This milestone is wild to me. I was looking through my old spreadsheets and realized that in 2015, I originally calculated that I would be able to retire in the first few months of 2025.
That was my goal based on my salary at the time and my spending living in Manhattan. I calculated that I would be able to retire in 2025 with $500,000 at 35 years old.
That day has come, but instead of closing my work laptop for the last time, I’m in my 5th year of early retirement. I’ve already ironed out the kinks of my new lifestyle, learned new hobbies, a new language and traveled the world.
- $500,000 at 30: I Hit My FIRE Number!
- I QUIT! I’m Retiring At 30.
- 4 Years Of Early Retirement: Finances, What’s Changed And What’s Next?
- Here’s What Retirees Do All Day! (I Recorded What I Did Every Hour For 4 Years Of Retirement)
So today I wanted to explore a possibility that’s been reflected in my actual life: when FIRE and finances can go better than forecast. We’re all working off of assumptions and historical models, but our reality can be very different.
All this to say, life can work out better than forecast. Between 2015 and 2020 (when I retired) I almost doubled my salary, and I also cut my spending in half just by moving from NYC to Seattle. Those two changes alongside a bull market halved my time to retirement.
Compound interest is an awesome force – as is increasing income and cutting expenses in a way that doesn’t decrease happiness. So let’s dive into the specifics of how I reached FIRE in less time than estimated.
You Might Make More
I like to base calculations on hard numbers so I assumed in my calculations that I would always make the salary I was making in 2015. However, I have never made the same salary for more than a year during my entire career.
I was a job hopping fiend after I discovered that the ad agencies I was working for did not reward doing a great job with a promotion, but with more work 🙂 . So I left and I kept leaving (or was laid off, which is common in advertising). And as a result, I usually increased my salary by $20,000 with each job hop.
I started my first job making $35,000 in 2011, was making $65,000 when I did my original FIRE calculations in 2015 and ended my career making $115,000 in 2020. I more than tripled my salary during my career. Where I started is not at all where I ended 🙂 .
You Might Spend Less
My calculations were also based on how much I would spend living in NYC, but moving to Seattle instantly decreased my costs. I also started actually thinking about the money I was spending and making sure that every dollar aligned with my values and brought me joy. After cutting out the things that didn’t, suddenly I was spending less while living an even better life.
- How I Lived On $15,886 In 2020
- How I Lived On $17,896 In 2019
- Every Dollar I Spent In 2018 ($19,191.55)
- 2017 Spending ($18,436.60)
- 2016 Spending ($22,518.67)
- 2015 Spending ($29,344)
I was spending way more than necessary on things that weren’t even making me happy like a $100/month cell service when a $15/month service from Republic Wireless worked just as well.
- Celebrating 5 Years With Republic Wireless: A Comprehensive Review
- My Vice: Gadgets
- My Vice: Eating Out
- My Vice: Fancy Foreign Beaches
Also, just the act of tracking my spending with YNAB (like I started doing in 2015), led me to spend less. I also learned that I could spend less if I did a little planning and research like travel hacking First Class flights. I used to buy international First Class flights for thousands of dollars, but now I just pay a few dollars of taxes.
- I Don’t Regret Spending $7,000 On A Plane Ticket
- How I Travel Hack: A Step-By-Step Guide To How I Saved $100,000 On Flights
You Might Move
Geo-arbitrage changed my numbers entirely without me doing anything but moving to a different city. Seattle jobs pay NYC salaries, but has half the cost of living. I wasn’t planning to live in NYC my entire life, but my beginning calculations assumed I would because as I said, I always based my calculations on hard data of where I am and what I actually spend, even in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
- $5K to Retirement In 9 Years: Year 5 “A Seattle Bait & Switch”
- $5K to Retirement In 9 Years: Year 6 “Searching for Bigfoot”
- $5K to Retirement In 9 Years: Year 7 “The Goldilocks Zone”
- $5K to Retirement In 9 Years: Year 8 “The Boring Part”
- $5K to Retirement In 9 Years: Year 9 “The Final Countdown”
So I moved to Seattle in the summer of 2015 and my costs plummeted. Then I retired in 2020 and since then I’ve been traveling the world, which can be a pretty affordable way to live with the unlimited flexibility I have in retirement.
