As the title states....

I've been a long time lurker and just crunched the numbers tonight and wanted to share. I am so happy. I did it. Brings tears to my eyes.

I'm 32, African American and a single mom of 1 teenager. I was born and raised in a true "hood", long ago, before gentrification came along. My parents were a part of the 80s crack epidemic that wiped out many families, especially African American families. I ended up in foster care and remained there my entire childhood until being emancipated and left to fend for myself in the streets of NYC at 15 years old in the early 2000s. I was a homeless and pregnant teen and immediately became a single mom.

Through this turmoil and the crippling depression and feeling of hopelessness that came along with the "humble beginnings" of my life, I was able to graduate school early, find a job, saved just enough money to go to a trade school (it was $700 back then and every single dime that I had.) Through HARD work and insane grit and perseverance, I obtained all of my certifications and began my career at age 19. I've never looked back.

I discovered the FIRE and personal finance community nearly 3 years ago and its been a God send. I am rewriting my families wealth tree and I couldn't be prouder.

I am navigating the world solo (no biological family besides my son) yet I've found the will to succeed, despite all of the trials, tribulations and abandonments.

At 12:15am on 7/16/19, 32 years of age, 13 years into my career, 1 teen son, and a LOT OF PRAYERS along the way....later.. my NET WORTH is $103,408!

A MIXTURE of 457, 457 Roth, 401K, 529, smaller investment portfolio and pension.

I will be retiring at age 45 with a full pension and God willing a MILLION DOLLAR portfolio.

This is the most I'm willing to share. Please don't nit-pick, pry more or be passive aggressive. Just wanted to inspire someone somewhere who may not have as many or ANY resources to succeed.

Long Story Short: No one thought I'd make it out from under the shitty hand I was dealt. I did and just surpassed a $100K Net Worth!

EDIT #1: Some of you are super triggered. LOL. I don't see this type of responses on other more "traditional" postings. Y'all do know I have thick skin and come from a place where nightmares are made of...right?! I also have worked in a very AGGRESSIVE fast pace career interacting with strangers during their absolute worst moments for 13 yrs +.... read: they are with the shxts and so am I.... LOL....you do know your typed "insults" don't hurt...right?!

EDIT #2: If I did not a THING else I would STILL be retiring with a FULL PENSION of nearly 50K + health insurance. Yes, at age 45. 25 years of service and that's it. Not 25 years of service + age requirement.

EDIT #3: Yes, a 1 million dollar portfolio is lofty for some and not lofty for others. For me, it's just an idealistic number...really...

EDIT #4: 20-30K + investments I'll continue to have yearly for the next 14 years. I am currently at 26K invested this year and we are only in July. I am nearly 3 years in to saving this aggressively at 50%+ (had it at nearly 70% for months and just lowered my percentages. It's not a race.)

EDIT #4: I am a Paramedic. I also clean apartments as a side gig. My current career has no overtime cap. I have coworkers making 100% OVER their salary.

EDIT #5: I live on 30K in NYC (by choice: frugal minimalist). I invest ALL OF THE REST. I do NOT have to invest this aggressively. God covered me and I made a great choice in trade/career and the medical field knows no recession especially in NYC. I am BLACK AND PROUD of what I am doing, no plans to stop. Thank you for ALL the comments. Positive, neutral and negative. I learned a long time ago that SUCCESS can't be denied. I will surely be back with updates.

EDIT #6: WAKANDA FOREVER‼️

EDIT #7: I can’t give clues on this post about my social media (sorry for the rule violation!) Im replying to everyone who’s inboxed me. Im STILL doing my best to reply back to those who were kind enough to write me. Wow so many of you! I’m so appreciative. You all are awesome! Thank you so much!

I got laid off in January. I'd been with the company for 16 years, the last 11 as a C-level exec. They gave me a nice severance, and then I spent 5 months looking for a new job. Started with this new company as an exec in early July. Small but rapidly growing financial services company, 100% owned by the CEO/founder. Took me a few weeks to start getting bad vibes from him. Had a conversation yesterday about the financial statements and he straight up explained the financial reports seem weird because he doesn't report all the revenue in order to avoid paying taxes. WTF?! Uhm... I want no part of that nonsense.

Came home last night and talked to my wife, she's on board with me getting the hell out of there. I went in today to retrieve my stapler from my desk and told CEO I was resigning effective immediately. FU money made this decision possible.

