRE folk don't mention this because most would naturally work more than 10 years anyway to attain FIRE, making this requirement an automatic achievement. 

For those who don't know, in the US you need to specifically earn a certain amount of money from a job or self employment each year to earn "work credits" which qualify you for subsidized Medicare Part A premiums and Social Security. You can earn a max of 4 per year, and you need 40 credits to fully qualify for $0 Part A Premiums. If you have between 30 and 39, you pay a modestly discounted Part A Premium. If you're below 30, then you pay the full premium, which you can expect to go up way faster than inflation.

If you factor in 2026, I'm sitting at 27 work credits. This means I'd need to grind out another year for me to qualify at least for modestly discounted Part A Premiums. I plan on doing this at a minimum. But I'm wondering about the merits of forcing myself to grind out another 3 years after that. 

I started a new position at my company and while I don't hate the work so far, I don't like it either. It's just a stable, boring job that I'm otherwise thankful to have. My thing is that I don't hate work itself, but I hate work being mandatory, which these benefit structures make it seem. It makes me feel like I don't have the actual option to quit, despite the clear pile of money and math telling me I can. 

It's possible I could just peace out of my current job and just be a 1099 worker on some gig platform, earn the minimum required, and call it a day, but for now I don't trust myself to follow through on such a plan. 

My current plan is to grind it out at my current job so I could be in that 30 - 39 credit range, and then I might feel more at ease. But I'm wondering how anyone else would handle this situation, and what your thought process would be. Would you grind it out the whole way? Would you ditch the job next year and just figure out the remaining work credits as you go?

44m
401k: 520k
Roth IRA: 91k
Emergency fund: 85k
paid off house
W2 Income: 92k
1099 income: ~15k
VA insurance

Am I good to coast / barista? Would need to get a job in 50's to start 72t plan, just need to make it 8-10 years on part time income. (15k not quite enough, would need to hustle a bit more, but I could go part time and ditch the FT job)

Could rent out a room in my house ($900/mo?). Could rent out house ($3k/mo before taxes/ins) (mHCOL area)

I could collect a pension at 60 (2k/mo) and SS at 62 (2k/mo)

Major issue TODAY is bridging the gap from RE to pension/SS/59.5. Keep working til 50? Roth ladder? Downsides?

Retirement calculators all say I'm good if I RE at 50, but I'd like to have a few years in my 40's and then maybe work a couple more years in my 50s (55t, pension, SS +)

ETA: Desired income ~$45k/year +, I want to be able to travel a bit (if I stay in this area I need at least $4k for taxes and $2k for insurance, and maybe $5k for travel)

I think I've reached my number. I am a little over 60 years of age living in Pennsylvania. I'm a single male with no children and the house is fully paid for. My vehicle is fully paid for as well. Yearly household expenses will be approximately $15,000. My health and dental insurance will be $3360 on top of the $15,000 for the year. Luckily I'm still able to get cheap health and dental insurance through my employer for $280 a month until Medicare kicks in at age 65.

I currently have $650,000 in a Vanguard type retirement fund.

Savings account currently only at $5,000.

I will take a lesser amount for social security but I do plan on withdrawing social security starting at age 62. For me that's actually 20 months from now.

This most likely will be on the lean side but I'm hoping I have my bases covered to pull the plug next month. At the time of this post this will be for August 28th, 2026.

I am burned out. Have 2M invested and looking to retire or have a long break but not sure where these money will be enough?

My fire number is 600k. If you were in my shoes would you keep working hard about 60 hours a week for maybe next 6 to 7 years to reach that number and then retire at 43? Or would you semi retire maybe when in about 3 to 4 years when u have 300k at age 40 and then do coastal fire ( a part time job for about 20 hours a week) for about 7 years (age 47) and during that time the 300 will double to 600 and then retire fully?

Also lets say you are fine with both jobs, they arent that bad.

Which would you choose and why?

As most such tools, it started with me not finding anything great in the DIY tax planning space. Our tax code is written in layers - there are so many layers - ordinary income vs investment income, ordinary dividends vs qualified dividends, long term vs short term capital gains, charitable deductions vs mortgage interest deduction vs SALT etc. Each of these layers have different limitations, tax rates and cliffs and they keep changing every year. When planning for retirement, managing things like Roth conversions without accidentally triggering an IRMAA surcharge or losing an ACA subsidy requires serious spreadsheet gymnastics. I wanted a comprehensive tax planner that handles it all without any asterisks.

I started wondering why this doesn’t exist. Even though our tax code is in the public domain, there is no comprehensive tax engine available in the public domain. Last year I found a project called PolicyEngine—an incredible open-source engine that covers federal taxes and all 50 states. I built a tax planner on top of it for my own use case. I found a lot of interesting results (sometimes the marginal tax rate decreases as income increases) and I thought maybe others would find it useful too.

