Like the title says- I'm 27 with a 750k net worth. Almost all of my money is invested in the stock market. My yearly expenses are currently around 40k a year, but I expect to go a bit over that number as I am planning on traveling a lot now. Im choosing to keep my job as a travel nurse but significantly cutting down the amount of months I work out the year. Our contracts are normally 3 months long, with the ability to extend for up to a year if we like the hospital. I have decided to only work 6 months out of the year and travel for the remaining 6 months. I am planning on living off of my salary for the 6 months that I do work, and investing any left over money into the stock market :)

I’m 51 years old, have right at 1 million in total assets and living pretty comfortably currently on about $60k yearly net income at a part time but very stressful job that offers full medical benefits. I am afraid that my employer wants to get rid of me for younger workers that will take less pay. (I’m getting written up for petty things and pretty sure they’re trying to force me out.)

I want to transition to something more enjoyable or less stressful. I’m considering going back to college for 2 years to get a BS in dental hygiene due to high demand, good pay, and great hours/ability to do it part time. My current career is medically related so a lot of my previous Bachelors degree should transfer.

I’m divorced with a son who will be going to college in 2 years and he has 90k in a 529 to help him. I’m thinking about going back to college when he goes so we will maximally qualify for grant money.

Is there a way to make my income look low the year prior to him going to college so he and I can get grants for school and possibly qualify for Medicaid for our insurance?

The breakdown of what I have:

$633k in investments in 401k/RothIRA/HSA/pension.

$94k liquid cash in HYSA/MM Fund

$335 assets in home/car.

I’m new to the coastFIRE community so any recommendations of reading or tools would be welcomed.

I think I’m coastFire. 44, having a second kid soon and buying a house soon.

I’ve done pretty well investing over the last 6 years, added some money to all my accts. Some of my money is in TQQQ and I’d really like to become a millionaire. Somewhat diversified. Seems like I have a huge setback every year or two. 2 steps forward, 1 step back type of thing.

Anyway, I love that I’m having another kid but now that I need a house I’m a little stressed about buying a $450,000 house with over 3k in extra bills. I can barely afford it but all the $350,000 houses look like garbage and I want my kids to have a nice place.

So the rough plan is to put $90,000 down and get a super expensive mortgage. I don’t mind the down payment but I’ll have to completely stop saving/investing every month and might even have to withdraw $500/month once in a while because my rent is $1800 now and the new mortgage with all the extra costs will be like $3000/month. Not 100% sure I can afford that every month without withdrawing a small amount.

I feel like I’m coastFire, but even though I would choose to continue working, I feel like I’m forced to work now to afford a nicer place. Not sure I like the feeling of withdrawing from my savings monthly before I’m a millionaire, even if it is a small amount.

Feels financially backwards.

27 male in UK

Salary - £40k

Mortgage - £70k left to pay (£210k home)

Investments - £40k in vanguard

In my position, would try to pay off home in next 3/4 years? Would you concentrate fully on investing? Or would you do a combo of both?

For context, my mortgage rate is 4.6%. 2 year fixed. I will start a new term March 2026.

I’m extremely burnt out. Been doing sales for 10 years and healthcare sales for the last 7

Wife is a nurse. She’s not concerned about being able to pick work as needed.

I live in the western US and recreate in the mountains and desert of the US. The weekends are my saving grace but I have a hard time reintegrating almost every single Monday morning. I’ve worked very hard (had no help through school, found myself in a lot of debt afterward and paid it all off) but I don’t know how much more I can give to this. I’m burnt out. I want to take a year, buy a nice van and drive around and mountain bike across North America.

My fear is that I don’t have relevant skills to come back in a year and make the kind of money I’m used to.

With that being said I’m ok making less. I just wouldn’t do what I do now for less.

Just interested in hearing what folks from this community would do. TIA

Like the title says. Hypothetically say you hate your job and the stress it causes and the issues it causes at home you also have to switch back and fourth from night shift to day shift every month. Day and night shifts are also 14 hr days. Say the annual income is $225,000.

BUT you have 600K invested properly in the stock market and have a overall net worth of $880K at the the age of 31.

How many people would keep hating life because of the high paying job vs how many people would take a pay cut and a typical 8-5 job something you enjoy doing and be home more with the family?

