A blog for late starters to the FIRE Movement A warm welcome to each and every one of you who’ve found my blog, I appreciate you. The vision of this blog is to share my story, and to have others share their’s to help and inspire you on your early retirement journey, despite starting late. Hopefully we’ll also shed insight into those non-DelayedFI folks too through mistakes made and lessons learned along the way.. De-lay /dəˈlā/ be late or slow; …
Blog Posts
If you’d like to save some work and time, I’ve authored an Excel compatible Google Sheet FIRE Budget Template for download for a small donation. It’s over on GumRoad through the following link: rad9creative.gumroad.com/l/ermxd It’s simple worksheet template to help you document your Income and Expenses over a 12 month period, and to calculate your FIRE number with the standard 4% rule. As a bonus, it also checks your spend and save numbers against Ramit Sethi’s recommendations. My hope is …
Off the top – I’m going to be sharing my personal Asset Allocation with the world and with that comes some disclaimers and important notes. First I’m just some random dude on the internet, treat my opinions as such, opinions. Anything expressed here should not be considered financial, tax, investment, fitness, health, or career advice. I’m not a licensed financial advisor, tax professional, legal, health, or career expert but I am passionate about Health, Wealth, and Career advancement and have …
Just a quick post to double click on Rates of Returns before we get into Asset Allocations. As individuals we can invest our excess income inflows into real estate, stocks, ETFs, bonds, art, and other asset classes, but the main objective is to be committed and consistent with our investments to allow the power of compounding to grow our wealth over time. For a refresher on the power of Compound Interest please refer back to my previous post: Run Personal …
Now that you’re well versed with the core concepts of FIRE, calculating your FIRE number using the 4% rule, and understanding the mountain that must be climbed to achieve FIRE you may be feeling the path is pretty long and steep, especially if you’re starting your FIRE journey late. If you have feelings of not bothering or discouragement it’s normal but don’t let those feelings hold you back. Work backwards from your expenses, your FIRE number and you will get …
This was a particularly difficult post to compose, not because it was hard to find 5 wonderful things about retiring early but rather limiting it to only 5. I hope this post helps incite your internal motivations to double down and chase FIRE! Time Freedom Improved sleep Genuine Mindfulness. Without the stresses of work your mind does really focus on the moment. Whether you’re cooking, reading, walking the dog, driving, visiting your loved ones, or crafting a blog post. Without …
If you’ve read the Types of FIRE post you’ll have a good understanding of the CoastFIRE flavour of FI. One in which involves reaching a point where your investments can grow over time to cover your expenses at traditional retirement age without any further contributions. If you’re interested in retiring at typical retirement age of 60, 65, or even 67 there is power in knowing your CoastFI number. If you’re now 25 years old and plan to retire at the …
It takes time, but once you have your annual expenses enumerated, well understood, and optimized you can calculate your target FIRE number. The dollar amount in which you’ll need to have invested in a stock/bond portfolio mix to allow you to safely withdraw 4% for your annual expenses with reduced risk of running out of funds over your retirement horizon. Asset Allocation We’ll get into this in more detail in later posts but speaking in general terms your stock/bond mix …
Time flies! At the time of writing it’s been 1 year, 2 months, and 11 days since I separated from my last employer. On my own to support my lifestyle solely through my investment portfolio – so what did I learn during this time being Financially Independent? This is just a quick post that’ll hopefully help you in your journey. Lesson 1: Inflation Proof Yourself! I mentioned this in a previous post but the fewer expense line items we carry …
In a an environment of capitalism, businesses are owned by the people. Where business decisions are made by the owners to provide both benefit to its customers and to the growth, sustainability, and profitability of the business itself. After managing deca-million dollar per annum team budgets in my professional career I’ve come to the realization that personal finances aren’t a whole lot different than those of a corporation. So here’s the case why we should run our personal finances like …
