Hi All, in terms of what people does anyone here work in the art world - museums, galleries etc? If so, does it pay well, are there benefits, how many hours worked, is that what you wanted or fell into it etc?

Any insights shared is great appreciated.

My wife and I turn 40 this year and should have roughly 1MM 401k, 14k Roth, 50k HRA, 200k equity in a rental, and about 300k equity in my main primary residence. I have almost no cash so I assume I will need to sell the rental to get me through to retirement since I won’t be able to afford repairs on the two homes (this hurts since the rental brings in about 500/month net and has a 2.75 interest rate, but it will need a new roof and siding within the next 10 years which I won’t be able to afford). The calculators say my 1 million in retirement will be like 5 million in 25 years but I don’t know if I am doing the math right. Is this enough retirement savings to stop contributing? My wife won’t be able to cover our bills so I still need to do gig work or something to cover the gap but I am just burned out working in tech since I was 14 (yes, I started a pc repair business in middle school, worked all through high school doing network cabling, tech support, pc repair, retail tech, etc.). Hopefully I have enough but I don’t know. I do have a 9 year old who I also hope to spend more time with once I retire from tech and have put away about 20k for her school in a 529. Thank you for any and all help!

Personally, I saved up to buy a triplex before I downshifted to a barista job. Do you aim for a number and then downshift? What is it?

I'm turning 34 this year (and a lover of cute things ☺️), planning on semi-retiring next year. I'm a planner and the thought of working in corporate endlessly just feels aimless. So I needed some goal and timeline.

I'm thankful for my work and have learned loads. I've been dreaming of working on creative projects and some side freelance/contract projects. My current job is quite demanding so I am looking forward to a shift in lifestyle. To focus more on my health and getting to spend more time with family and friends and out in the community.

I have enough retirement savings that will compound til I'm 65. I've also budgeted and if need be, I can always find some kind of work enough to live off of.

Just wanted to share my countdown experience, hopefully another avenue for accountability and something to look forward to. Cheers to all of y'all who are all also counting down and planning on some kind retirement in the near future. We got this 🙌

I might share updates on my journey here or on a new post. My rough timeline is Aug 2026 (based on family needs and financial calculations).

Does anyone have experience or solid documentation on returning part time to a job at the same employer where you retire using the Rule of 55? I can’t seem to find any clear guidance.

For example - if I retire at 56 from my full time job in order to access funds but they ask me to return (as a non 401(k) eligible) part time employee or consultant 20 hours a month?

And what jobs should I get? I only need $3k/month. By the way im in my 40s to 50's

Hi, I'm giving some strong consideration to leveraging a 72t to facilitate a career change and switch to a job with much less stress. One of the positions I'm considering only works 10 months per year. Does anyone have any insights on unemployment and 72t distributions? Would receiving these distributions decrease the unemployment benefit? I live in RI and would be working in MA for this position. The language on the .gov sites does not clearly state one way or the other. Thanks for any insights or experiences anyone may have.

Just wondering what it's like.

For those of you who are in the barista FIRE stage of life, what jobs are you working?

My plan (49M) is to do a little bit of ground and flight instruction and maybe pick up teaching an aviation class or two at a local JC.

Thankfully, I can FIRE without having to pick up extra work; but, I would like to stay somewhat busy while the wife is working. The kids are in college. I'm about 2 years out from leaving my job.

Background: 39 y/o tech bro keep getting laid off and now looking to switch from a goal of hard FIRE at 45 to maybe barista FIRE until 50 or so (?)

Assets:
401k - 200k
Brokerage - 360k
HYSA - 50k
Checking - 40k
TOTAL - 650k

Liabilities: Renting forever, no mortgage planned. Live downtown MCOL city. Don’t own car, don’t plan to. No credit card debt, student loans paid off. Long-term partner with separate finances, no kids will be had.
Spending is 4-4.5k / month - 50k / yr

This engaging-data calculator LINK shows the following results:

• No extra income at 7.7% withdrawal rate there is a 19% success rate of not ending up broke in 40 years
• Extra income of 25k from ages 40 to 50 increases success rate to 41%
• Extra income of 35k from ages 40 to 50 increases success rate to 52%

So, if I aim to make $35k/yr for the next 10 years from 40-50 years old, I should be cool to retire at 50 and keep the same standard of living for the next 40 years?

What is not being taken into account? What am I missing?

For those who want to skip work for a while.

My Q is how to reword resume - my last jobs were manager/coordinator type roles. If I leave these off, I can't account for the last 6 years. If I change the wording to more entry level jobs (I am actually looking for cleaning work), then reference checks won't be accurate. I am in Australia and references are definitely checked, more than just "they worked here between X and Y dates". If I use friends as references, then I am essentially asking them to make things up, which I am not keen on. Any work arounds for this? Thanks

I am not close to barista fire but I remember trying to get hired back in '08 when job pickings were slim and being told over and over that they wouldn't hire me because I was overqualified. How do explain your situation in interviews or even get companies to take your application seriously when you are ready to barista fire?