Those planning to coastfire and take an easier, lower paying job. Do you have concerns about negatively impacting your SSN payout with lower salaries later on in life? I read in a couple of places that say that you should maximize your annual salary up to and including at age 60 to get the most SSN benefit. The SSN payout specifically looks at income at age 60 in its calculation. (Yes, I know people say there won’t be much SSN benefit left soon, but I don’t want that to dominate the discussion)

I am severely depressed. I can not function at work, let alone at home. I feel so mentally crippled, and I want to be altruistic by not spreading depression and withdrawing from work.

Is there a place in this world where I can move to like Laos or Burma, which can allow me to live off of a 4%swr? I just want to last long enough to where I am able to withdraw from my 401k.

What are your thoughts?

What age did you CF, how much did you have invested, and what are your expected expenses in retirement?

(i.e. Not I’m 25 yrs old, left FAANG for an easy job, and CoastFIRE’d with 1.5MM)

I have been feeling unfulfilled at work for the past few years. I have been in the same company for over 10years. The company culture is good and flexibility but the work has become sooo boring. The pay isn’t bad . I make six figure at a manager role but I could make more if I change jobs. But I don’t want to look for another job because I don’t feel like climbing the corporate ladder. But then I go on linked in and see all my college friends climbing the corporate ladder and holding senior leadership role. I start feeling like I’m behind . I’m just confused do I keep striving , do I stop working . Does anyone else ever feel this way . Based on my math I am 5 years away from reaching FIRE. But it feels so far away

I'm about to unplug for a week and could use something to read. Retirement is several years away (with a coast path likely beforehand), and while I'm very educated on saving for retirement, I'm much less educated on what spending for retirement looks like. Would appreciate recommendations on anything you found helpful.

My wife and I have ~1.5M (50% still in pre-tax) in retirement accounts and ~500k in non-retirement accounts. My wife is younger and just got out of grad school, makes around ~125k and isn't burnt out (yet) in her career.

The current house we live in is nearly paid off but too small for our needs, and will likely need to change that at some point soon.

We have an investment RE property that currently has ~200k in value but needs work before becoming being able to be sold, but I think theres good profit opportunity there also.

We also have a newborn. Pre-newborn expenses from that are still TBD but certainly non-zero. I'd say our expenses are currently somewhere around 50-80k/year, but seems quite variable. Most months are around 4k in expenses but sometimes we blow way through that.

I'm trying to figure out how crazy it would be to quit my job that i'm starting to hate (~150k) and transition to a passion side project that I expect could generate ~50k/yr in net worth after a few years if things succeed. Certainly theres a risk associate here so it could be 0 or 100k, and with a child i'm trying to process what my risk acceptance is for that.

23M, 110K+ in Roth 401k/IRA combined, 30K+ individual brokerage acct, 45K+ cash/cash equivalents (180-190K “liquid” net worth). No debts, paid off car.

I live relatively modestly, probably spend ~35k/yr in living expenses. Salary is ~65-70k/yr.

From my understanding, if I invested little to nothing for the rest of my working life, I could likely retire safely at age 60 or so.

Also would appreciate if people could avoid commenting things about how I must’ve gotten help from parents etc. (I’m grateful for my upbringing but it was not an easy one by any means. My parents didn’t buy me a brand new car/pay for my college or any of that bs). I worked hard and saved more than any of my peers and I’m feeling burnt out, now wanting to lay off the gas and live more stress free.

Thanks for taking the time to read my post :)

[I may delete the OP later.]

I’ve been a casual browser of this subreddit for the past few months and I’ve found the discussion, insight and advice super helpful. Before my wife and I were laid off, I thought we might be on a path to coastFIRE. We met with our financial advisor recently and his projections say we could retire comfortably in 11-12 years assuming current contribution levels and approx. $75K/year spending.

Here’s what our portfolio currently looks like.

• Brokerage: $750K
• His 401k: $590K
• Hers 401k: $96K
• His Roth: $75K
• Hers Roth: $25K
• Stock: $700K (invested in one stock 12 years ago got lucky; $3K/year dividends)
• HYSA: $140K
• Home ($500K) and cars paid off

Income and expenses prior to lay off:

• Combined $250K/year gross
• Max 401k contributions
• Max Roth contributions
• $2K/mo month to brokerage
• $1K/mo month to 526b
• $4,500/mo other (insurance, food, travel, entertainment, etc.)

