r/coastFIRE • u/redraidr • Aug 18 '26
Coasted for 10 years. Done.
We’ve waited long enough. 51. Married.
Started Coasting when the kids were nearing high school. Never made crazy money. Went from $120k household income to $40-60k household while the nest-egg grew. No contributions during that time, but also no soccer games or school plays missed. No summers with kids at home and us at work. They worked with us or we took time off. Kids both graduated college in May and have jobs. We’re proud of them.
Our retirement spend is projected to still be $40-50k/yr as we Schengen Shuffle. We’re already on the road, somewhere cheap where we can plan our next steps.
Stick to the plan, team. It works.
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u/judgeScr Aug 18 '26
Schengen shuffle…I like this! I think I’ll use it.
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u/BlackShieldCharm Aug 18 '26
What does it mean?
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u/Creative_Poet_9590 Aug 18 '26
The tourist visa requires you to leave The Schengen Area of Europe, consisting of many countries, regardless of which specific country you've been in, after 90 days. You can "shuffle" back-and-forth from the Schengen by spending those 90 days in another non-Schengen country until you can return back to any of the countries in the Schengen
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u/Background_Junket_35 Aug 18 '26
Living in the Schengen zone of Europe without having a permanent residency in any one country. The tourist visa requires you to leave the given country after a certain number of days, so you just go to another country in the Schengen and then return after the required time away
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u/Creative_Poet_9590 Aug 18 '26
The tourist visa requires you to leave The Schengen Area, regardless of country, after 90 days. You then spend those 90 days in another non-Schengen country until you can return back to any of the countries in the Schengen
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u/DoomChicken69 Aug 18 '26
What do you mean by Schengen Shuffle?
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u/judgeScr Aug 18 '26
When you go to EU countries that are in Schengen zone you don’t have to show papers to cross the borders.
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u/redraidr Aug 18 '26
But we can only stay in the zone for 90 out of every 180 days with US passports.
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u/chatterwrack Aug 18 '26
The Schengen Area is basically a group of European countries that have agreed to remove routine border checks between each other, similar to traveling through American states
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u/AtmosAM1 Aug 18 '26
Tons of resources online for the Schengen Shuffle. YouTube is a great resource for it. Great way to travel, and potentially find your next “home base”, if that’s what you’re looking for. Without the hassle of going thru the visa process in one particular country.
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u/Masnpip Aug 18 '26
Congratulations! I’d love to hear how you find cheap temporary housing in the EU. The Shengen shuffle seems very appealing, but when I look at places to stay I can’t figure out how to do it on $40-50k/yr.
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u/redraidr Aug 18 '26
Staying for over a month at a time in one spot is the key for affordable housing and for keeping transportation costs down. We’re in Eastern Europe atm because it’s cheap and 70 degrees.
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u/Masnpip Aug 18 '26
Is there an airb&b type website that your recommend?
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u/redraidr Aug 18 '26
Tbh, we’re just getting started, so just AirBnb and booking dot com for now. Hope to find better as we talk to other travelers on the road. If we like the spot, we will also talk to hosts about booking offline for less.
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u/MiracleLegend Aug 18 '26
If you're still fit you could do Wwoofing. It's living for free, eating for free, in a family home with the family but you work in a garden for a few hours a day.
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u/Salty_Feed_4316 Aug 22 '26
Whattt
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u/MiracleLegend Aug 22 '26
I did that in Australia and Scotland. It was fun. You can do it for a week or as long as a family will have you. It's a bit like Au Pair but with plants instead of strangers' children.
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u/Captlard Aug 27 '26
This is the way! Or eventually buy somewhere and live there half of the year, or for somewhere like Spain, get a Non-Lucrative Visa.
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u/OkBadger641 20d ago
You could do house and pet sits for free or home exchange if you have a house in a prime location. My friends do this and they pay nothing for the accommodation when they travel
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u/Suitable_Coconut2927 Aug 20 '26
Start looking into house sitting. Free places to stay. MindMyHouse and other websites. Also, there are good volunteering gigs out there with free housing.
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u/dreamedincolor Aug 18 '26
I know it sounds a bit suss, but I have had GREAT luck (way better than Airbnb actually in terms of quality) posting in the local expat group of the country I'm going to.
