Let's talk about early retirement and financial independence! These phrases alone have a lot of weight associated with them, and you might have an immediate gut response to just hearing these terms.

You might love your job and wouldn't think about leaving it. Maybe you hate your job and can't wait to leave it. Maybe you're looking for a change. Maybe you feel you never want to retire because you'd just "be bored", or maybe you plan to work until you can't work anymore. For this post, I'm going to ask one thing...

My request for you:

Don't assume financial independence

means retirement.

Instead, for this post, think of financial independence (abbreviated FI) as the point where if for any reason you stopped working, you'd be set for the rest of your life at your desired lifestyle. What you choose to do with your life at that point is up to you!

After making your way through this post and filling in your numbers, you're going to know what you'll need to do in order to make it happen. Here's a rundown of what we'll be talking about.

Part 1: Where Am I Now?

The most common question when it comes to financial independence and early retirement is the big one:

How much money do I need to retire?​

This is going to be the core question we answer in this article, exploring it in a number of different ways. My goal is that after reading this post, you know exactly how much you'd need to retire in your current state, but also give some advice on small tweaks to your lifestyle that could hugely impact this number.

The first step is understanding your financial footing today and where your current path would take you. Depending on your financial health, this can range from a breath of relief to a sobering realization. Please, bear with it. I guarantee that knowing your financial health is better than not knowing.

This Article Is Interactive!​

This whole article is a bit of an experiment. Whenever you see purple underlined text yes! just like that! , that indicates this is a place that needs your input! Just hover over it and it'll tell you what to do. The content of this post will change based on your input!.

Another type of input in this article is the slider-field. You can type a number into this box, or use the slider to select a result. The inuts will allow numbers outside of the range, but the range is there to make it easier for you to have fun reading this article. Try this one out:

I am years old and was born in January February March April May June July August September October November December .

Adam Says: I'll be the first to say Happy Birthday! It's not every day you turn years old.

Sure, I'm month early, but I didn't want to miss the chance!

Consider it an old-school choose your own adventure blog post like you might have read as a kid. The goal is to have fun, explore financial independence, and hopefully learn a little.

To get started, let's dive into your numbers starting with the basics.

Savings Rate Calculator Try changing the underlined values and see what happens! My yearly after-tax income (w/401k included) is and each year I save total for retirement – including 401k and all other means. Using these figures, my savings rate (SR) will be about . This is calculated with the following formula: ( / ) * 100% = Savings Rate. Adam Says: These values will be stored in a cookie in your browser and be anonymously aggregated. If you revisit this page, you will see the same results. If you want, you can reset all values to the defaults at any time.

When working towards retirement and financial independence, your savings rate is one of the most important numbers. The more you save each year, the faster you'll be able to retire – that's obvious – but how much faster? See where your SR falls on the following chart:

Years to Financial Independence Calculator Years of savings needed vs savings rate. 100% = saving every penny. Adam Says: Assumptions abound! This assumes $0 current savings, you save what you don't spend, /yr investment growth, with inflation of , an inflation adjusted withdrawal rate of , and consistent spending when you retire. If you don't know what these terms mean, don't worry -- we'll get to them.

For your savings rate, , you can see on the chart that you would need year to earn enough to be financially independent if you were starting today.

If you were to continue saving and investing every year during that time, eventually you would have saved up. At that point, you would be able to retire and withdraw each year – most likely for the rest of your life.

Throughout this post, we'll be diving into the math behind these numbers, why this is enough, how can you lower this number and what's required of you (and the world) to hit it.

Part 2: How Much Should I Save?

What floors me about the above chart is that a 10% SR is often sighted as a "good" savings rate. In practice, it will take you 41 years to save up enough to retire, and that's only if your spending stays the same! If your income and spending go up, it'll take even longer.

If you double that savings rate to 20% though, you can retire in 30 years. That's 11 fewer years working for 10% of your salary.