A few questions:

• Am I on a path to coastFIRE? Once I retire, I plan on getting a part-time job that I find enjoyable. My wife may work full-time a few years beyond my retirement, so that’ll help with health insurance costs.
• Is it possible/necessary to calculate a salary target for our next jobs? I would prefer to not take a step back in terms of my salary, but since neither of us have jobs, I may have to take the first opportunity that comes along.
• What else can we do to get us to coastFIRE?

Thanks in advance!

Edit: Just found the coastFIRE calculator on the side and it says we are already there! A few things my wife reminded me of. We are planning to have a second child in a few years and plan to contribute $100K each to their 529bs. Also, we've been entertaining buying a plot of land and building a house as we close in on retirement (est. $1-1.2 million). How would these factors affect our coastFIRE?

I have been considering leaving my high-earning, high-stress job to take something with less stress, less demand on my time and schedule, even if it means less money. I have heard that a good job to transition to would be Accountant or Bookkeeping, and in doing research I have seen a ton of 'courses' that can teach you how to do it. This raises concern for me as it seems like a bit of a scam or grift. Has anyone done this, or has anyone started out in bookkeeping and accounting, that can provide perspective. Is it really less stress and less demand on time? How hard is it to gain competency and/or certification/education? If anyone has done this, I would love to hear your story, thoughts, would you do it again, anything you can provide to help me decide if this is something I really may want to consider. Thanks!

If the US GDP is +2.5% per year, but the market returns 7+% (i know its been more), how does that compute over time?

Hello! I am wondering why people want to pay off their mortgage in retirement. If I have a loan @ 2.75% and put and extra payment into a side account making 4.4% wouldn’t that be the logical thing to do? I don’t understand the high desire to have your home clear and free. In addition to that, once your money is in your home it’s gone forever. Your home asset can no longer be leveraged? What am I missing here? I have 3 rental properties all financed with one @2.75, 1@3.65, and our primary @2.65. I would rather keep cash and have it work for than buy down these mortgages to 0. Please tell me why I’m wrong. I need to learn. Cheers!

41m looking to CoastFIRE at 45.

Current salary is 80k and I'd look to go part-time in four years (<20 hours per week) for another five years, before ramping down further at 51/52.

Wife and two young kids. Kids will be 18 before I fully FIRE.

I have a property that's conservatively worth 400k with a mortgage of 200k that I split with my partner. No other debts.

I have 200k split almost 50/50 across pensions and savings. I can't access the pension until 57.

I also have an apartment worth around 100k in another country where my work is that is mortgage free. I'd rent it out once I'm finished with work, which should get about 3-4k in extra income each year after expenses. I'd also look to sell our main house eventually and move into the apartment to free up the equity.

I also have a business with 50k in cash reserves that I've built up to help bridge between retirement.

Expenses are tough to work out as my life will be very different without commuting to another country for work and maintaining two properties. I have gone through our household expenses and would estimate 25-30k combined is all we need to live frugally.

My wife wants to keep working and doesn't have much savings or pension (around 15k in a pension she started paying into recently). It's very frustrating that she doesn't engage with these things, but not a lot I can do. I have tried repeatedly to get her to think about it. I calculate my expenses to be around 15k a year to maintain the basics and probably closer to 20k a year to travel a little/maintain the apartment. Obviously if I keep working part time, I would be able to continue to save.

If you were in my shoes, what would you do? I could probably CoastFIRE within a year on my own or work another ten years to top my wife's accounts up?

Edit: my partner earns a lot more than I do. She wants to work until they kick her out as she loves her job. I do not.

42 male in BC Canada. Married with 2 young kids 2 & 3 years old. Single income household, wife raises kids at home. I am so burnt out at work with recent doubling of work load. Work is effecting my health and there is no way I can do this long term, current role includes frequent travel. I have an opportunity to transition from the private industry to government with a 50% pay decrease. New role doesn't even require a company phone!