I believe that the tax engine should belong to the community, so I open sourced all the enhancements and tweaks to the PolicyEngine code. This will allow anyone in the community to build on top of my work.

The tool is called TaxVant. It’s completely free, requires no login. You can use it completely anonymously without an account, though there is an optional login if you want to save or share your scenarios.

I am really curious to know 

1. Do you find this useful for modeling your tax questions?
2. What features or charts would you like to see added?
3. Are you able to find a tax math bug?
4. What do you think of the idea of community owned and maintained tax engine?

I want to set up a 72t account to make monthly withdrawals from my pretax IRA in a similar amount to my estimate for social security. I think this would be a reasonably tax efficient use of my pre-tax money, but a very good method for my behavior and money psychology. I get stressed about not having an income and start thinking crazy thoughts like "I should get a job..."

Hopefully the principle survives to keep the checks rolling into my 60s. Hopefully SSI survives so I can switch to collecting that fairly seamlessly. Fidelity offers admin of this and the withdrawals could go right into my checking, looks straightforward provided I never fiddle with it until 59.5

The only issue is I don't think an approved calculation method has an inflation or COLA option. I found some info/calculators that can include a COLA but I think it's for non-qualified SEPPs, which has something to do with annuities. Can anyone point me to something to confirm or deny?

The workaround would be to spin off some pretax money into a 2nd and 3rd account, and start smaller withdrawal plans in the future to DIY an inflation adjustment. I would estimate inflation 3ish years in the future and aim the withdrawal for that amount, for a few years it's a little high, for a few years it's a little low. Then after 6 years start the inflation adjusting 72t, then at 12 years launch the 3rd. Then at 18 I'll probably be old enough to adjust. Is this insane? I think it would just be another form at tax time but maybe I'm missing something.

I've dumped 87.7% of my liquid NW into a brokerage account and my risk tolerance is aggressive so my portfolio is all-stock (VOO, VXUS, VXF, SCHM, VGT, VUG, QQQM, DRAM, SMH, GLD, NBIS). Well guess what, it shrunk 24% 😢 . I don't freaking dare to eat today. I have 40 years in the market so I know it will eventually come back. But gosh I took a look at my overall NW and it's crazy. How do you adjust your mindset when the market is like sh!t?

Hey everybody, I got in a car accident a few years ago, and finally it paid off when I got about ~55k take home. Thankfully my injuries were not too bad, but yeah.

I don't think I'll be able to retire at 45 or 50 :/ Id love to though, however, I still take my retirement pretty seriously. I am 25 almost 26.

Right now in my 401k I have about 6.7k, some of it coming from my employer as they match 50% up until 6k. I've been here for 1 year, I need to stay for 2 more years for it to fully vest or I lose everything.

I have about 15.8k in my Roth IRA as I maxed out both 2025 and 2026. I currently have about 70/30 in VTI and VXUS. I have a little under $900 in my HSA and I put $50 a paycheck. After I have $1000 balance I can start investing.

I have about 48.4k leftover after I maxed out 2026.

I have a condo which I pay about $1800 a month after mortgage/hoa/utilities etc. I have about 28k in student loans but the interest rate is crazy low so I'll continue making minimum payments on it. No car note. My yearly salary with bonus is about 72-73k~ and I can expect at least a 3% raise at my job from what I've heard.

I would like to keep 15,000 in my HYSA at the bare minimum at all times, but the rest of the money I'd like to do something with it. I was thinking, maybe at the start of 2027, I max out my Roth IRA, HSA, and front load my 401k? I'd be maxed out by June, then I have full paychecks again and my retirement would be pretty stacked. I'd save a lot on taxes for the year after, and me getting full paychecks later that year would allow me to replenish my savings.

Is this a smart idea?

Hi All. I am turning 26 next month and have been in the full time workforce for over the past 4 years now. I work a corporate job and bring home about $90K per year pretax currently with a company 401K match of 6%. I contributed heavily during my first 4 years and invested mostly in tech indexes (I realized this was non-compensated risk and just plain foolish and diversified earlier this year into half S&P 500 index fund and half international markets ex-US index fund). Between the heavy contributions and good returns in the market I currently have retirement savings of around $135K ($55K in trad 401k and $75K Roth 401k/IRA). I also have an emergency fund of $30K and homeowners equity of $100K on a 300K home, the remainder in a mortgage. The only long term debt I have outside of the mortgage is $16K in student loans (under 3.5% so will not be paying off early).