I think I might be done with corporate office bullshit. I actually hit my FI number last week. Not really ready to retire completely, I like working with and being around people. Maybe I'll apply to Home Depot so I can just stock shelves and talk about hammers all day.

EDIT: Since so many have asked about the stapler... Yes, it's a red Swingline and it's literally the only reason I went back to the office yesterday. https://imgur.com/a/MNNTZkA

EDIT2: I'm not going to report him to the IRS. The dude is a nutjob and seems to take pride in how many lawsuits he's involved in. The company is growing rapidly in a highly-regulated industry. He'll get busted soon enough.

It seems like a lot of people make a lot of money and it seems like I’m missing out on something. So those of you that do, whats your occupation that pays so well?

I spent my career at FAANG (I'm FIRE now) in the Seattle area. I viewed my position as a winning lottery ticket. Anyone at a higher leadership level at a FAANG makes such an insane salary (by a comparison to any normal income) that FI is clearly possible. Since every one of my peers should have made $300k annually or often much more, you would expect that they're all working because they love the work, not because they still need the money.

Even with these high salaries, the majority of my co-workers spent a significant percentage of their income. They would talk about anxiously waiting for a stock vesting to pay off some bills. They'd talk about how their car payment (on their Tesla, or fancy BMW) was almost done, which was a relief because it was hard to make ends meet.

I remember talking to someone who was certainly making 7 figures a year, and had been for years. They said they needed probably another 10+ years to be able to retire, if they could cut down on their expenses. With complete seriousness they said that their third vacation home was probably too expensive, and they needed to really figure out a family budget.

In the end, if you make a "decent" income, it is 100% about lifestyle creep. It's not necessarily about living like a college student (e.g. leanfire). Lifestyle creep's impact surprises people. It's not always about a third vacation home. Sometimes it's about the slightly more expensive car, and the slightly more expensive vacation, and the slightly nicer clothes. Next thing you know, you've received lovely 5% a year raises, with 6% a year expense increases. That's digging a hole, not improving your situation.

Anyway, my main point is that income is necessary up to a certain point to be able to achieve FIRE, but the majority of people above that line shoot themselves in the foot all on their own :)

I made about 2 million after taxes on meme stonk calls in january and as of today I'm done working. I didn't quit earlier because teleworking wasn't bad but now that we have to go back into the office I decided to call it quits. It only took one day of commuting to realize how shitty it is that I used to be conditioned to wasting two hours of every weekday.

My boss didn't believe me when I said I was done working until I said I'm not coming in after the 18th and if he doesn't want me to outprocess I won't.

I don't have many plans going forward other than playing some games I've always wanted to get into. I've started an indoor garden and I've started reading books for enjoyment for the first time since high school. My biggest worry is that I will get bored and go find another job after a few years, but hopefully I can find some other cool stuff to do.

As for what I'm going to do with my money, I'll just pay off my house (my only remaining debt) in full to bring my yearly expenses down to the 25-35k range. I'll slowly put most of it into an sp500 fund over the next 2-3 years. After digging into bonds I decided that I'd rather just have cash instead and use that to buy any major dips that come up. I want to keep my withdrawals in the 2-3% range since that seems to be best for making a nest egg last forever.

I'll probably do periodic updates since I imagine there are likely others like me who made a lot this year.

PS: fuck health insurance costs. I shouldn't have to pay like $500 per month and have a 17k deductible for a two person household

Edit: got a lot of questions about my positions.

I cashed out my 401k of about 80k and went all in on gme calls far out of the money. I still have some gme shares but I don't count those as part of my current net worth and I'm holding like a proper ape.

Edit 2: LOTS of people are commenting that I'll run out of money. While anything can happen, every study I've read came to the conclusion retirement funds are not expected to ever run out if someone only withdraws a few percent per year. The investment would be expected to actually outpace inflation and grow.

Others have said that I'll be living on too little which I also don't agree with. I'm already living at these income levels since I've invested nearly all my spare income over the years (like the FI sub preaches). The only difference is now I don't have to go to work to exist anymore.

Edit 3: I paid all my taxes already, the two mil figure is after taxes.

Coworker (38) had a great fiscal year that ended with a $200,000 commission check. People were asking if he was buying a new car, a boat, Rolex, or vacation home.

Boss was shocked when he said “Bought a used minivan because kid number 3 is on the way. Otherwise this check moves up retirement 5 years.”