Current

• 200k income
• 13 years invested in DB pension
• own 1 million dollar home outright
• 750k savings in tax sheltered and non sheltered accts
• own all assets inc vehicles outright
• no debt whatsoever

Future

• government opportunity for a 100k role with far less responsibility
• wife will be able to work in a few years but is a low earner

I think this is may be a good opportunity to coast. My concerns are that I won't make enought money to contribute to investment going forward and will need to funds kids as they grow, potential new income would leave very little for that. I tend to overthink this kind of stuff sometimes. Any thought thoughts??

Looking for words or stories of encouragement.

I'm a resident physician with 2-3 years left of residency/fellowship, depending on the ultimate route I go. I left a high stress, high paying career to go into medicine, naively believing medicine would fulfill me in ways my prior career hadn't.

It has, in fact, done the opposite for me. I'm burned out, stressed out, and disillusioned with medicine. The work is incredibly demanding, the hours are insane, patients are often ungrateful or even argumentative when they challenge you with their own research, people salivate at the thought of you making a mistake to sue you into oblivion, and on and on.

I fantasize daily at this point about quitting residency and going back to my old career, but in an easier role. I believe I could comfortably make 70-80k/year without much effort. Things that actually hold me back from doing this are (in no particular order)

1. Sense of obligation - I took a med school spot, and then a residency spot in a specialty/eventual sub-specialty. We are in a significant shortage of our specialty and I would feel guilty taking a spot and then never utilizing it.

2. Sunk cost fallacy - I'm 200k in med school debt and 8 years of arduous training at this point.

3. Sense of obligation to my family - I have uprooted them twice for med school and residency. I have missed out on a lot of memories with my kids. I feel like I owe them a physician's lifestyle at this point, though I have never been pressured by my wife to continue.

4. Earnings potential. Average comp in my field is 450-650k depending on location and practice type. I certainly don't need that level of income, but I also wouldn't turn my nose up to it.

I'm in a good position for coastfire. Without belaboring my financials too much, we are sitting on about 1.4m in IRA/brokerage and have 450k equity in a 550k house. We are both mid-30's.

I have thought about pulling the trigger and making it happen so many times, but I look at what I have done and what my career trajectory would be if I just continued on and it makes it difficult to actually make that leap. Has anyone here done anything similar?

RRSP: $700K (80% VOO, 20% Blue Chip stocks) TFSA: $100K (50% VFV, 50% in Canadian Banks & Enbridge) Corporation: $1.5M (80% in VFV and XEQT, 20% Blue Chip stocks)

Mortgage: $200K left Line of Credit (Prime - 0.25%): $100K

I am a 46yo physician and would like to leave my full-time practice, take 9 months off, and return to working ~1 week a month.

My monthly expenses including mortgage payments are ~$4,500.

TIA

If you’re expecting a windfall once you hope to have FIRE’d, how would you use that $ inflow and expected timeline in your calculations? (Presumably it would bring your FIRE and coast dates forward). The coastFIRE calculator doesn’t seem to have a way to add something like this.

31yo Living in a HCOL making $85k a year with $35k in annual expenses and no debt.

Investments: $116k HYSA: $184k (yes, I should invest these funds and plan to)

Am I on track to coast fire? What age can I start?

I did today and I got the feeling (shrugging it away as anxiety) that people think I’m arrogant for planning my life and financial, especially because I have no desire to get married or have kids.

When thinking about which type of FIRE I aspire to reach, I always get hung up on something with Coast.

If you reach your number at an early age and proceed to stop contributing to retirement accounts, wouldn't you just be increasing your spending which also increases the number you'll need for retirement?

It seems like the goal should be to work less to the point where your monthly income drops to your monthly spending number and allowing your nest egg to continue growing. Otherwise you're just allowing lifestyle inflation to creep in and at some point you would have to lower your spending or push back your full retirement age.

Maybe this is a dumb question. But I feel like I always read about people stopping retirement contributions without mentioning if they are scaling back work/hours.

I want to quit my soul-sucking job and move back across the country to be with my fiancee. Did I actually do it? Can I step away and take a massive pay cut? Can I finally afford to go after a career change that gets me away from terrible locations and managers? Am I free from the fear of a destitute end of life?

Age: 35

Engaged.