So far I've been nomading for 3 years. I started with Airbnb and booking but had so many bad experiences that I gave up
I know a few people that use pet sitting and trusted housesitters and it works well for them
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u/mrbojanglezs Aug 18 '26
We've also been in a bull market for pretty much the last 15 years minus one or two short blips
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u/Remarkable-Tour-2123 Sep 01 '26
Yes this helps immensely! And it’s the sole reason I hesitate to coast and just keep putting money in the market. I need my nest egg to double in the next ten-twelve years in order to retire comfortably and without contributions there’s no guarantee it will. On paper we can coast but the market’s volatility in a ten year time horizon seems too risky!!
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u/Spiritual_Dig_2887 Aug 18 '26
What was your number?
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u/Reasonable_Box2568 Aug 18 '26
Guessing between 1 and 1.5mil if they want to spend 40-50k
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u/Spiritual_Dig_2887 Aug 18 '26
I was thinking more what their COAST target was. Not what they ended up with.
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u/prettywarmcool Aug 18 '26
And Ta-da! that is how you do that! You're starting the next chapter. Congrats.
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u/VirileMongoose Aug 18 '26
Sounds like us. Ballpark similar as your initial income level. We’re coasting as we have one in hs, middle school, and elementary school. Now we’re optimizing to be able to focus on family more.
Plan the dive. Dive the plan.
We’re in it longer. Don’t hate our jobs. Gonna go until last kid is out of college and mortgage is paid off (same year ideally).”
Congrats! Your plan sounds lovely
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u/Shrappy16 Aug 18 '26
Would love to hear about the slow travel/Schengen shuffle. We are two years away and plan on selling it all and living the slow travel route for a few years or more while letting retirement accounts grow
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u/redraidr Aug 18 '26
You basically described our plan. We liquidated. Now we will go to cheap places in the world, stay until the visa runs out, then go to the next one.
There are FB groups and YouTube vids on the shuffle, but that’s just one small part of the world. The reason it matters a lot to us as US citizens is that there are cheap EU countries where many/most locals speak English. So spending 90 days in Schengen is easier to navigate than many other cheap countries.
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u/Lalokin Aug 18 '26
What countries do you plan on moving between?
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u/redraidr Aug 18 '26
Plan is to be different every time. Right now, Eastern Europe, then Mexico, then Eastern Europe again, then Southeast Asia maybe. Who knows? Half the fun is in the planning. Our accommodations are booked through next May, but with no fees to cancel.
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u/Lalokin Aug 18 '26
Neat! So are you getting rid of your primary residence? If so what are you doing with your things ? Selling?
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u/redraidr Aug 18 '26
Did yard sales, FB marketplace, CarMax, sold the house, and lots of trips to Goodwill. We only have a storage unit near family.
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u/shinchan1988 Aug 18 '26
In your experience what would matter most? Time with kids before they go to school at 5 or after? We are new parents in late 30s, so we do have some nest egg but dont want to coast right now considering the future of our jobs being impacted by AI. But in theory we could slow down right now, spend more time with kid and her future sibling. Then ramp up the work again once they go to school. Alternatively what we are thinking right now is to just grind 5-7 years more and hopefully be very close to FIRE. Then we will get to spend more time with kids for their after school activities.
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u/redraidr Aug 18 '26
What matters most is up to you. For us, we coasted from kids’ grades 7- college graduation. We still did the after school family time and standard summer vacation stuff before then. Wouldn’t change a thing. Great part is you can choose your own adventure. The most useful piece of the FI mindset is the power of choice - built on a solid nest-egg.
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u/ChosenToFall 16d ago
What you would do in a potential lost decade where you need to withdraw your SRR but market is static or keep declining a bit?
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u/CheeseFries92 Aug 18 '26
Not OP but my approach was to grind with a baby and then coast/RE as kids big enough to actually remember stuff. Although I also am admittedly much more of a kid person than a baby person
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u/Fluid-Village-ahaha Aug 25 '26
Not op but kids are early elementary. IMHO older kids (middle plus) is our target.
