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(Posted from a throwaway for privacy — this is a big life shift and I’d love honest feedback.)
My partner and I are going through a major life reset and want to be intentional about our next move. To prepare for our next step, we have liquidated what we owned, including our home. We’re currently living full-time in a paid-off 5th wheel camper with her two kids (half the time), a paid-off truck and SUV, and minimal monthly expenses outside of some lingering debts (~$30k) and our $800/month RV site.

We’ve saved up about $125k in cash, and we want to use it to build a more sustainable, FI-aligned life. Our long-term goal is to produce 80%+ of our own food, generate some income from the land, and create time freedom for ourselves and the kids. We’re based in a county where we’d like to stay (due to shared custody), and there’s a surprising amount of opportunity here. Our current RV park is half full, not well-managed, and located in a region with a steady flow of transient labor (mostly farm-related).

Here are a few directions we’re considering:

1. Homestead + RV Park (Phased Buildout)

• Buy 4–5 acres

• Live on-site as caretakers and start with 20 long-term RV spots

• Phase 2: Expand to 40+ spots if demand justifies it

• Include amenities over time

• Potential exit: sell as a turnkey income-generating RV park

2. Micro-Community or Homestead Co-op

• Partner with investors or other families to develop a homestead neighborhood

• 2–4 acre lots, shared amenities, farmers market space

• Either subdivided or run as a co-op with shared ownership

• I LOVE the idea of a community for homesteaders

3. Scrappy Homestead + Goats

• Buy affordable rural land

• Raise goats (milk, cheese, soap, breeding)

• Build out food systems and experiment with small-scale production/sales

• Low startup cost, more DIY-intensive, build as we go

What we’re wrestling with:

• How would you allocate $125k in our shoes? (land, infrastructure, debt payoff, etc.)

• Is it better to stay lean and bootstrap or leverage some of the cash into income-generating assets now?

• Any other models or ideas that we’re not seeing?

I have a background in marketing (self-taught, used to earn well) and love working with my hands. Building, fixing, fencing, fabricating — I’ve been dreaming of this pivot for years. We don’t need luxury. We want time, sustainability, and autonomy.

Would really appreciate ideas from people here - especially those who’ve taken the slow FI or alt-income path. Thanks so much in advance.

Hello!

I (29M) am trying to get some feedback on what I can be doing better to make things easier later in life. I feel like I am in a very good position, but I just wanted to get some feedback from this community.

Brief financial picture: Currently making north of $90k per year, only real major expenses are rent, utilities, insurance, etc. I don't have a strict budget, but I don't splurge too much. I don't have any debt. I would like to purchase a house in the next three years and figure I'd just liquidate a decent chunk of the investment account to get enough clams for the down payment.

• Retirement Accounts: ~$80k
  • Currently contribute 10% of my paycheck split 5% each to a 401k & IRA account. Employer matches up to 3%.
  • Current holdings are in a growth fund, a T Rowe 2050 retirement account, and some international & small cap growth indexes
  • I updated this recently so 55% will go towards a S&P 500 index with the remaining going for international, small cap, and growth indexes to get some good potential juice on returns
• Investment Accounts: ~$100k
  • Contribute approximately $1,000 a month, and more if there is leftover in the bank account after a period of time. This number can spike when i get quarterly bonuses which typically leads to an additional $1,000 in the bank account.
  • Current holdings are primarily in PLTR (20% of portfolio), SPY (15%), T (10%), AMZN (8%)
  • I am currently selling a covered call and collecting about $150 a month and putting that into NVDA. I want to rebalance the portfolio and have less PLTR (probably down to 10%) and flip that into VOO, but i figure in the short term I can collect some "free" premiums.
• Savings: $25k
  • $10.5k is in a CD that i have rolling over every 3 months. Current rate is at 3.5%
  • The other $15k is just kinda sitting there earning minimum interest. I want to maybe transition this to a high yield savings account so i can get a little more juice on it
• Coinbase: $6k
  • Contribute randomly to this, sometimes when the bonus hits and i'll throw an extra $500 in to see where it goes
• Gold: $6k
  • Same as the crypto, just throw money at it occasionally.

What can I be doing better?

Hello everyone. I'm thinking about moving to Austin with my partner. We're originally from NYC and have been exploring jobs in the area. I recently received an offer for a role which is in the same industry and similar to one I currently do.