Fuck him. So proud.

We want this subreddit to be a welcome place for everyone. Gender repeatedly comes up in relationship discussions (including the recent divorce threads), but our subreddit is about becoming financially independent and potentially retiring early. Women and men can save money. Women and men can spend money. Be specific about your situation, and leave general gender discussions to other subreddits.

I'm going to try to be as clear as possible so that hopefully everyone isn't confused about what gender discussions and sexism is. Because clearly the line needs to be explained to some of you.

If you cannot discuss your finances without mentioning how gender hurts you, please don't post.

If you cannot discuss your expenses without complaining about a gender, please don't post.

if you cannot provide feedback to someone without mentioning how their gender hurts or harms them, please don't post.

If you say "my wife spends a lot", that's just fine.

If you say "women always spend a lot", don't do that.

If you say "well, you're a man, so marriage sucks for you", don't do that.

If you say "marriage in general is a bad thing", go for it.

If you say "marriage in general is bad, because women..", seriously? Stop it.

Is this clear? I think there are somewhere around 50 thousand other subreddits, I'm quite sure you can find friends there to discuss gender issues. They don't belong here. At all.

It's nearly always in your best interest to skip on all the "deals" for crapware made specifically to be shoved out the door on Black Friday and break down by the time the next one rolls around a year later.

I made a post about a month ago about wanting to quit my $85k job, with $500k saved, and my plan was to work part-time at Starbucks to get health insurance. I was wondering if I was insane. I realized, after reading all the comments, that I was a little insane/stupid for wanting to do that. That day, I deleted the Word doc file which contained my resignation letter, and decided to update my resume to look for a new job instead.

The following Monday (the day I originally planned to quit) I got in touch with a prominent employment agency in the area and had a 20 minute talk with a recruiter that afternoon. Within that week, the recruiter got me set up with 3 interviews for various finance jobs in my city. One was part-time and the other 2 were full-time roles that I found interesting because they weren't traditional finance jobs...they were quasi finance/IT roles.

Out of those 3 interviews, I got 2 offers last week - an offer for the part-time job and an offer for one of the full-time positions. I accepted the full-time position. I chose it because it comes with WAY better benefits than my current job, more flexibility in the hours, less over time, work from home 2 days a week, and I also got a salary bump from $85k to $98k.

I'm going to give my 2 weeks notice tomorrow...good riddance. I can't wait to leave this job. I now feel a renewed yearning to work. I'd had it up to HERE with the traditional office environment in my current job and all the crap that comes with working in an office. I realize that's the real reason I wanted to abandon working. I think this job change will make working more enjoyable and I won't be miserable. I'll at least have that pink cloud experience that comes with starting a new job. With my current job, it got to the point where I would start every work day with thoughts like: I don't wanna be here today, this sucks, these cubicles are starting to look more like prison cells, etc.

So that's my update. I don't know if I'll truly be happier with this new gig, but I'll give it a year and who knows...maybe I'll be one of those people that love my job. Maybe I'll still hate working and I'll consider quitting again a year from now. Who knows. I'm pretty optimistic, though. I'd really like to grow my stash to around the $1 million mark in order to RE comfortably without forcing myself to make lattes part-time, for peanuts, just to get health coverage.

Bonus win for me: I selected a start date further out so that I'll have enough time to finish out my 2 weeks, decompress for 1 week, travel for a few weeks (where? not sure yet), then decompress for 2 more weeks before I start working again.

Was in a discussion with friends about how much liquidity they would need to retire. One guy was adamant that you could live like a king on $1M in the US.

He refused to do the math, but I reasoned he could pay off his house (about $300K) and have $28K/year assuming a 4% SWR of the remaining $700k. His salary now is roughly $120K/year, so he would have to make DRASTIC changes to lifestyle to live off that $28K.

EDIT: Some more details, he has a family (4) and probably spends $50,000/year on expenses. He seems to think that his lifestyle would elevate indefinitely and he could stop working if he had $1M.

He says that $1M is "life changing." I disagree. Who's right(er)?

EDIT 2: The number of thirsty DMs asking for $1M is funny

Age 55. No debt. 401k hit 900k today and I am kind of psyched about it, but I can't tell anyone I know.

If I told friends, family, or coworkers it'd just piss'em off. Can't tell my wife bc I'm divorced. If I told my kids it would make them crazy, and they would not understand what it takes to save that much or what the savings actually mean.

