When Lauren Keys decided the time had
She was 25-years-old at the time.
“We were both coming from college in 2012 and going into full-time work for the first time, and that transition to having to be somewhere 40 hours a week was really overwhelming,” she says. “We found out about this concept of financial independence, retire early, and that if you had a certain amount of your income invested, that should be enough to pay for the rest of your life. That math was really encouraging and empowering.”
Keys and her husband began following the FIRE movement — Financial Independence, Retire Early — which involves individuals living below their means while saving and investing as much as they can, as soon as they can. On paper, the goal is
“I would say that for us, our goal was to retire in our 40s, so when you know your career is only going to be 10 to 20 years, you can tolerate more,” she says. “It was freeing to know I could work any job and it wasn’t going to last forever or have to be the perfect fit. I felt more freedom to choose and to pick what was best for my goal.”
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Keys and her husband, a public school teacher, began working toward early retirement with some small steps that quickly snowballed to bigger savings. They both pursued higher paying jobs with salaries around $50k, took advantage of their
By the time they were 25, they had more than $150,000 in savings and investments, after starting with a combined nest egg of $47k. This was enough to test out their retirement plans with a six-month stay in Hawaii, convincing them that full
“We wanted to slow down and test the concept of early retirement and see what it would mean to not be working full time when we’re at this age when you should be,” Keys says. “We were fully getting the complete benefit of being on our own time.”
Now 31, the Keys live back in Florida, traveling frequently and documenting their financial journey on their blog. Keys no longer works a traditional job, and spends her time updating their blog and social media accounts, while her husband tutors remotely around 10 hours per week.
“I think we all have to shift our mindset, because it’s so ingrained about where things like retirement and healthcare come from,” she says. “But if you have savings, you can be confident and comfortable knowing that you can take care of yourself and you don’t have to rely on your employer or the government or whoever is it to provide that for you.”
Too good to be true?
For most people, this concept sounds unrealistic. The average 20-something has just $16,000 saved for retirement. Nearly a quarter of Americans have
“When you're first starting out, you can't really think about retirement — you have to think about rent and food and building an emergency fund and not having any credit card debt and all of those other things,” says Rachel Christian, a retirement expert at the Penny Hoarder, a personal finance website. “But once you have that little bit of breathing room, then you need to really pick your head up and just learn. Put a percentage of your income into a 401(k). Skip the inferiority guilt complex and just start saving.”
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For Rivka Schreiber, a certified financial planner who is also pursuing early retirement, having savings helped her align solid numbers with more abstract goals. Knowing
“I knew I wanted to pursue early retirement when I started to believe it was actually possible, because otherwise it’s just a lofty goal,” says Schreiber, who’s 43-years-old. “Having savings made me feel powerful, and over time, I managed to hold onto my 401(k)s instead of cashing them out, I invested small amounts and realized when I’d be paying off my mortgage, and at that point the lightbulb went off, like, let’s figure this out.”
Schreiber plans to retire at 52, buy an RV and road trip around the U.S. But she doesn’t just have her own financial future to look after — she plans to put her three children through college. Making sure her goal was flexible enough to account for these other financial responsibilities is all a matter of perspective, she says.
“It comes down to the priorities in your life, and it’s easy to stay hyper-focused on one thing,” Schreiber says. “But if you have other people in your world you need to support, you have to learn how to juggle that and let your top priority sit on the back burner for a little bit.”
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Schreiber has built up her investment portfolio, and has 401(k), Roth IRA and
“I'm going to retire at 52. I'm going to have been in the workforce 30 years at that point, so I understand that to have that lifestyle, it won’t be lavish, but it’s definitely going to be adequate,” she says. “And I do worry that people who are so quick to retire, whatever that means to them, that they've locked themselves into an almost poverty-level income stream.”
‘Coast FIRE’
Being more flexible means acknowledging that retirement is not one-size-fits all, Christian says. Financial flexibility is crucial for early retirees, and anyone saving for their long-term goals. Christian advises early retirees to give themselves space to readjust expectations.
“The goal is to be financially independent and that's achievable, but the whole hard retirement cutoff, people realize that's not for everybody,” she says. “You can have as many projections as you want, but life will still happen. If the numbers don’t add up, what adjustments do you need to make?”
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Colin Smith has become increasingly adept at making those kinds of adjustments. Early in his career, he was a committed FIRE seeker, but meeting his wife and
“I'm a CPA and have worked in consulting firms for the past 13 years, which can be a hard-charging career with a lot of potential for burnout. But I wanted to make as much money as possible while I was young,” Smith, now 35, says. “But once we had our baby last year, I said, let’s try to downshift a little bit, because I love that quality time with my daughter, to put her to bed and wake her up in the morning.”
Smith now practices “Coast FIRE,” which means he has enough saved in his retirement accounts to stop making any additional contributions. Any additional money he saves goes into his brokerage accounts that can be accessed before retirement age without penalties. He no longer has a hard and fast retirement date in mind, though he plans to retire before 50, and can focus on making financial adjustments as they come up, like planning for a second child, or paying for college for his kids down the line.
“It relieves the pressure — I don’t have to work a full-time job, or contribute 50% of my earnings to my savings,” he says. “I'd much rather kind of go at a slower pace and enjoy what I have now. I’m still pretty far ahead of where I want to be.”
No matter the strategy, FIRE is more of a philosophy than a hard and fast financial plan, Schreiber says. Picturing your future — whether at 25, 52, or retirement age — is best done when well-prepared.
“The FIRE movement is really about taking control of your time and what you want to do with yourself,” she says. “It’s hard to commit to a goal that has only a number and not a feeling attached to it. Know what you want, know what you enjoy, and use savings to help you make your own choices.”
