FIRE Movement

Personal Finance

Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) is a lifestyle movement built around aggressive saving and investing to retire decades earlier than traditional age 65-67. The math: save 25 times your annual expenses, then withdraw 4% per year indefinitely. A FIRE practitioner earning $120K and saving 50% might reach financial independence in 17 years. Variants include Lean FIRE (frugal lifestyle), Fat FIRE (high-spending early retirement), Coast FIRE (save aggressively early, then coast), and Barista FIRE (semi-retire with part-time work for benefits). FIRE is mathematically sound but psychologically demanding — it requires saving rates well above the 10-15% mainstream advice.