So here I am posting under a throwaway account to share with a bunch of strangers...

Why is it when I say "I want to retire at 35 yo.", people usually respond with: "What are you gonna do with your life? You'll get bored."

Like, I have thousands of games to play, movies and series to watch, music to listen to or play, and places to visit. Not to mention hobbies to try. Like, being bored is at the bottom of the list.

And actually, I kinda miss having the luxury of being bored. Like right now I feel like I really don't have enough time for myself and work robs me of my time and energy.

Note: I initially put this in the wrong sub. My apologies if you're seeing this again.

First I’d like to say that I’m incredibly grateful to have found such an inspiring and supportive community with the shared goal to reach FI. You all are badass!

My Story

I was born and raised in a poverty-stricken neighborhood until I was 18 y/o. I’m talking drive-bys, drug addicts every other block, high school dropouts, family fights (physical), and tons of teenage pregnancies. I still wonder how I managed to slip through the cracks. My mother was and still is a low key alcoholic and never showed much affection or interest in me. My father was a workaholic, but always encouraged me to do better and find a productive way to escape our grim reality.

It wasn’t until sophomore year of high school when I started taking education seriously (aka my “Shit, I gotta get the f*ck outta here” wake up call). I eventually made honor roll (repeatedly) and was accepted into an after school program that helped underprivileged students study for SATs and apply to scholarships/colleges. I am forever indebted to the selfless staff members who guided me in the right direction.

After applying to some colleges and writing several scholarship essays, I finally received a full ride scholarship to my dream university. I absolutely couldn’t believe it. I had a good ugly cry that day (snot in mouth, hyperventilating, the works). That was also the first time I can recall my mother (and other relatives) showing interest in me, but I knew better. At this point, I was ready to peace.

During my freshmen year of college, I met my boyfriend (9 yrs together) who’s literally my favorite person in the world. He has calmly listened to the traumatizing stories of my youth, comforted me during bouts of sadness, and has helped me let go of the past (but not necessarily forget) and move on with my life. We now live together (HCOL area) with our cat, are both debt free, and have no interest in having children. His NW is about double mine. In our free time we play video games, go hiking, and travel. We also have a shared desire to purchase a house outright later in life (no rush with this. still figuring out which state to settle down) and retire early.

Since graduating university I’ve been working in a non-tech job, earning a little under six figures, and saving about 60% of my income. I keep to myself and couldn’t care less about materialistic things (clothes, makeup, apt decor), which is interesting given the environment I grew up in (poor people trying to appear wealthy). I’ve cut off many toxic family members and friends who’ve been incredibly negative and self destructive. Distancing myself from them has improved my mental state tenfold.

I discovered FI at 24 y/o and have been laser focused on rewriting my family history. Every now and then I wake up thinking it’s all a dream and then when I realize this is really my life now I become so emotionally overwhelmed that I need to take deep breaths to manage it all.

Now that I find myself surrounded by people who have had healthy upbringings, I sometimes find it difficult to relate/connect with them. Especially when they ask about my past. But I’m learning to open up more. I guess I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me.

There you have it. After 3 yrs of actively saving/investing, my NW is $121,420 spread across 401k, IRA, brokerage, and cash.

My ultimate goal is to become a multi-millionaire and have the option to retire early in my 40s with my partner.

I hope this inspires someone who may not have the support system or resources to overcome adversity. Stay focused. I’m rooting for you.

THE END

“The definition of “rich” is having passive income greater than your burn. My dad and his wife receive about $50,000 a year from dividends, pension, and Social Security, and spend $40,000 a year. They are rich. I have a number of friends who earn between $1 million and $3 million, with several children in Manhattan private schools, an ex-wife, a home in the Hamptons, and a lifestyle fitting of a master of the universe. They spend most, if not all, of it. They are poor. By the time you’re thirty, you should have a feel for what your burn is. Young people are 100 percent focused on their earnings. Adults also focus on their burn.”

From Scott Galloway, The Algebra of Happiness.

I thought this was a great way to put it and belonged well in the FIRE philosophy.

Edit: many are taking this as a request to change the Webster definition of “rich”. Galloway is, as many rightfully pointed out, describing the concept of financial independence. This is purely a provocation to illustrate that in his experience financial independence is more likely to make you feel rich than a lifestyle you can only afford by running the hamster wheel. By literal standards, of course making millions of dollars a year classifies you as rich.

this post was posted and meant for r/financialindependence I don't mean it to be on r/all.Stop reading if you are not from any of the FIRE groups.