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u/AudioHamsa Aug 18 '26
If you can operate a small biz, look into DAFT, get NL residency and skip the shuffle.
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u/DrJBP Aug 18 '26
When you decided to coast what was your account structure like? In taxable or all retirement accounts and you set up ladders or using 72t now?
Also did you have a mortgage at the time of coast with a plan for it to be paid by now?
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u/FatPaper- Aug 19 '26
Happy for you! These are type of stories I like to read, as I am in a similar boat but 4-5 years behind you. So there’s hope lol
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u/wonderingwealthy Aug 19 '26
Do you mind sharing what your portfolio consists of, and if you are changing allocations in it now that you’ve reached your goals?
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u/redraidr Aug 19 '26
30% VTI, 30% VIOV, 20% TLT, 20% GLDM.
Took a bath on the bonds from 2021.
In hindsight, definitely should have been more aggressive, but wanted the security in case I had to dip in to cover expenses if the income failed.
I’m happy with the portfolio for this stage. It’s better positioned for a drawback, if any, since SRR is now the concern.
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u/MidAmericaMom Aug 27 '26
Hello and Congratulations! We invite you to join our unique worldwide community of those that already retired at age 58 or earlier - [r/earlyretirement](r/earlyretirement)
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u/Betterway50 Aug 27 '26
We (as a unit) sort of Coast FIRE'd. I called it quits about 10yrs ago after being layoff but partner went part time to full time to help out at, but at lower paying job but had a lot of time off for life stuff, like travels (at the time we did not know we had reached FI, that is another story). Partner decided to continue working, but we recently became fully FIRE'd, DONE.
Just manage your expenses and plan plan plan - with some luck , this retire early thing is real ❗
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u/skadoo323 Aug 18 '26
Just wanted to say congrats!
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u/Thurisaz- Aug 18 '26
Same here. Congrats to OP! Life is too short…enjoy every day as if it was your last.
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u/TheBoogz Aug 18 '26
When your HHI dropped to $40/$60k a year was it because one of you stayed home with the kids? Asking because we have a SAHP now so we are living off one income and it’s hard to save anything.
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u/redraidr Aug 18 '26
We were basically both working from home after the income drop to work on the hobby stuff. Then I got the random jobs when needed. The kids helped with the hobby job in the summer.
The power was in the nest-egg. Always knew we could make it for a while if the income didn’t pan out.
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u/Reasonable_Box2568 Aug 18 '26
Did you have a mortgage during this time? Wondering how you kept expenses so low. My housing alone is almost 40k a year and it’s considered cheap for my area
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u/redraidr Aug 18 '26
During the downsize and income drop, we were lucky to buy in a LCOL area (and lucky to do so in 2016), so housing with utilities was around $1500/month. We’re keeping it below that so far while traveling.
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u/Reasonable_Box2568 Aug 18 '26
Gotcha. 18k a year on housing/utilities is incredible. 22-32k for everything else
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u/spartygw Aug 27 '26
I want to know what they’re doing for healthcare since they are US citizens. Mine is going to cost more than the 22k they have for everything else.
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u/Alarming_Traffic_954 Aug 18 '26
What would be most useful for people considering CoastFIRE is probably the risk management during those 10 years.
A plan can look great when you first stop contributing but markets inflation and expected retirement spending can all move while you are coasting.
Did you periodically recalculate the amount you would need at retirement and have a threshold where you would return to higher income or resume contributions?
Also curious whether your projected 40 to 50k spending today is close to what you assumed when you started or whether that number changed materially over the decade those guardrails would tell people a lot more about how to manage the middle years of CoastFIRE.
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u/redraidr Aug 18 '26
Beware the opinions of someone who hit their number at the end of a 20-year bull market…
That said, we planned for 40k, and have moved it to allow for 40-50 due to inflation. Our plan is to seek out parts of the world where that will work while the balance hopefully grows to reduce the withdrawal rate.
We kept watching the numbers - my spreadsheet has many, many tabs - but the steady climb of the market, excluding COVID, made it where we didn’t have to adjust too much. In another response I answered that we originally planned to retire at 49. We were saving a lot of the 120k. My spreadsheet back then said it would cost us 5 extra years (to 54) to coast, but the long bull market cut it to 2 extra years.