If you want to retire before you're 65, the common wisdom "save 10% of your income" is terrible advice! FIRE Wisdom

If you're hoping to be financially independent before collecting social security, you'll need to save more than 10%. Let's look into ways to reduce this number. The estimates in this article make a LOT of assumptions. We can refine this a little, but for that, I'm going to need your help – in the form of answering a few more questions.

Saving Money is a Hike​

You're starting with a time period of based on just your savings rate. Saving this much isn't a sprint, or even a marathon but a hike. Depriving yourself for a few months, only to be exhausted, or spend more the following months, isn't going to have a positive impact. Pace and progress are the keys.

I've personally tried maxing out my savings some months – spending the least amount I possibly could to get that SR formula looking better. The problem was that the next month I'd reward myself for doing so and things would balance out.

Favor lifestyle changes that help you save over changes that feel like deprivation.​ FIRE Wisdom

Instead, make changes that make your life better, and that you look forward to week after week and year after year. If you're spending money on something that brings that kind of joy into your life, that's well worth it.

Find a way to enjoy saving the same way you'd enjoy a hike. Make it effortless, make it relaxing, make it feel right.

You could be reading this and think "there's no way I could save up!". I know when I was growing up, at times my mom was scrapping to make ends meet, and saving was the last thing on her mind. For those reading in that situation, I empathize with you but struggle to find the best advice. You know your situation better than I ever could, as well as what you could do to make it better.

Part 3: How Much Do I Need?​

In order to understand how much you need, we'll need to learn a little more about you.

Let's Talk More About You Customize this article by providing us with some details about yourself. By answering demographic questions, I'm able to analyze the collective results and share themes. Two of my favorites are: millennial spending analysis and an exploration into the gender pay gap. Rest assured that all data is anonymized in these articles. I'm a year old white (non-hispanic) black or african american asian or pacific islander hispanic or latino native american/alaskan undisclosed or other Man Woman Trans person Other Undisclosed born in January February March April May June July August September October November December with dependents/children. I have a total combined savings & liquid investments of about . Right now, I'm saving money for retirement retired paying off debt . Each year I spend about , but when I retire I'll likely spend of that (equal to about /yr). I'm hoping to retire when I'm years old. Minafi's Take On Your Finances Given your savings rate and a net worth of , if you continue to invest /yr, then you're on track to be financially independent in year – at years old. When you're years old, you would need in retirement savings and can start withdrawing /yr. Ahead of Schedule You're way on track to be FI by your goal retirement date. Why not try setting a stretch goal for this post? Turn down the stock market rate of /yr or turn the withdrawal rate down even further below . Close but Calculated Your FI and RE dates are within a year of each other - which means you're right on track! I calculate you'll be FI at age years so if you retire at age years you should be in good shape. Are You Retiring Too Soon? You want to retire when you're years old but you're currently on track to be FI at age years. If you're expecting some additional funds or growth outside of what we've asked about, you might be in a good position. If not, I'd encourage you to check out why there is a difference between these two. Adam Says: For these numbers, I'm assuming /yr investment growth and a withdrawal rate. If you're not sure what these numbers mean, don't worry! I'll explain them later on in this post.

This is where things start to get fun! There's now enough information to know a rough estimate of when you'd be financially independent – in year at when you're years old. Let's dive into how we got to this number.

Retirement Age Calculator This graph shows your future net worth given your current & future savings. Adam Says: This assumes you're years old with in savings. You earn /yr and spend /yr before retirement. After retirement you'll aim to spend of that – equal to about /yr). That means in retirement, you'll be withdrawing about /yr). You're saving /yr. /yr investment growth and you'll use a WR.

The dashed horizontal line in this graph is how much you'd need to be financially independent given your current numbers. The other line is your net worth at each age. The point where these lines intersect is your FI Age -- the age in which you'd have enough to be financially independent.

Financial Independence (FI) is different from retirement. Think of financial independence as the amount of money you'd need in order to never need to work again. Retirement (RE), on the other hand, generally means not being employed, but being self-sufficient.

