How to Retire in Your 30s With $1 Million in the Bank

Millennials have begun to embrace what has been dubbed the FIRE movement, an acronym for financial independence, retire early. The movement calls for its followers to retire far earlier than society expects, often in their late 30s or early 40s, and sees it as a way  out of soul-sucking, time-stealing work and an economy fueled by consumerism.”

Most of the followers tend to be male and work in the tech industry, and scour over Reddit and other Internet blogs that shell out advice on how to achieve saving the “hallowed” 70% of their income. This could include extreme frugality (lean FIRE), small adjustments to lifestyle and investment choices (fat FIRE), or picking up a part-time job at Starbucks after retiring to take advantage of their friendly health insurance (barista FIRE). The process of downsizing your lifestyle and increasing your savings is called firing, and others may see it as an entirely new and alternative subculture.

“A lot of people think you’re a new-age hippie,” said Mr. Jensen, who sold his four-bedroom, four-bathroom house, downsized to a more modest home and maxed-out retirement accounts while firing to retire at the ripe old age of 43. “They can’t even wrap their minds around it… People always assume there’s an external circumstance: ‘Oh, you must have received an inheritance,’” he said. “We’ve just chosen to live far below our means. That itself is a radical idea.”

See Steven Kurutz, How to Retire in Your 30s With $1 Million in the Bank, New York Times, September 1, 2018.

Special thanks to Lewis Saret (Attorney, Washington, D.C.) for bringing this article to my attention.