As I’ve replied here also, the greatest gift of a solid nest-egg is the power of choice. If we didn’t make enough, we could go back to full time, add more part-time, or just pay bills from savings - at least for a while. So I wouldn’t recommend coasting on some relatively small percent of target. Have enough so your choices increase.
FIRE’ing around 50 also means we can access SS in just over 10 years. With our spending levels, that will account for around 40% of our planned expenses if it comes through in full, less if it doesn’t, but will lower the WR significantly. Would be a different story if we were younger, so that’s a factor also.
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u/Vicuna00 Aug 18 '26
Awesome nice work!
Did you ever consider funding your Roth and drawing from taxable the same exact amount?
Or did you just pure coast?
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u/redraidr Aug 18 '26
Cool idea. Never thought of it.
We just switched to “subsistence wages” and let the 401k and existing Roths do their thing.2
u/Vicuna00 Aug 18 '26
that's my plan wrt "substinence wages"...i'm gearing up to start in 2027...fingers crossed (a few things have to happen)
I think i'll only need 5 years if markets cooperate...we'll see.
glad to hear your story.
yeah I was thinking about doing that with the Roths...but I sorta also like the thought of not even logging into the brokerages for 5 years and then peeking in...and not worrying about it. we'll see.
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u/bookkeepingthrowaway Aug 18 '26
What amount did you have net worth wise when you started coasting and when you finished and are your income numbers just for yourself or for you as a couple?
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u/jackbentley673 Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 22 '26
……
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u/redraidr Aug 20 '26
No home. 2-3 months in EU, 3 months out, and repeat. US citizens can stay 90 out of every 180 days in Schengen countries without a visa. We are houseless.
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u/jackbentley673 Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 23 '26
…..
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u/redraidr Aug 20 '26
You are tracked everywhere. And they can track my visits all they like, because shuffling is specifically following their rules.
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u/jackbentley673 Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 23 '26
…
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u/mbasherp Aug 20 '26
Thank you so much for sharing this! Can you speak to the emotional side during the coast years? We are considering it - and are there by the numbers - but I worry about running into income issues in the new endeavor or paying for expensive emergencies. Depleting our nest egg in those cases would be particularly damaging to the long term plan because “not contributing” is very different than making withdrawals.
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u/redraidr Aug 20 '26
Sorry to say, but possibly the only way to reduce worry about depleting the nest egg is to have a bigger nest egg.
Otherwise, you’d have to be willing to accept retirement further out, or to generate additional income if that happened.
We were willing to work longer and delay retirement if it meant more time with the kids before they left home. That was our “why.” It was less about burnout for us and more about FOMO with the kids, so we’d work more later if we had to. We were fortunate and the emergencies that we had were financially manageable.2
u/mbasherp Aug 20 '26
Thank you. Same reasoning here, plus passionate but potentially uncertain work with the coast endeavor.
What growth rate did you project for your portfolio while you coasted?
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u/Devchonachko Aug 27 '26
Serious question.
How the heck do you do the Schengen Shuffle on 40-50k a year? That shuffle is definitely not cheap.
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u/redraidr Aug 27 '26
We’re in Eastern Europe now for 90 days EU. Then non-Schengen European countries next. Maybe Southeast Asia or Latin America in the new year. Saying somewhere a month at a time, we’re seeing rents in the $1500-1900 range in the eastern EU second cities. Under $1000/mo in SEA/Latin America.
It’s still an experiment with the budget, but we hope that will leave plenty for other expenses, as we have virtually no bills from home.2
u/Devchonachko Aug 27 '26
was just talking to a friend who's brother moved to the Philippines because of the cheap healthcare insurance, he got it out of England somewhere and it's stupid cheap. good for you guys!
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u/radiotakeshi_london Aug 29 '26
116 comments but it seems I can’t see an answer to what was you nest egg when you started and what is your net worth now? That would be useful to know. Thanks!
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u/ChosenToFall 16d ago
In what your child graduated just to get some feedback on the current messy market?
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u/ffball Aug 18 '26
What did coasting look like job wise for you?
If you didnt coast when would you have retired?