The issue is it is a significant pay cut. In my current role, my compensation is 158k with a yearly ~10 % bonus. The role I received an offer for is 92k. That's almost a 50% paycut.

I've been following this community for over 10 years, and am super grateful as the principles of FIRE have allowed me to save a decent bit:

• Age: 30
• Assets
  • Retirement Accounts: 504k (364K in 401k, 140K in a Roth IRA)
  • Investments: 169K
  • HYSA: 79k
  • Property: ~150k equity
• Debts
  • 3.5% mortgage, with roughly 237K remaining
  • 0.9% rate, with roughly 4,700 remaining on a car

My partner is also taking a paycut from 72K to 57K, so not as significant. She has no debts, and savings as well but for the purpose of this analysis I would like to stick with my numbers only.

The way I think of it, this would be our version of coast fire. We're pretty frugal people, but accepting the position and paycut is giving me a lot of anxiety. Would people in this community be comfortable with this? Am I crazy for considering the move?

Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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HEY! 7 years ago I came to this subreddit to ask if I would be a total moron to quit a cushy corporate job to go full time with my wedding photography business.

I got great responses from "yes" to "yeah totally you're so dumb" that helped ground me massively. Reading all the responses encouraged me to wait an extra 6 months to see how my bookings would pan out and re-calculate everything that could go wrong again and again.

But I did it! And it fucking rocks! 230 weddings later, current stats:

Average ~150k income after expenses for the last few years. My cash and retirement net worth without my husband's contribution (for stats purposes) is $550K. We also own our home outright and may never move as we're planning to be childfree. Cheat code!

But most importantly I feel none of the panic I felt about my future while I was working at a large corporate office. I know I may not be able to do this job all the way until retirement, but I now know that there are jobs out there that sit well in my brain and make me overall a happy person.

In January, I received the news my role and team are being offshored. Have until end of Q3 since I am in charge of transition. While my end date seems far away. 6 months to go and still not in a formal interview process yet. The job market is tough right now. We were high savers but I had started to think we could start spending a bit more money. Now with the layoff, I want to even more aggressively pursue FI. I am about to be 35. My original target was FIRE at 55 but now I want it to be earlier. Corporate America is cut throat especially when you enter middle management. For those thinking, let me take my foot off the gas pedal, don’t. Invest.

For additional information. Right now my target is $10M at 55. We currently have $2.3M in investments and another $270K in cash. Planning to invest the $200K soon. Current spend is $120K but we don’t have kids yet and want them. I am using nominal 6% rate of return, assuming $120K annual investment until we hit $5M, no contributions after that. Mostly because I rather reevaluate when we hit $5M what contributions are needed. Future expenses that are hard to predict at this moment - kids, my parents retirement support & elderly care, and housing.

I've read several threads on the RO55 and have additional questions.

I'm 58 and am about to be laid off (along with most of my industry...). The 401(K) for this employer is with Principal. I asked and was told that yes, the plan allows for the RO55.

Main questions:

A lot of the threads here about it involved people actually retiring. I do not intend to. I'm job searching. The R055 does not require that I actually retire, does it?

Unclear whether I can take multiple partial distributions or can only take a single distribution.

Is it a good idea to leave at least $5K in the account to avoid it being rolled over to an IRA?

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So I'm getting close to retirement just wanting my kids to graduate college. Based on the fact that our needs are small compared to our retirement, we are electing to have my wife retire early and I anticipate needing to reduce either the 401k contribution or the HSA. Both are maxed currently. Which would you reduce if you had to and why?

There will be about a 10-12 year gap between retirement and Medicare age so I anticipate using ACA to cover the gap. Not sure if that makes a difference, but thought it might.

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I was listening to the ChooseFI episode 538 today. I've noticed this in other episodes as well..

They were talking about how the guests at one point were just a few years from FI a while back, but since the market went crazy lately (up quickly) they are now even closer than they expected to be at this point.

Other times, and the way that makes sense to me, they say on average the market goes up ~8% per year. Sometimes it's up 20% for a few years in a row but that averages out with when it's down a few years in a row to be about 8%.

So which is it? If your FI number is 1.2M, and your sitting at 1M invested, then your investments go up 20% over the year, are you now FI at 1.2M or are you figuring you are actually at 1.08M? This gets complicated figuring previous years in of course.