So you now know your FIRE number, but how do we climb the mountain to get there? Easy, peasy…this is going to be a short post… Spend Less. Save and Invest More. Increase Income. Limit Lifestyle Inflation. 4% Rule with VTI/VTSAX. And just like that with high mathematical certainty you can achieve financial independence and retire early. Each post on this site will touch in some way or another on each of the 5 pillars above. Plus I’ll add a …
As you’ve already learned getting your expenses in check can shave years off the accumulation years as your climb FIRE mountain. The multifold benefit of reducing expenses also sets you up to have optimized cash outflows when you FI(RE), as well as the added consciousness around the cost/benefit of each of your expenses. Here are just 5 ideas to that helped me and perhaps would help you or at least spur some ideas as inspiration. Subscription Services Companies are always …
This may go against the grain of popular opinion but I’m a proponent of not following your passion. At least for the majority of the population if you want to become financially free early in your lifetime and given that your passion isn’t trending toward the top 1% in your craft (i.e. think pro athlete). No one grows up thinking I want to be an all star cross border tax accountant because that’s not necessarily sexy 😀 But in reality, …
A quick life update. On April 25th, 2024 I was laid off from my Senior Director role as the company I was working for fought to remain solvent. It didn’t. The company eventually declared bankruptcy and folded in August. I lost my cliche “Dream Job'”. Honestly I wasn’t surprised or upset by the news. Not only because the writing was on the wall but because I was much more prepared this time around versus the first time I lost my …
I can’t emphasize the importance of the expense side of the equation enough. From the day you start saving on your journey toward FIRE all the way into your withdrawal strategy in early retirement. Optimizing expenses is key. Expenses: A Different Perspective Let’s think about expenses in a different light. With the 4% rule, for every $25 invested you’re effectively able to withdraw $1 safely in retirement. This is a 25:1 ratio. On the contrary, for every dollar in expenses …
Let’s take a moment to double click on lump sum type expenses. As you go through each and every one of you expenses to build your budget and to calculate you FIRE number you’ll generally find two types of expenses. Ones that occur monthly like rent or mortgage payments and those that occur once yearly or billed bi-annually. How do we handle these? Monthly Expenses These are predictable expenses that occur with consistency month over month. Such as fixed expenses …
The general school of thought is to amass a nest egg of 25x your yearly expenses so that 4% can be withdrawn from your portfolio on an annual, inflation adjusted basis as your income for any particular year. This is of course if we’re following the Trinity Study. Let’s break it down. The Trinity Study The Trinity Study is a landmark research project that examined the sustainability of retirement portfolios, specifically focusing on the “4% rule.” Conducted by researchers at …
Why do we work?…For a sense of purpose? To pay our bills? To provide for our families? Do we live to work, or work to live? Whatever it is at some point in our lives we retire from work, whether sooner or later. What if we could live frugally, save, and invest to free ourselves from the constraints of the typical 9-5 as fast as we can? Allowing us more of the most valuable resource we have – time. Welcome …
As I progress through my FIRE journey I take a step back to reflect upon everything I learned along the way. I’ll share 5 lessons I learned in my 20’s and 30’s that I wish I had learned earlier, in hopes of helping you in your journey. This is the second of a two part series. Let’s go! Money Lesson 1 Don’t invest other people’s money. One of my biggest regrets was accepting money from a close friend to invest …
My parents worked hard through their working years but were never financially educated. So I didn’t have a great relationship with money growing up, but that’s not to say, that looking back I didn’t learn anything. Here are 5 money lessons I learned from ages 0-20. Money Lesson 1 $20 is a lot of money. I was lucky that my mum didn’t have to work weekends, and since we lived in the center of the city there was a large …
I was an 80’s kid. The time of shoulder pads, the Walkman, and 8-bit video games. I was born into an immigrant family a year after they landed in Canada to start a new life. Like most immigrants my parents wanted a better life for me and my big sis and were willing to risk it all with literally nothing in their pockets. My mum worked at a hotel cleaning rooms, it wasn’t a glorious job but one that required …