It's possible for people to be FI but continue working – you see it all the time. From CEOs of companies to quiet employees who have saved huge amounts to bloggers talking about retirement (well, some – not me). There are also people who are retired, but who may need to return to work someday down the line when their savings run out, or if social security fails.

To be FIRE (financially independent + retired) is an aim with the goal of minimizing stress from external sources. It does rely on stock markets to perform in a similar pattern to the last 100+ years, but aside from that, it's not based on too many assumptions.

Part 4: How Much Could I Spend Then?​

Up until this point, we've been a little rosy in our withdrawal rate (WR). The withdrawal rate is the percent of your savings you withdraw each year. This can be calculated as follows:

Withdrawal Rate Calculator A percentage of your total investments you'll need each year. This assumes that you'll spend of your current spending of about /yr in retirement, which would be /yr. (Yearly Retirement Spending / Retirement Savings) * 100% = WR ( / ) * 100% = In other words, at a withdrawal rate , you'll need to save up before you stop working completely. At your current pace, this will take year - allowing you to be financially independent at age years old. The Lower the Withdrawal Rate the More Money You Need (but safer) It may sound counterintuitive, but the lower the withdrawal rate, the more money you'll need. For example, if you use a withdrawal rate of 3%, and want to spend /yr, you'll need to save up . If you want to use a withdrawal rate of 4% for the same spending amount, you'll "only" need . In other words - a 4% withdrawal rate has historically been safe for at least 30 years. A 3% WR has historically been safe forever. For a 3% WR, you'll need to save an additional more than a 4% WR, but your FI plans will be that much more bulletproof. Adam Says: This uses the same /yr investment growth as before. According to the Trinity Study, a 4% WR works 92% of the time over 40 years, while a 3% WR works out 100% of the time. Check out Early Retirement Now's Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates for a deep dive into this subject.

Withdrawal rate is one the most talked about (and heavily debated) topics when it comes to early retirement. I'm only going to introduce the topic in this article, but if you want to read more here's a great post on Where'd the 4% Rule Come From Anyway?

My personal withdrawal rate I use for calculations is somewhere between 3% and 4%. The fewer unknowns in your life, the higher your withdraw rate can be. When I say unknowns, I include many things that are notoriously difficult to plan for: your health, insurance, home situations, family health, changes in your spending, lawsuits against you – anything that could throw a wrench in your plans.

The more of these edge cases you can have a plan for, the higher your withdraw rate could be. I don't know what will happen with insurance (or many other things) and so I lean towards a 3.5% withdraw rate.

Part 5: How Is This Enough?​

When I first saw these numbers and did the math on it, I immediately asked the following question:

If I retire with and spend /yr when I retire, doesn't that mean my cash will run out in / = year?

If you put your money into a no interest account, then this is exactly how long your money would last. Even in a savings account it'll only last a little longer. There are better places to put your money though!

Factoring In Inflation​

There is some bad news here, unfortunately. For each of those year, your spending power would be slightly less due to inflation, which is generally around 1-3%. Inflation is something we have no control over individually but it is something we can plan for.

Inflation means that each year, what you can buy with your money is going down by some small amount. If you've seen prices rise since you were a kid, that's potentially a result of inflation.

In year, in order to spend /yr in today's dollars, you would need in the year to have the same spending power.

Because of this, we need to increase our total funds by each year just to have the same buying power as today.

So why are we using for these numbers rather than ?

There are two main reasons. First, the withdrawal rate is inflation adjusted. That just means that each year the amount you withdrawal will shift based on the inflation rate of that year.

Here's an example using your expected yearly spending and spending rate. Here's how much you'd withdraw during your first few years assuming a inflation rate.

Year Amount Inflation Rate Inflation Increase 1 0 2 3 4 5

The takeaway here is that your first year you'll withdraw a set amount. In future years the amount you'll withdraw is be based on inflation during those years. For this example we're using the same inflation rate, but in reality it'll vary each year.