What method do you use? CAPE ratio? Check lifetime returns and adjust accordingly? Something else?

I suppose you generally just go with what your account says, if you have your FI number then you're FI. If you don't, you aren't. It just seems a bit different if the previous say, 5 years averaged 30% returns vs 6% returns (just for stark contrast).

Thought it might be an interesting discussion.

Self-promotion (ie posting about projects/businesses that you operate and can profit from) is typically a practice that is discouraged in /r/financialindependence, and these posts are removed through moderation. This is a thread where those rules do not apply. However, please do not post referral links in this thread.

Use this thread to talk about your blog, talk about your business, ask for feedback, etc. If the self-promotion starts to leak outside of this thread, we will once again return to a time where 100% of self-promotion posts are banned. Please use this space wisely.

Link-only posts will be removed. Put some effort into it.

Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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Hello all,

Sorry if this topic has been discussed before, but as someone who is around 8 years away from FIRE, and who is constantly seeking better and easier ways to plan for that day, I've used all sorts of asset tracking methods from spreadsheets, to apps.

One thing I've noticed is that most apps don't do traditional finance and digital assets well together, unless I've missed to try some. So far I've tried Google Sheets & Excel, with different formulas and such,to calculate stock and ETF price changes, tried to manually capture dividend income (hectic and time consuming). I've tried apps such as DivTracker, dashboard.io, getquin, and while they all do most things well, they either have a high premium package rate, or don't track crypto in addition to traditional assets.

I've uses coingecko and similar for digital assets, however for the sake of simplicity, and to avoid using multiple apps for different asset types, then aggregation then manually, I'm looking for suggestions and advice, on the matter of the existence of a unified platform that does all my portfolio management for me. Doesn't have to be free, I'm happy to pay a reasonable price for a premium service, if it meets my needs.

Apologies again if this has been asked elsewhere, keep investing and FIRE away!

Hello all! Looking for some advice on the possibility of a new car.

37 male, DINK, ~12-15 years from FI and paid off mortgage.

Currently own a 2017 Rav 4 hybrid, only 52k miles. I put on 7k miles a year and my commute to and from work is just under 9 miles. I have done basic maintenance and gotten tires on it, etc, and otherwise it's fine. It's fully paid off, and I have been putting in 3-5k/year in an s&p type ETF as a 'new car fund' for when it's time, currently about 13k.

My FIL and wife just got plug in EVs and are pretty high on them. They just got a charger installed at their office (family business, 5 min from home) where my wife would fill my car up once or twice a week (free fuel) . I wanted to look into the possibility of upgrading and jump on the bandwagon but I'm struggling with the decision.

I was looking at a Prius prime xse, and the lease deal is trade in my car (valued at 17k), get 3k back in cash, and no lease payments or interest or taxes/fees (included). The buyout would be 19k in 3 years, which I'd use the new car fund for, and during and after this time I'd continue to put money in (in addition to the 3k). My FIL and wife's argument is that I should get the car because my current cars value and this deal, and the fuel thing, seems to be a good value before my car depreciates further and starts needing higher maintenance costs like a battery.

So I had chatgpt run some scenarios, which take into account taxes, fees, maintenance, residual value, needing a car at the end of each timeline: " Final Thoughts Scenario 3 (Prius for 5 yrs then New Car) shows the lowest effective cost ($37,825) and a healthy ending NCF (≈$43K), thanks to a high residual value at 5 years.

Scenario 2 (Prius for 10 yrs) has a very competitive total effective cost ($49,250) but a lower ending NCF due to the larger early withdrawal.

Scenario 1 (RAV4 for 10 yrs) and Scenario 5 (RAV4 for 15 yrs) preserve more of your NCF, though they require higher effective outlays when you eventually buy a new car.

Scenario 4 (Prius for 15 yrs) results in a higher overall cost and a lower NCF, due to extended operating costs and a larger new-car purchase cost at 15 years. "

Some of these scenarios look pretty good but I'm still skeptical. My wife's final argument was that this is the reason I have a new car fund because in the back of my mind I was thinking I'd just and up using it to get me to FI faster. Not to mention the new car is pretty damn sweet.

Any thoughts? I figured this community would give me the best insight.