- How I Lived On $21,499 As A Global Nomad In 2024
- How I Lived On $23,290 As A Global Nomad In 2023
- How I Lived On $16,930 As A Global Nomad In 2022
- How I Lived On $20,415 As A US Nomad In 2021
The Stock Market Might Perform Better Than Average
This is a big one. I analyzed how much of my net worth growth while working was from my blood, sweat and tears, and how much was the market growing my money. I was surprised to see that it was about 50/50.
Most retirement calculators understandably assume average stock market growth after inflation of 7%. If that was the case from 2015 to when I retired in 2020, the market would have returned 35%. Instead it returned 54%.
Obviously this doesn’t happen all the time, but I got lucky and the market has been on a tear and helped me retire earlier than planned. Combine that with me saving more than planned from a higher salary and lower spending meant I quit my job way earlier than forecast.
Conclusion
Instead of working for the last 5 years I’ve lived in 16 US states, 13 countries and on 5 continents. I’ve seen my loved ones for more time combined than I previously ever had in my life. I’ve had the time to get better at things like sleep and find new hobbies I love like running, yoga and meditation. I also learned to speak Spanish 🙂 .
- Celebrating 3 Years Of Running: My Progress and Revelations
- Insight Timer: The Best Free Meditation App
- From 0% to Fluent: How I Learned Spanish in 1 Year
I’ve seen and eaten and experienced amazing things and I’m just so grateful that the math worked out and I’ve had the time to do all of this instead of sitting in meetings and flinching when I hear an Outlook ping. All that to say, it’s never too late to improve your financial life and it can go better than forecast 🙂 .
What an inspiration! Fire minded people or speaking for myself do plan worst case and have all these contingencies that are quite unlikely to occur
Hi Purple, I loved reading this post! I’m so glad the math worked out for you and it gives me hope that it might work out for me too. It’s amazing when FIRE and finances can go better than forecast! We can plan as well as we can, but we can’t control the future. We don’t know when life will throw us a curve ball or when we will be hitting home runs for several years in a row. All we can do is plan for the future and do our best. Thank you for sharing your story and giving us all inspiration on our FIRE journeys.
Things definitely can go better than expected and that’s not talked about enough. I bought a condo at a low interest rate and the neighborhood has been developing quickly since then. Also just started to house hack the second bedroom this month bringing my monthly costs down so I can invest more.
These are great points! My plan had me retiring this year at age 32 with 1.2M. Instead, I have 900k at age 32 but retired three years ago… not such a bad trade!
Looking at your spending going down over the years is really inspirational. It goes to show what tracking and being intentional can do!
With this phrase – “sitting in meetings and flinching when I hear an Outlook ping” – I think you’ve hit on something pretty deep. How many of us out here on the path to FI – or having already FIRE’d – are in the same boat? We are professionals who pursued our field because it inspired us, not people who hated what we did for a living. We took pride in our work and derived satisfaction from a job well done. But what did us in finally – what caused us to head for the exits anyway – wasn’t the work itself, it was the always-on modern work culture. I can still viscerally remember the feeling of cringing when that horrid orange-flashing icon would start bouncing on the bottom of my screen, which meant someone needed an answer NOW and I needed to drop whatever I was doing (losing a good 15 minutes to the context switch). There were times I sat there for an hour, 2 hours, unable to start working on something because I knew the minute I did, that orange flash would appear and I’d lose all that mental effort. Of course management doesn’t want to hear the growing drumbeat of research suggesting that constant interruptions, forced RTO in open-plan offices, and 30-minute meetings with 30 minute gaps between them throughout the day, are simply murderous to productivity. So the competent and capable among us are voting with our feet as soon as we can, depriving corporate America of our talents.