Another thing to keep in mind is that inflation doesn't mean all of your expenses will rise by this much every year. Inflation means that the Consumer Price Index and Product Price Indexes indicate that this shift in prices.

Your net expenses may even go down! While many people see a spending reduction once they stop working, if you're more than 10 years away from that, I'd recommend raising your future spending percent from (spending /yr) to at least 90% to buffer for potential increases due to inflation and other unknowns.

Factoring in Taxes

In addition to inflation, you have taxes to watch out for. For that number we've talked about – that's how much you'll need to save after taxes are taken into account.

There is some good news here actually. Taxes are extremely lenient to those investing in the stock market. Withdrawals from a 401k/IRA will be taxed at the same rate your paycheck when working, but there are many other investing options that allow you to pay much less tax.

For example, a Roth IRA allows your money to grow tax-free, and you to withdraw money without paying any taxes. Capital gains, which are the growth on an investment, are taxed at 15% – but only for earnings above $78,000 (!) if you're filing a joint tax return.

Depending on your situation it may be possible to withdraw /yr and pay absolutely nothing taxes. For our plan, we're aiming to withdraw $80,000 a year and pay $0 in taxes – so it's definitely possible!

The takeaway on taxes is that you'll want to make sure your number takes them into account. Keep that knowledge at the back of your mind for now as something to learn more about later (taxes are a huuuuge subject that are too big to cover here).

Enter Market Investing​

The missing piece here is that you can invest that money in the stock market -- both while you're growing it and when you're drawing down from it.

A diversified portfolio of US stocks, foreign stocks and bonds has returned on average 7% a year over the last century. This is an important number! If you're withdrawing at most 4% of this, and 3% of it is going to inflation, then your net worth will last forever. Unfortunately, the stock market has ups and downs, so we can't make predictions quite that bold, but we can use it as a baseline. This is why 4% is often sighted as the maximum WR to use in calculations.

Learning how to invest and earn ~7% will sound intimidating at first. It will take trial and error, but more than that it'll take being brave and putting money into the stock market. Using a simple 3-fund portfolio is a great place to start learning how to invest.

Your Numbers with Market Investing​

If you put your money into a savings account and withdrew some of it each year, the total amount you'd withdraw would be around . However, if you invested this and it grew at a pace of /yr, and you withdrew an inflation adjusted /yr, then this amount could provide you with before your 100th birthday.

That wouldn't be all at once but in the form of /yr. This is the true power of compound interest! Imagine how many more years you'd need to work to save this amount without investing. Actually, no need to imagine -- it's year!

That deserves repeating. If you learn how to invest, you can retire year earlier.

This is the number one difference between people who retire early and those who wait until social security -- people who retire early learn how to invest.

When I first did the math on compound interest I was floored. The idea that I'd make more money during retirement than during my working years seemed counterintuitive, but the numbers were right there.

Become an Investor

If you're not currently investing, learning enough to feel confident can be intimidating. It takes time, patience and the occasional leap of faith. I've put together a free 10-week email course to help you get started.

In this course, I'll email you a new set of tasks to accomplish each week. Sometimes this will include articles to read, or activities to perform on Vanguard or wherever you're investing.

By the end of this course, you'll have a balanced understanding of investing and confidence to invest for the rest of your life. If you've been putting off learning how to invest, this is where you should start. If you'd like to learn more, you can read about The Minimal Investor Course and take the entire course for free (Really. I just want to help you learn to invest).

Speed up your FI hike with a few small lifestyle tweaks.

Part 6: What Can I Do to Retire Sooner?​

Now that you have a baseline of until you've saved up enough at your current pace, let's see what small steps you can take to lower that number!

There are only 2 ways you can affect this number:

Make more money. Spend less money.​

That's really all that it comes down to. The savings rate calculation we looked at is based entirely on these two numbers (spending/savings). Let's look at a few scenarios and see what impact they have on your FI dates.