Fiancee owns house outright. Pre-nup to come, separate finances. Good house to raise a family in. No, I'm not a breadwinner.

Zero debt. No student loans. No car payments. No credit card balance.

Annual expenses: $36,000 (will be same or less with fiancee).

Total Assets: $312,000

$186k in retirement split- $90k in old 401k (empower), $61k in current 401k (fidelity), $37K in Roth IRA (fidelity)

$50k in managed brokerage (Edward Jones)

$63k in personal investment account (Fidelity)

$8k checking/cash

Upcoming expenses- incidentals for a small wedding, incidentals for modest honeymoon, maybe a different truck. To be determined.

The little tool in Empower is saying I'm good. My Charlie-Day-esque excel sheet says I'm there. Now I just need some strangers from the internet to tell me I can feel alright in transitioning to Coast FIRE in the new year, what adjustments to make, etc. Or just tell me I'm completely full of shit.

I am starting to hate my corporate job and I am pretty close to my minimum FIRE number. But I still like the tech stuff, just not the constant pressure. I am wondering if there are any coasting jobs for software engineers. A part time job would be great for example. The jobs I see are either full in or nothing.

Is anybody here coasting doing tech work?

My spouse and I are coasting, at least mentally (expenses are about 8% of our current liquid NW so planning full fire potential in 10 yrs with no further savings). Two young kids in daycare. We each continue to work full-time careers, either of which would cover expenses if necessary. My job has recently turned toxic under a new boss and requires a butt in a seat for 40 hrs a week. The job is easy but quite boring and at this point of our lives, flexibility and time are much more valuable, yet I’m having great difficulty giving up this career of 10 years for two reasons: 1. my current compensation is substantially higher than anything else I’ll find in my local area given my skillset (ME 165k total comp, L/MCOL) and 2. There aren’t a lot of part time or non-office based jobs with this skillset.

I’m considering starting a small, solo operated service business. I estimate I can make 60-80k per year and it would give me the flexibility I desire which would allow me to spend more time with my kids while they’re young. My wife wants to continue working, even if it evolves over time. We’re both on the same page, so no issues there.

I would love to hear from those that have made or are considering making similar drastic career changes at this stage in life. It’s quite scary, so I need some inspiration! Or feel free to tell me I’m crazy

I am trying to work out how far away from CoastFIRE I am, but am not sure what assets/equity to include. The big one is my home. How do I include in my calculations? My plan is to buy a second place now and rent as a holiday let until the age I can withdraw my pension. At that point, I'll sell my main home and move into the holiday let. As such, there will be a solid plan to release the equity, just not yet.

Spouse and I are 32 with two kids under 5. Household NW is 517K.

319k is in invested assets (50k in a brokerage and the rest is in retirement accounts.

We have about 50k in cash and the rest of the NW is home/car equity and 529 accounts.

Our yearly expeses right now are 65k with a mortgage and that is excluding our daycare expeses which we will stop paying for in about a year.

Just started exploring coast fire as we have been actively pursuing traditional FIRE for about 4 years.. I just checked and the online calculators say we can stop contributing now and RE sometime between 50 and 60? Is that all there is to it? It seems too easy and too good to be true, what am I missing?

No matter what, I do plan to keep working at my full time job for at least another year, which would bring our invested assets close to 420k at 33.

I have 2 side hustles that net pretty close to what I make at my full time job. Right now, I just invest all of the profit from them toward retirement. I would plan to pursue these full time if I commit to coasting next year. I'm not confident that the income level on these side hustles would stay this high but I have a lot of margin for error still if all we need to do is cover expeses. Plus if I can devote more time to them, I should make more.

My wife also has the ability to work less than full time at her job and keep her health insurance.

It's hard to imagine that we'd ever stop saving, it would just be drastically less if we start coasting. But that is what I'm picturing if we decide to pursue a coastfire lifestyle. Do you see any holes or things I'm overlooking?

Bonus question. Have any of you CoastFired to pursue a side hustle? I really struggle with viewing my side hustles as legitimate endeavors. And it becoming my "identity" if I pursue it full time. I guess the the underlying issue I wrestle with mentally is not having a real job and feeling like a bum from the viewpoint of older family members. Most of my family have very traditional views where the man of the house should always be "working" to support his family.