Context:

28 y/o general dentist w/ household annual income of $250K

Assets:

-Monthly take-home pay: $12K-13K

-Traditional 401k: $10,000

-Brokerage: $5,000

-Home Equity: ~$100K

-Two paid off vehicles

Liabilities:

Monthly expenses: $7K-$8K (includes mortgage, utilities, property taxes, insurance, etc)

Student loans: $73K remaining balance

Mortgage: $329K remaining balance

For a little backstory behind the numbers, I started working at the end of 2022 and spent the early/mid part of my 20s in college and dental school. I wasn’t investing during this time due to having no income, ignorance about personal finance, etc.

During the past two years after graduation up until recently, my wife and I have basically put most all of our extra income towards paying off high-interest student loans and managed to pay off $150K so far. My family gifted us the down payment for our home and we purchased it during this time. We also just had our first baby several months ago.

I just recently started maxing out my traditional 401k at work for the past 3-4 months and have accumulated $9K so far. Any extra I recently started putting into a brokerage account starting this month and plan to contribute around $4K-$5K on a monthly basis moving forward in addition to maxing out the 401k so that I will have accessible funds prior to 59.5.

As you can imagine, I feel very behind for my age, especially if my goal is to FIRE by 40-45. I enjoy dentistry, but I want to get to the point where work is optional and/or reach the point where I can work a couple days per week while simultaneously living off of investments.

However, I can’t help feeling like I screwed myself by going into a field that requires years of school, lots of debt, and little to no investing during those early years, which is crucial for compound interest. I realize that my numbers are small since I literally just started investing, but I just feel like the math isn’t mathing. Is there hope for my situation? Any tips or recommendations?

29F Salary ~ $115k Currently maxing both my 401k and Roth IRA at 30k a year.

401k ~ 74k Roth IRA ~ 57k 75k property equity 35k in student loans (4% interest)

I have been paying the monthly payment on my student loans ~ but I'm not sure if I should keep saving the 30k per year, or if I should skip 1 year of direct savings to tackle my student loans (pay off in a year)? Any advice there is welcome.

I know I do well with my savings, and I'm proud of myself. I am happy with my salary, but the growth will probably be slow and steady vs big jumps. However, I work A LOT.

Compared to a lot of friends & family, I save a ton. I don't know many people saving this much, outside of some friends who actually want to FIRE (saving a lot less than them). I'm not sure if FIRE is my actual goal, but I like to keep up with these threads just to learn and as motivation. I want kids & a family eventually, so if anything I'm trying to save heavy so I can focus on that when the time comes.

Although I feel like I'm saving a lot, when you Google it ~ fidelity (and most resources) recommend 1x salary by age thirty. I hit that pre-30 so I'm happy with that. But that is supposed to be the "standard" and not "ahead of the game." I know so many people aren't even close to this~ but I'm having trouble saving MORE if that means I can be ahead of the game.

Anyone baristaFIRE and do something in healthcare or healthcare adjacent industries? Or personal training/fitness? I'd like to help others with diet/mental health/physical health, but didn't work on FIRE just to go back to a brutal FT schedule. I'm willing to go back to school because I love learning. I'm 34 so I don't mind physical roles, but ideally nothing that requires lifting super heavy things.

My friend who is also FIREd went into stage tech and got on the union list, so she just gets called for jobs and decides if she wants to do them or not. I'm jealous of her flexibility. Is there something equivalent or gets close to that in healthcare?

Hello,

I don't get the math on how you are supposed to retire fully if you are barista fire'ing.

If you are coast fire, you don't touch the investments and let them grow until target /closer to traditional age, and then Retire fully at some point.

But if you barista fire, you are drawing from investments all the time.

Is it because you are drawing 1-2% instead of 3- 5% from your portfolio and having SS cover the income from Barista fire that you expect to retire ?

I'm relatively new to the FIRE club, even though unknowingly I've been working toward something that looks like barista fire for a long time. But now that I know about FIRE, barista FIRE, and all the calculations that go into it etc. have I totally screwed myself before even really "starting"?

I had about 150k in assets, mostly invested, 30k cash in 2022. I liquidated 120k for a downpayment on a condo. 5.5% rate, renews end of 2025. Moving in 2023 and furnishing, fixing it up, etc. has been rough and only had 13k left in assets. I've been diligently saving this year but unexpected costs have come up twice, and am only back up to around 32k invested and 8k cash.

My mortgage is about 26% of take home pay, then there's condo fees, utilities, etc. and I can manage to save about $500/month. I worked a second job this year and some months I was saving closer to $1500.