What If: You Reduce Spending & Save It? If you reduce your spending by (saving a year more), then you could be FI year earlier once you have saved . By reducing your yearly spending by , you'll need less to retire. Upon retiring, you'd be spending a year. Adam Says: Are there things in your lifestyle that you'd be happy to cut? Would you rather cut spending by /yr or work for an additional year?

The less you need, the less you'll need to save. If you reduce your spending to $0/yr, you'd need $0 to retire. That's likely unrealistic, but the less you spend, the less you need.

The art is not in making money, but in keeping it. Proverb

Taking steps to reduce your lifestyle can pay off by reducing the time you'll be required to work to maintain it. Be careful not to go overboard though. Build a life you want, then save for it.

What If: You Earn Money In Retirement? You're on track to spend /yr during retirement. What if you still spent this exact same amount, but of it comes from income in retirement? This would involve you finding a way to make /yr in side income. In that case, you can retire year earlier! Adam says: What can you start doing today to add another income stream? It would reduce your time until retirement, but also add stability for later on.

Finding a small way to supplement your income can reduce the amount you'll need to save. The concept of a side hustle has grown a bunch in the last few years, with people opting to find ways to control their financial destiny. I like Side Hustle Nations description of a side hustle:

A side hustle is something you do to earn money outside a traditional job. Side Hustle Nation

If you're like me and haven't made money outside the boundaries of a W-2 for your career, this might just seem like more work and not FIRE. The distinction to me is in having a side hustle that you love doing. One that you look forward to waking up to work on.

At that point, this additional revenue stream can become another challenge in your life or another form of self-expression.

Lowering expenses and earning money in retirement are two very clear ways to reduce the time until you are financially independent.

What If: Reduce Spending & Earn Income? Rather doing one or the other, what if you do both? That's the best way to optimize your path to financial independence. You reduce spending by while replacing of your income during retirement (). This would result in you reaching FI in year. That would be earlier than your current timeline of year by year! Adam says: It's crazy to think that these 2 things could result in a reduction in your working years.

Making more money and spending less while investing is the key to achieving financial independence sooner.

There are 543k subscribers to /r/financialindependence/ alone.

Part 7: Who is actually doing this?​

You might be surprised by who is pursuing FI. It ranges from people in debt to multi-millionaires who have retired already. There is likely someone who is in a similar situation to you out there.

Here on Minafi alone there are 14 people pursuing fire who have contributed their own stories to the community directory! Here's a random sampling of a few stories.

Adam from Minafi 38, Man, SINK, FIRE, Salt Lake City, UT $2,200,000 networth. Spending $80,000/yr. FI at 36. RE at 36 in Salt Lake City now. Maybe Seattle and traveling later? (traveling) Hi, I'm Adam! I help millennials invest to reach financial independence sooner than they ever thought possible. Want to see what you could do to reach FI sooner? You're in the right place! How did you learn about FI? Reading The Bogleheads Guide to Investing set me on my journey. It made it clear how little I needed to retire if I was investing it in the stock market. What was your financial status when you began? 2 months after I graduated college (age 23), my mom passed away and left me her house and $100,000. A few years later I was 28, had experienced investing during the recession and bought my first home. After selling her house, I had $150,000 in investments and -$100,000 in home equity when I started while making about $52,000 a year. What has been the most impactful change you've made towards FI? Learning and executing on a long term investing strategy. When I look at my total investments today, more than 1/3 of it is from investment gains alone in the past 7 years. This, coupled with controlling lifestyle inflation. What, if anything, do you wish you could have done differently? Does buying Bitcoin count? For me, I underestimated the financial impact of buying a house. I did this prior to learning about FI, and I undertook it without enough thought and planning. The extra yearly expenses (1-2% of the home price every year), the additional time for maintenance and improvements, yard work, cleaning - it's a lot to handle. In retrospect, I would've just continued renting. What advice do you have for others going down the path of FI? Save up $3,000 and invest it in your 401k, a Vanguard IRA or a Vanguard Roth IRA. Use that account to learn the basics of investing - how to buy and sell, what investments to pick and how that works. Starting small in an account where you don't have to worry about taxes helped me gain confidence before jumping in completely. Following that, keeping your spending in check year after year and not letting it grow out of proportion with your happiness. Read more about Adam