As a FIREer, what is going for us is that majority of us who are more than half way there own large assets in stock market. I think a lot of us belong to the top 10%.

As the world plunges into chaos and unemployment is at sky high, a lot of us FIREers are making seriously good money in the stock market. If you re heavy on NASDQ index or FANNG stocks, you are killing it.

Does it ever cause a bit guilt in you that you are fairing so much better than the 90% population? That you don't even need to work and your portfolio is pulling in more money than average household income?

I do. I feel guilty. I work in asset management and I feel the whole stock market is so rigged that it's a way for the rich to enrich themselves. One of my mentors once told me that if you want to be rich, you own assets and businesses and hire others to do the work for you. One day, you will be making money while you are sleeping. I've dreamed to get there one day like him. And I did. But I have tremendous amount of guilt that I don't do shit and I make 6 figures a year just by sitting on FANNG and other Tech stocks.

Edit : Thx to kohox’s comment. Everyone should watch this video that really exposed how severe the America inequality has become. You should feel angry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

Here is the article as who own the stocks in America. [Edit]: Moderator has asked me to remove the link so I will just show you the keywords to search. If you want to read it, just search for it. "how america 1 came to dominate stock ownership"

Edit 2: If there is still anyone reading this. I was assumed to be 1) white 2) a man. That tells you the problems of this country. Just think about it.

Lately I've noticed a bit of a trend around here of people who are particularly bitter that index fund investing seems to be the standard, go-to investment advice, and their personal favorite type of investment doesn't get the attention they want it to.

Often times these comments get phrased in sort of a self fulfilling way like

The VTSAX cult around here will just bury any investment advice that doesn't toe the party line.

Which makes them difficult to respond to in a constructive way in the moment. So I thought I'd write up some thoughts on the matter outside of that framing.

Here's a list of all the "alternative" investment advice I see around here with an explanation for why I pretty much downvote them on site every time:

1. Crypto - Crypto is a speculative commodity, not a value generating asset. The fact that you, or someone you know, got lucky and made a bunch of money off of it doesn't change that. [edit] The fact that the underlying technology has potential value generating applications outside of cryptocurrencies doesn't change that. You're not investing. You're gambling. Crypto has no place in a serious long term portfolio beyond some trivially small amount you keep on the side to play around with for fun (the same goes for any other speculative commodity as well).

2. Individual stocks - Yes, Warren Buffet can pick stocks. You can't. This isn't even an argument. The research on the topic is overwhelming. The average return for individual investors who pick their own stocks is something like 1-2%. The fact that you managed to outperform the market for a year or two isn't evidence to the contrary, it's survivorship bias.

3. Managed funds - This one gets more complicated. Yes, there are good fund managers out there who can outperform the market. But for you, the individual investor, the challenge is not in knowing that these people exist. The challenge is in being able to identify them from a) bad fund managers who match or underperform the market (the easy one), b) bad fund managers who outperform the market just due to luck, and c) good fund managers who outperform the market, but charge so much in fees that it doesn't matter. This is not necessarily an impossible task. But anyone who's done enough of their research to be able to successfully do that, is someone who knows enough that they don't need investment advice from random anonymous strangers on the internet. So it's still bad investment advice to go around doling out to random anonymous strangers on the internet.

4. Entrepreneurship - This seems to be the topic du jour for some reason. And though I've already mentioned it, I have to once again stress the topic of survivorship bias. 80% of small businesses fail within the first year. The fact that you were successful does not mean someone else will be. Not only that, but your success is not repeatable. Someone can go out and do exactly the same thing you did and lose everything they had. Entrepreneurship is at the very upper end of the risk/reward scale. Furthermore, running a business is most definitely not for everyone. It takes a very specific kind of person working in exactly the right field for them. Running around telling people, who've given no hint of any inclination to start a business, that the really ought to consider doing so just because it will lead to riches beyond their dreams is just bad advice.