Thanks!

Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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Follow up to original post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/16r5wgk/just_hit_275k_invested_25m/

602k Net Worth (~25k in cash across $20k in HYSA / $2k in HSA / $3k Checking) - 26M

I originally wanted to wait until I hit $600k invested to post for the cooler number, but I’m trying to be more consistent with these updates. Not to brag, but to track my progress and mindset around investing each year, and hopefully get some feedback along the way.

A huge thank you to r/bogleheads, the FIRE Movement, and the Money Guy Show (have any of you been watching their Making a Millionaire show? I find it way more interesting than Caleb Hammer's content, personally).

I do want to acknowledge that I’ve been extremely fortunate with my income this past year. My side job turned into a second full-time role, and my gross income for 2024 is around ~$250k. I’m not sure if that’s sustainable long-term, but I’m trying to make the most of it while it lasts.

Right now, my rent is $1,250/month, my job pays for my gym and internet, I don’t own a car, and I’ve been fairly frugal. I took some advice from my last post (shoutout to u/jsir1999, u/khangaroofinance, and others) and read Die With Zero. It’s been helpful in reminding me that it’s important to balance saving with enjoying life. I’m trying not to sacrifice experiences just for the sake of accumulating wealth, and I’ve found that spending more on things doesn’t make me happier—only experiences do. Simple things like cooking meals with family or going to the gym/watching shows with my friends bring me a lot of joy, and they don’t cost much.

Investing Update:

Not much has changed in terms of my investing strategy since my last update, but I’ve been consistent in contributing as much as I can from each paycheck. I’m still focusing on a mix of low-cost index funds and contributing to my tax-advantaged accounts (HSA and 401k). My priority is to continue automating my investments and avoid making emotional decisions based on short-term market movements. While I haven’t made any major shifts in my portfolio, I’m happy with the discipline I’ve built and the progress I’ve made.

For this edition’s book recommendation, I want to suggest The Power of Now. At first, it might seem like one of those self-help books that’s not really practical, but I think it’s really relevant here. Many of us (myself included) can get hyper-focused on the future and forget to enjoy the present moment. I’ve found that shifting my mindset has helped me find more balance in my life.

I have the option in my company to take 1 year sabbatical that I can extend 2 times all the way to 3 year in total. So I have the option to come back to work, after 1, 2 or 3 years.

Suppose I have reached my FI number, have a good paying job, and a nagging one more year syndrome (which can be quite good to pad the portfolio and lower the risk).

I am just throwing the idea here to get your opinion: what if instead of quitting/firing, I take this sabbatical for 2 or 3 years, go 100% equities (instead of doing some elaborate bond tent or whatever to diminish the sequence of return risk), and reevaluate after 2 or 3 years where I am at in terms of balance ?

If numbers are still good, keep retiring, if they are down, one or two more years it is and back to DCA in a possibly much cheaper (and thus better foward looking returns) market... ?

Have I solved the sequence of return risk using long term sabbaticals ?

PS: sorry English is not my first language

Hello People,

I’m currently 42 years old and trying to determine when I can afford to leave my high-paying but high-stress job. I’d love some input on my financial situation and possible retirement timeline.

Current Financial Snapshot:

• Liquid Assets: $50K in cash, $50K in collectibles (Lego!), $20K in Bitcoin
• Investments: $200K in Treasury Bonds (4.2%), $600K in a 401K/Brokerage (contributing 15% yearly, ~$15K)
• Real Estate (Paid Off):
  • Primary residence – $600K
  • Rental 1 – $700K (Net income: $24K/year)
  • Rental 2 – $240K (Net income: $12K/year)
• Current Job: $120K/year (high-stress, want to quit in max 5 years)
• Planned Lower-Stress Job (BaristaFIRE?): $45K/year (low-stress, good medical benefits, ~$23/hr)
• Expenses:
  • Current annual spending: $100K (until my daughter finishes college in 12 years)
  • Future spending: ~$80K/year

The Big Question:

I want to know when I can realistically transition out of my high-paying job and move into a lower-stress role (or even retire early). My primary concerns are:

1. How long should I keep working at my current job before switching to the lower-paying one?
2. Is my investment portfolio strong enough to sustain early retirement within the next 10-15 years?

Thank you guys in advance!

Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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