Amy Blacklock from Life Zemplified 49f, married, working and saving money in Michigan. $900k in savings. Spending $75k/yr, $50k in retirement. FI by 53. RE by 55 in an rural area. My current day job is in the automotive industry as a project analyst with additional responsibilities in office management. On the side I'm a nutrition and health coach, blogger, and freelance writer. I enjoy a variety of sports and fitness activities, and I love learning and trying new things. How did you learn about FI? I stumbled upon Mr. Money Mustache at the age of 45 and realized I wasted a lot of money and time. What was your financial status when you began? I was newly married after being divorced for a couple years. We both had some money in 401k plans and IRA's but nothing to brag about. I think we were both saving around 10% in our 401s at the time. We had some debt, car loans and a mortgage, but no plan to eliminate it other than making the monthly payments. What has been the most impactful change you've made towards FI? Increasing our incomes by changing employers. Maxing out any and all retirement savings accounts that we could. Eliminating all debt other than our mortgage. Selling our sexy vehicles for older but dependable cars. What, if anything, do you wish you could have done differently? Started saving more so much sooner! Not fall into lifestyle creep and try to match what others were doing to achieve a so called status. What advice do you have for others going down the path of FI? Try different methods to find out what works best for you. If you hate debt eliminate it. Earn as much as possible, without sacrificing your health and time with your family. Save just a bit more than you think you should every month. Automate saving and investing. Don't give up. If you need to modify your plan, that's okay. Forgive yourself for any mistakes, make corrections as needed, and keep on going. Read more about Amy

Gwen from Fiery Millennials 26f, working and saving money in the Midwest. $170,000 in savings. Spending $40k/yr now, $25k in retirement. FI by 28 in a ruralish area. RE by 30. Hey, I'm Gwen! I'm a 26 year old IT professional on my way to early retirement. I enjoy playing sports, cuddling my cat, reading and working on my real estate properties. How did you learn about FI? I found Mr. Money Mustache's blog my junior year of college and was immediately hooked. I spent the rest of my time in college soaking up information from blogs, prepping, and strategizing. What was your financial status when you began? I graduated from college with $10,000 to my name, a paid off car, and no debt at the age of 23. What has been the most impactful change you've made towards FI? Not allowing lifestyle inflation to creep in. Keeping my spending low has been an enjoyable challenge. What, if anything, do you wish you could have done differently? I wish I had gone for slightly cheaper housing in 2016. I spent a lot of money to live close to work. It would've been better for me to live slightly further away, but I wanted to bike to work. What advice do you have for others going down the path of FI? Keep your expenses low and focus on growing your income as much as you can. You can only cut your expenses so much, but the sky is the limit when it comes to earning more money. Read more about Gwen