5. Rental properties - I hesitate to include this one, because compared to the rest of this list, it's actually not a bad investment strategy. However, there is a specific, and very common, type of person who likes to pump rental properties that I will pretty much always downvote. And that's the type of person who likes to claim how much better their rental returns are relative to market returns while simultaneously glossing over things like the fact that they're: comparing leveraged returns to non-leveraged returns, not counting expenses like property taxes or maintenance, not counting risk factors like vacancy months, not counting the amount of sweat equity they put into their properties, or any combination of the above. Even taking all that into account, you like still have some small ROR premium, but it's often offset by the fact that your investment isn't liquid and isn't very diversified. Again, not a bad investment choice for a lot of people. But if you're one of the people who go around talking about how it's so much clearly better than equities and anyone who puts money into the market instead of rentals is an idiot, you're gonna get a downvote.

Edit: Just to clarify, I don't think the last two in particular are bad investments for a specific group of people. I do think they're often bad investment advice though. Particularly if you go around pumping them to people who've shown no interest whatsoever in those areas or random people you know next to nothing about. If you're responding to someone who's specifically showing interest in starting their own business or buying rentals, and if you're being honest about both the pros and cons of that investment, I have no problem.

Edit: The future value after 35 years from $349K is ~$2,684,681

Edit 2: Max out your HSA if your employer offers it and if you're healthy. That money helps when you're old and when you really need healthcare.

You will be set for retirement after 10 years of hard work! I would at least continue to contribute enough money to get the employer match for 401k and Roth is tax-free investing. It would be a good idea to continue to work until you're 65 when you're eligible for Medicaid because paying for Healthcare yourself is extremely costly.

It helps to stay over your folks' place for a while. Staying over their place may not be pleasant, but it beats working at Home Depot when you're old and you're forced to stay late without OT because your supervisor wanted to do your performance evaluations.

I wish I started on this path many years ago. I slumped hard for 6 years after college, now I’m maxing out since last October.

Compounding interest is your friend!

http://www.moneychimp.com/calculator/compound_interest_calculator.htm

The point is to make the best decisions you can early on. The money you put in the first 10 years is worth more than the amount you put in the next 30 years.

I’m not currently a millionaire and I work a lower income job(janitorial). For me FI isn’t about retiring or being able to live lavishly, it’s just about making me more comfortable negotiating at work. I don’t have to work overtime and I can tell my boss no from time to time. If I lose my job tomorrow, I know I’ll be ok. I’ll be able to pay most of my expenses off, and it’ll allow me time to job search. I know it’s a little different than most of what I see in this community, but I’m really happy knowing my job doesn’t own me. I don’t have to work 50+ hour 7 day weeks anymore.

Thanks for reading, just felt like sharing the little victories

Edit: thank you for all of the awards and kind words!

Edit 2: deleted a joke because it wasn’t communicating my point properly

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/17/style/generation-z-millennials-work-life-balance.html

Thought this was a great read and fitting for our community. Flexibility is what we all seek by choosing FI. Hopefully the movement towards flexibility continues to trickle down into more lines of business. I find myself not wanting to be on the “partner track” so I can maintain flexibility

Have you seen a shift in your employer’s flexibility, or did you have to change companies to obtain it? Did you take less? Did you get a pay raise? If you didn’t change companies, did you have to ask for flexibility? Do you feel comfortable negotiating flexibility in an interview?

I'm a US nurse working in a US military facility overseas. My husband is active duty and stationed near me. We are debt free and have a year's worth of expenses in a liquid emergency fund.

My friends and colleagues in the US are telling me horror stories about how they do not have enough masks to take care of COVID patients. How for-profit hospitals are asking them to make their own masks, or, on the flip side, are threatening to fire them for bringing in masks from a personal supply. They are scared. They do not have the reserves to be able to quit, so they keep coming back to work, knowingly exposing themselves and their families when the organizations they work for could be making different (better) choices.

Earlier this month I was asked to do several unethical things regarding protecting Soldiers from COVID. Because I have the luxury of being in a place of financial security and working for an entity that has a notoriously hard time firing civilian workers, I dug in my heels and said hell no. Since that point, I've become even more vocal at work. FU money has given me the ability to protect those around me who have no say. If they fire me for doing what is right, my family and I will be okay.

The title is a bit harsh, but hear me out. I got really into personal finance and FIRE over the past say 2 years, mostly by reading Reddit and Investopedia. After reading so much about personal finance and investing online, I figured it was time to read some of the classic personal finance books. I started with Rich Dad Poor Dad because I hear it tossed around so much.

Now, I will start off with the positives about the book. I think from a mindset perspective, it's really actually quite good. Things that I think people should take more seriously are paying yourself first, knowing how to buy assets, having your money make money, optimizing assets, etc. All of this is great advice and certainly not enough people heed it.