I was living with family previously paying low rent for about 8 years to save that initial downpayment.

Now that I know my barista fire number is around 300k and the option of living with family again is still available... Every single day it pains me that if I had not liquiditated in the shitty market in 2022 and held on and continued to save I'd be at that 300k by now. Did I totally screw up? Should I sell my condo (400k equity now due to price increases and paying down a significant part of the mortgage with accelerated payments) and barista fire??

I've been working long hours through chronic illness and disabilities my entire life and I am TIRED.

I've been searching for a literal 20-24hr a week baristafire position. Applied to a few that specifically say benefits for part timers. Spoke to the hiring managers of some, and they always want open availability and weekends. I always lie and say, I need one of the weekends off, as well as nights because of my other job. That is partly true, but my other job which is a business, is flexible enough where I actually don't need to have nights off. I just don't need or want to work nights/weekends. After I tell them that, they're not interested because there is obviously someone else who wants the job with better availability.

After looking through the subs of these retailers (Safeway, Starbucks, Costco as examples), it looks like these part timers are working 29 hours, 5 days a week consistently. Anyone have thoughts on this? Am I going this the wrong way, like do I just need to get my foot in the door with open availability and then negotiate the amount of hours worked? How would you even go about telling your manager that you don't want hours, no one really does that.

I live in an area with close proximity to quite a few universities and colleges. What are the easy and stress free jobs available in this setting? I don’t want to be part of the teaching staff. Looking at office jobs that would give me access to health benefits and maybe facilities (gym, pool, library, etc). Any ideas?

Just want to read. Looking for a way to get a room in a multi room apartment. Plan to work overnight so i can read. Advice? 🙏

I know I’m over complicating things, but would love some help from you good folks.

I can “retire” from my current job in 2028 at 51, and my good health insurance will be covered until I’m 67. I’m fine with working part-time, but I’m hoping my husband will work 5 more years after that to cover his health insurance and our kid’s until age 26.

I don’t know how to determine the magic number for this scenario. If we do this, I’d retire at 51, and him at 55.

Currently, we have a little under 600k in retirement accounts. We owe 70k on our home (worth about 200k). I own half another property in trust (estimated about 250k). We can comfortably live on 60k including our mortgage, and once that is done, our mortgage money could be our travel funds.

I don’t know what calculator or formula to use to determine where our savings should be in retirement at point A and at point B (when I can retire and then when he can) especially if he will contribute for 5 more years. Also, would there be a way to tap into our retirements early if needed, and how would that affect the calculation.

Any help is so greatly appreciated.

I'm new to the group but have 'kind of' been living a FIRE lifestyle for a while. Trying to calculate when to get out of the 9-5 (which I enjoy and am paid well) but do want to work part-time even when I'm out of the FT space. I'm 57, married with 1.7M in investments, 600k in private equity (which 'should' grow) and 7 rental properties all with mortgage rates below 3.88% and 5/7 cash-flow with an estimated 1.5M in equity across all 7. Outside of mortgages we have no debt. I have 4 month cash reserve and about 150k in a slush brokerage fund and about 100k in crypto. Monthly expenses are approx 5k between primary home mortgage, utilities, food, gas, etc.

I'm trying to plan for 200k annual income from investments and PT work when I leave my FT job in May 2027. I 'think' I could be close to that now but wanted to put it to the group to see what I may be missing and thoughts on starting to pay down the highest interest rate mortgage (3.88%) so I can have all cash-flow by the time I get out.

Thanks for the feedback

I am a single 34yo female, living in a low cost area. I am renting my current house, but I have fully paid off a commercial property that I occupy for business purposes, which I may consider renting out for additional income in the future. My financial situation includes $200,000 invested, $40,000 in my bank account, and a property valued at $170,000. No debt

My annual income is approximately $120,000, with around $40,000 allocated to investments each year.

At this stage, I do not have the desire to purchase a home, as the thought of managing two properties as a single person feels absolutely overwhelming. I am relatively new to this financial journey and would like to know if anyone else has achieved their financial goals while renting an apartment or house. I am contemplating whether just keep commercial property and call it good.

Hi all, age 47, $1.5M total net work in HCOL (sf bay).

Very ready to stop work!

I have a house that still has $621K mortgage ($200K in equity.

I am renting it out, and was wondering: does it make sense to cash out my full brokerage account to pay off the house so that I bring in $3K per month (net after property tax and insurance but pre-income tax)?

I calculated to make $36K/yr off investments (pretax) is like having $1.2M nest egg.

Or, am I thinking the wrong way about this?

If I did cash out my brokerage to pay off the remainder of the mortgage, I’d be left with $800K as my total nest egg (all in retirement accounts so not liquid).

I do realize the $36K is taxed at ordinary income, vs taxed as long term capital gains (which is 0 taxes federal).