Financial Independence (or FIRE – Financial Independence, Retire Early) is the point at which you have accumulated enough income-producing assets to cover your living expenses indefinitely. Once you reach FIRE, you don’t have to earn an active income anymore and are free to retire if you wish to.
FIRE followers usually spend 10-15 years working and saving hard to reach this point. We refer to this path as Traditional FIRE.
Besides Traditional FIRE, there are several alternative FIRE strategies that will get you to the end goal (Financial Freedom), but that have a slightly different path. Most of these are geared towards people who don’t want to fully retire and would prefer to work part-time. For them, a more gentle semi-retirement approach is suitable. Depending on when you want to semi-retire, there are different options that use semi-retirement strategies – Coast FI and Flamingo FI are two examples.
Depending on your lifestyle goal in retirement, you could opt for Lean FIRE (suited for very frugal people who want to retire as soon as possible), Fat Fire / HIFIRE (for those who want a more comfortable retirement with lots of travel) or normal FIRE (somewhere in the middle).
As you can see there are many different options and strategies. Money Flamingo focuses on the less mainstream FIRE strategies to help you design the lifestyle you really want, before and after you reach Financial Independence. You can find an overview of our Alternative FIRE Strategies page.
And just like that, Money Flamingo turned 5 years old earlier this month! This anniversary also coincided with a few other blogging/business milestones (more on this below), so I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to reflect on how the blog has grown and evolved since I started it in 2018. I’ll also share … Read more
Today I invite you to do a little thought experiment with me. It reveals what most people get wrong on the path to FI. It will also tell you a lot about your own journey to Financial Independence. I call this thought experiment “The Road Trip”. I used it as an exercise in a workshop … Read more
Today I’ve got something a little different for you: a review of a new financial planning software developed specifically for the FIRE community. ProjectionLab was promoted on several prominent FI blogs and podcasts over the last few weeks – and for a good reason: the software is beautiful and flexible. A lot of FIRE enthusiasts … Read more
The book “Die With Zero” by Bill Perkins is fast becoming a FIRE classic – for a good reason. Many in the community have adopted a Die With Zero mindset, which goes against many of the core pillars of the standard approach to Financial Independence like delayed gratification and frugality. Instead, Die With Zero is … Read more
Want to know my numbers? This is the innocent little question I recently asked my subscribers. After all, I’ve run Money Flamingo (which is, at least in part, a financial independence/personal finance blog) for almost five years now without revealing our net worth or FIRE number. Instead, we use multiples of our expected future expenses … Read more
F.I.R.E. stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early – or does it? Sure, the basic premise behind the FIRE movement is pretty simple: Spend less than you earn (or earn more than you spend) and invest the difference. Eventually, you’ll reach Financial Independence, which will enable you to Retire Early. However – and I’ve written about … Read more
In this article, I’ll share five simple questions and some ideas to help you to move towards your ideal life (and not just towards your financial goals). Most Financial Independence enthusiasts have an annual review and goal-setting routine. We check how our investments performed over the last year, calculate our savings rate, review our spending … Read more
No matter where you are on the path to financial independence, there are many lifestyle design options you can use to create a better life for yourself and your family. They allow you to improve your life along the path to FI but are also great alternatives to early retirement once you reach your financial … Read more
Here is the standard FIRE blueprint: Step 1: Work hard, save, invest and … wait.Step 2: Reach FI, retire and sail into the sunset. We all know that’s not what usually happens (bear with me). Almost everyone (as in 99%+) of people who hit FI in their 20s, 30s, 40s and even early 50s will … Read more
One piece of feedback from the recent Money Flamingo reader survey surprised me. Many of you commented that I don’t write enough about our signature “type” of Financial Independence – Flamingo FI. The reason why I don’t write about the math and mechanics behind Flamingo FI that often is that it is a really simple … Read more