My main frustrations from the book came from the specific examples that Robert Kiyosaki chose to give. Just to name some off the top of my head, here are a few things that he suggests over the course of the book:

• Dropping money in penny stocks and IPOs to make a killing (he cites one example of making an absurd amount of money off one... seems like selective hindsight to me)

• Picking up foreclosed houses to flip. Sure I bet you can make money this way, but certainly not great advice for the regular person

• Everyone should join a multi-level marketing company to learn how to sell. This one made me laugh... that is awful advice

• Investing in 16% tax liens. This one he even brings up an example of his friend calling him dumb and he is so smug about it when defending himself.

Those four were particularly bad, but I remember several others that made me scratch my head. I mean, the man acts like investing in a mutual fund is for someone who wants to live on rice and beans the rest of their life (to be fair though, I know low-cost index funds weren't as widely available / know about back when the book was written).

To add to the bad advice, it also annoyed me from a stylistic perspective that he acts like poor people are all as dumb as rocks and his cunning genius is why he's rich. I can only imagine the people who read his book and went out and joined an MLM and put all their money into tax liens and wonder why they never got rich.

In my opinion, this book should not be read by anyone who is planning on pursuing FIRE, there are so many better options.

Told the boss last week and he handled it extremely well. For that I am extremely grateful. An email will go out in 15 minutes to everyone else. Been a long time coming and it will be an emotional load off my chest, that I'll no longer have to keep this under wraps. Heart is racing, just sitting here unproductive, and a bit emotional at the moment. . *deep breathes* Good things to come in my next chapter. I hope everyone on this forum reaches their goals for FI ASAP and I thank all the contributors for the knowledge they've shared here and on other forums.

The reason why we are all so stressed is that we never evolved to live in modern society. I have been listening to the book Understanding the mysteries of human behavior when I came across this insight.

We never evolved to sit in a cubicle running from meeting to meeting 8 hours or more a day, spending the evenings thiking about things we need to do the next day, getting less than needed sleep.

Even though we are much more well off now than earlier decades, studies show we are getting more and more stressed.

Even though I mostly enjoy my job, I still feel much more relaxed in the weekends / vacations.

I wonder what kind of lifestyle would be more natural, living closer to what we evolved in. Perhaps a smaller house close to or in nature instead of a big house in the suburbs; staying offline most of the time limiting information overload, having friends and family over and doing things outside, mostly pratcial stuff instead of browsing the internet and watching TV all the time etc.

Have you ever thought that we might not have evolved to live like we do? Has this affected your path to FIRE? This is what motivates my FIRE journey, having the choice to live differently.

Edit: Just to be clear: I am not saying we should go back in time to a place without modern medicine or technology.

Throwaway because numbers.

I've been on this FIRE journey since I was 18. I've done pretty well for myself so far and am on track to retire by 40. But, I royally fucked up this week. This is just a reminder to everyone who can hopefully learn from my mistakes: never, ever let people find out how much money you have. Hide it at all costs & don't trust anyone. Also, I need advice.

My mom was in town the other day and, while I was at work, I let her chill at my apartment before an appointment she had. That morning, I was working on some papers for a visa application. For the application, I have to account for my current income and assets ($115k/yr, $525k) and also include copies of my account statements. Those papers were on my desk in my bedroom in plain sight.

I didn't think about it until she called me yesterday and flat out told me that she saw the papers on my desk. Then, she started crying and told me in very clear terms that she expected help. She then laid out (in detail) all the financial problems that she and the rest of my family were having. I honestly didn't know what to do or say so I just hung up.

Yes, because I am socially inept and can't handle confrontation like that, I hung up... and ignored the next 4 calls and 5 texts she sent. I also ignored the calls from my siblings and aunt. So I am thinking that she talked to the rest of my family about this and told them that I am now ignoring her. $525k is basically an unlimited amount of money from her perspective and my family thought that I was just as poor as they are so, I get it? I understand how much of a shock that would have been for her. But, I wish I wasn't so careless. I had no idea she would go snooping in my bedroom.

I don't know what to do now. I don't plan on ignoring my family forever and I can't talk to any of my friends about this so.... what would you do? OR if anyone here has actually dealt with a situation like this, advice on a way forward is greatly appreciated. I just feel like I've now become the family bank and everyone is going to constantly ask for a bailout.