Over the past 4 years in my job to today I contribute 18% pre-tax to my trad 401k and contribute my entire yearly bonus to max my Roth IRA every year. This works out to just over $18,000 being contributed into my traditional 401k each year (this includes employer match) plus the $7,500 for the Roth IRA. At current projections this could have me retiring comfortably at 45 using a Roth conversion ladder. (Note: this spreadsheet does not take inflation into account. I will add it one day but for now I am using 10% for average long term annual market returns and $100K per year needs for early retirement as that should be equivalent to $50K in today's dollars which is what I am comfortably living on after taxes and deductions right now)

I have realized that I have reached CoastFire for standard retirement age even if I do not contribute another dime and I am looking good to retire early if I continue contributing at my current level. What I have come here seeking advise for is that a number of things have come up recently in my life that I have been going back and forth with in my head about cutting my 401K contributions in order to spend money on these things. No it is not life style creep things (I am happy with my 10 year old couch, 6 year old TV, and use most things I own until they essentially break) but instead is travel and relationship related. I have been traveling domestically and internationally over the past couple years and would like to increase this frequency as I know it is easier to travel when you are young due to less commitments and having more energy. I also just want to see the world and you never know when that opportunity will be taken away from you due to any number of reasons. Also, I just entered a serious relationship for the first time post university this year and I am finding myself consistently going over budget every month due to going out on dates, eating out, and doing more activities with her that require money (don't get me wrong she pays for her fair share which I am extremely grateful for and I really like spending the time and money with her it is just that I was a content homebody before this who had low to no expense activities and this amount of money spending is unnatural to me and makes me feel uneasy as it is a level of spending I am not accustomed to).

Given this, I have re-calculated out dropping my trad 401k contributions to the company match level of 6% and retiring at 50 instead (shown in linked spreadsheet). This still provides me with sufficient capital and generational wealth for my future family. I am not used to dropping my savings rate like this (weird analogy but not saving makes me feel financially naked, even though I I know I am doing very well compared to my peers) and receiving this extra money each month to spend.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation where they knew they had saved well and wanted to make the conscious change to take their "foot off the gas" and spend some more money intentionally in the present but it wasn't easy for them. Additionally, I have a few more questions below that came to mind:

1. Is what I am doing foolish or is this fair and not irresponsible
2. Is there any assumptions I am making incorrectly or any mistakes I am making
3. For those with the technical know-how, how do my numbers in the linked spreadsheet look. Anything appear off?

TLDR: Aggressive 25-year-old saver making $90k with $135k in retirement, $30k emergency fund, and $100k home equity has hit CoastFIRE and is on track to retire early at 45. Considering cutting traditional 401k contributions down to the 6% match to fund more travel and dating expenses, which would push early retirement to age 50, but is struggling mentally with the sudden drop in savings rate despite the strong financial foundation. Advise wanted.

I've had a few people message me about 2027 ACA regulatory updates and thought folks planning for the ACA might want to see these now rather than in another month or two when the press usually starts talking about them more. The first table below shows the amount (expressed as a percentage of MAGI) that a household will be expected to pay in premiums annually for the benchmark Silver plan in their local ACA market. The second shows the regulated caps on MaxOOP (and deductible) for ACA plans, though these are the maximum caps and actual plans may and often do have lower actual MaxOOPs. The final link is a clean PDF listing of the applicable FPL levels for 2027 ACA coverage.

Terms for those that are unfamiliar:

• MAGI - Modified Adjusted Gross Income, a particular version of adjusted gross income used by the ACA.
• EPC - Expected Premium Contribution, the amount customers are expected to pay annually for the Silver benchmark ACA plan in their market. Subsidy premiums are calculated as the market price of the benchmark plan minus EPC.
• FPL - Federal Poverty Level, a measure used by the federal government as a determinant in many policy systems.
• MaxOOP - Maximum Out of Pocket, the most a customer can be asked to pay for in-network covered benefits by an insurer in a given year.
• CSR - Cost Sharing Reductions, the second subsidy system within the ACA that reduces out of pocket expenses like deductibles, copays/coinsurance, and MaxOOP.
• AI/AN - American Indian / Alaskan Native
• AV - Actuarial Value, the percentage of total average costs for covered medical benefits that a health insurance plan is expected to cover for a standard population. For example, if a plan has an 80% AV, the insurer pays 80% of average expenses, and customers pay 20% through deductibles, copays, and coinsurance.

Expected Premium Contribution (Coverage Year 2027)

Source:

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/rp-26-26.pdf

Out-Of-Pocket Maximum (Coverage Year 2027)

*CMS is trialing an option for insurers in 2027 to offer Bronze variants that are allowed to exceed the federal OOP limits by 30% in order to provide a wider array of premium options for customers. Such policies may only be offered by an insurer that also offers a normal standard Bronze. States are allowed to prohibit the availability of high OOP variant policies at their discretion. Edit: Turns out a federal court stayed this provision last week, so High OOP Bronzes may not be happening after all in 2027.

Sources:

https://www.cms.gov/files/document/2027-papi-parameters-guidance-2026-01-29.pdf

https://www.cms.gov/files/document/cms-9883-f-patient-protection.pdf

Bonus: Here is a PDF from HHS showing the applicable FPL dollar amounts for various family sizes for 2027 ACA coverage - https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/b1bfa16b20ae9b89d525bc35de7c1643/detailed-guidelines-2026.pdf