Early Retirement Dude from earlyretirementdude.com 48m, married and retired in the Southeastern US. $2.3m in savings. Spending $55k/yr. FI & RE at 36 in a ruralish area. I'm a Deadhead-type GenX'er. Love running and bicycle touring. Averse to the toxicity of consumer culture and the modern workplace. Trying to wake people up to the idea that financial independence/early retirement A) exists, B) can be an antidote to that toxicity, and C) is actually achievable. How did you learn about FI? Honestly, I came up with my own version of it in a vacuum. I graduated from MBA school and went corporate in 1993, so I didn't have access to the web-based resources available today. Found myself immediately miserable. At the time defined-benefit pensions were being killed off by 401(k) plans, so between the financial modeling tools I'd learned in school and the idea that I'd have to fund my own retirement, I cooked up a plan to get out of the workforce much earlier than 57 1/2. What was your financial status when you began? Frugal, relatively high-earning engineer.Started with a few hundred bucks and a beat-up car and a couch from Goodwill that was covered in suspicious purple stains. What has been the most impactful change you've made towards FI? When I was twenty-six I got passed over for a great job because I'd stirred up some political problems through sheer arrogance. I really wanted that job, so I called up the hiring managers and asked them if we could get together for a feedback session. What could I learn/do differently/etc. to earn an offer during the next round of hiring? Asked them that in all humility. They gave me straightforward feedback, I got the training and made the changes they recommended, and ended up getting hired. If I hadn't asked for that meeting I'm convinced I'd still be working. What, if anything, do you wish you could have done differently? I wish I hadn't put so much pressure on my wife to be frugal. Twenty years into our marriage, now, and she still feels guilty when she spends money. What advice do you have for others going down the path of FI? Understand that it's not just a numbers game. If you focus on FI/ER to the exclusion of all else, you can wreck things that are very important to you--relationships, pastimes, creative outlets, etc. It's a serious commitment. Know what you're getting into. Read more about Early Retirement Dude

Jane from Cash Fasting 25f, working and saving money in New York City. $65k in savings. Spending $25k/yr now. FI by 35. RE TBD in a city metro. I'm a VA native trying to build wealth in the Big Apple. I'm relatively new to the idea of FIRE, but I've jumped on board and I'm eagerly tracking my progress. I enjoy dancing, cooking, trying out new restaurants, and telling my friends to invest more in their retirement accounts. How did you learn about FI? I've always had an interest in personal finance. In my first job out of school, I did market research for credit card companies, and was the go-to gal in my friend group for the knowing the best credit card offers, terms, and bonuses. In 2015, my boyfriend introduced me to Mr. Money Mustache. That sparked the idea of FI for me; that I could take all this PF knowledge that I was accruing and apply it to my future in a way that wasn't just building the biggest nest egg possible. What was your financial status when you began? I finished graduate school $35K in debt. I don't think I had more than $2K in my checking account, but let's be real, that was my parents' money. Luckily I didn't have to pay for any large expenses like a car and I lived at home straight after graduation, which allowed me to focus on my debt right away. What has been the most impactful change you've made towards FI? Increasing my income. I'm not the most frugal person (though I try to be), but you can only decrease your expenses by so much before it stops making sense to do so. At the beginning of 2017, I negotiated a 20% increase in salary, which helped me pay off my debt earlier than expected. What, if anything, do you wish you could have done differently? Lived at home longer. After a year and a half at home, I moved out to live with a couple of friends. It made my commute longer, and increased my expenses by a lot. I definitely enjoyed the experience, but I wasn't unhappy at home. The nine months I lived with friends before moving to NYC probably cost me a good $10K. What advice do you have for others going down the path of FI? Set short-term goals. Pursing FI is more of a lifestyle change than it is pursing a long-term goal. Ask around; people who have reached their FI number don't have an accompanying revelation or giant increase in happiness. If you set smaller goals like "pay off loans by 2018" or "save $5K by the end of the year", the boost you get from reaching those goals will help you stay focused on the bigger one. Also, don't forget to enjoy the journey. Read more about Jane

Darrow from Can I Retire Yet? 57m, married and retired in Santa Fe, NM. $1m+ in savings. Spending varies . FIRE at 50 in a city metro. Early-retired civil and software engineer, author, investor who loves outdoor sports like climbing, biking, and hiking. How did you learn about FI? By pursuing my dream of freedom from a 9-5 job. What was your financial status when you began? Frugal, relatively high-earning engineer. What has been the most impactful change you've made towards FI? Not inflating lifestyle (houses and cars) as I received raises and bonuses in my career. What, if anything, do you wish you could have done differently? Hindsight is always 20/20. In reality I think I made the best decisions I could to reach the goals I had at the time. What advice do you have for others going down the path of FI? Spend in the few areas that matter to you. Cut back everywhere else. Avoid big houses and cars. Learn to invest prudently for the long haul. Read more about Darrow