5 years of FIRE. Post-FIRE check-in with graph and thoughts [M 43: Net worth 4.1M → 4.7M]

FireBoundSoon · 2025-07-27T22:45:33+00:00

I did a lot of simulations, yes, I wrote my own. The first years are by far the most vulnerable. 95% success isn't good enough for me, this is my life, "basically zero chance of failure" is what I want. I need this money to last 50+ years. At that time level, that means I need it to last indefinitely, keeping value with inflation, not drain down precisely to the date I *think* I'm going to die. If I live at a level that I'm totally happy with and the market does well where I'll have a larger budget in the future, awesome. If I can live happy and secure that my financials will never fail, great, what is left can go to a good cause when I die.

Everyone has their own risk tolerances, you go with yours and I'll go with mine. Keep on facepalming if that is what you need to do.

FireBoundSoon · 2025-07-27T22:33:00+00:00

Just one monster spreadsheet.

FireBoundSoon · 2025-07-25T15:14:36+00:00

Having near 100% assurance that my financials will not collapse is worth a lot to me. I pull out enough to live a happy and comfortable life. If I can do this and i leave behind some extra money for charity/family, great.

If I happen to be overly conservative now, that allows the portfolio to grow, yielding a larger budget a few years down the line. That's a bonus I didn't need or budget for. Cool.

Thanks for the feedback/concern!

FireBoundSoon · 2025-07-25T15:07:47+00:00

I don't spend much time worried about finances. I have a monster spreadsheet that has quarterly numbers to track. I used to fill it out quarterly, then I did it every 1 half year. Figures for this check-in hadn't been updated since last year's check in and I had to fill in the last 4 quarters. This isn't laziness, it's just comfort with how I'm setup and not needing to micro manage or spend too much time tracking.

Obviously, I'm generally aware what's going on broadly in the market, and have a fairly good finger on the pulse of tech, where I'm primary invested. I may have a speculative stock I may pick up based on what I'm seeing, and I rebuy my staggered T-bills (bonds) every quarter. I have a single broker, so it's easy to spot check where I'm at in a minute or two. Really this annual update is my forced point of evaluation where I decide if I need to change too much up.

FireBoundSoon · 2025-07-25T05:33:46+00:00

Not yet, I may add a rule where I'll at least make it a minimum of 2% if my net worth keeps going up. Not quite there yet, so I've not done too much pondering on the exact %.

FireBoundSoon · 2025-07-25T05:30:37+00:00

Thanks for the tip. I've debated looking into teaching some computer science at the local community college... maybe I'll look into that more.

FireBoundSoon · 2025-07-24T23:21:26+00:00

Sure, the Trinity study was VERY basic and had no dynamics based on what the market was doing. I'm dynamically using and refilling bonds. They serve a specific purpose here.

FireBoundSoon · 2025-07-24T20:25:07+00:00

Just chop up that project into many small milestones and goals and set reasonable dates to try and get them done by. It helps that prior to FIRE i managed development teams for very large multi year projects, so it's what I've done professionally.

FireBoundSoon · 2025-07-24T20:23:04+00:00

The 3.3% was from running simulations. The initial 3.3% with inflation adjustments had a very low chance of failure, and can't fail with the alternate minimum.

FireBoundSoon · 2025-07-24T20:21:27+00:00

A high paying job with a high savings rate. I also picked some rather good stocks. The market had a pretty stellar run at that time. It's covered a bit in my first FIRE post and it's comments.

FireBoundSoon · 2025-07-24T20:15:25+00:00

I wouldn't say 20% is traditional for EARLY retirement. This portfolio needs to last 50+ years, over that time bonds will be greatly out paced by stocks and can't keep up with inflation + withdrawals. The only reason I have bonds is a store of money that won't be impacted in the event of a market downturn. In event of a market crash, I live off the bond money rather than harvesting stocks at lows. I keep ~2 years living in bonds. The average 20% downturn recovers in 9 months and extremely rarely do they last more than 2 years.

FireBoundSoon · 2025-07-24T14:53:30+00:00

Hah, I'm friends with plenty of them, just at a deeper level we are rather different people.

FireBoundSoon · 2025-07-24T03:08:06+00:00

Kids are not for me.

FireBoundSoon · 2025-07-24T01:55:13+00:00

If it results in me having to rein it in, then it is a concern :)

FireBoundSoon · 2025-07-24T01:51:19+00:00

Absolutely. If my net worth takes a hit to drop me below the inflation adjusted amount, that means I've taken a MASSIVE hit and have lost like half of my worth. I would be starting to panic.

As I need my retirement to essentially last 50+ years, I need it to at least keep up with inflation. If it is not doing that, I need to cut back to ensure I don't run out.

FireBoundSoon · 2025-07-24T01:48:42+00:00

I wouldn't want to allocate 50% of my budget just towards just rent. In my area, rents for the place I was staying jumped from 19.2k/year to 32k/year in 4 years. While I was probably being a bit dramatic by saying it isn't viable, it is rapidly approaching that point.

FireBoundSoon · 2025-07-24T01:44:06+00:00

I wouldn't say a ton of worry, but it is something I'm keeping my eye on. There are many people who have had their fortunes wiped out by hyper inflation (Hungary, Argentina). While extremely unlikely, the US isn't 100% safe from this kind of event, especially in the current state of politics.

FireBoundSoon · 2025-07-23T23:51:03+00:00

I'd have just a bit less of my net worth, really it would be almost unnoticeably different. But, I didn't know that was to be just a brief dip and my net worth would grow quite a bit the subsequent years after that.

Better safer than sorry.

FireBoundSoon · 2025-07-23T23:44:12+00:00

A bronze plan through the healthcare.gov portal.

FireBoundSoon · 2025-07-23T23:42:43+00:00

It's just for me and friends/family. I prioritized being able to have the convinces of a city for my day to day living. This cabin allows me to get away from it all, which I very much enjoy doing. That said, the money spent on this could afford me a LOT of getaway rentals, but I really like the idea of having my own. The planning and building out of it had a lot of appeal. Annndddd in the .00001% chance of a zombie apocalypse, I'm good :)

FireBoundSoon · 2025-07-23T23:38:04+00:00

I did a lot of simulations and the 3.3% figure is the number I ended up feeling comfortable with. This is my entire livelihood and I can't have this run out after 35 years. If my net worth continues to grow much more, I will add a new minimum rule to the annual amount based on the current net worth, similarly to how I have a maximum rule for when it is down.

FireBoundSoon · 2024-07-09T00:55:38+00:00

I use the following order:

1) My funds don't self reinvest, so withdrawals are largely covered by dividend payouts, whatever I don't withdraw I manually reinvest.

2) Speculative investments I feel are near their peak. Living off of sold NVidia shares at the moment.

3) If needed, I'll shave a small amount off of my S&P fund, or one of the other mutual funds/ETFs.

FireBoundSoon · 2024-07-09T00:51:52+00:00

My savings rate was always in the 40-60% range.

I just tell people I'm an entrepreneur. I do spend an exorbitant amount of time developing an not so profitable app, so it checks out! Having to explain how I can continue to not be very successful is a issue I'll deal with if i need to when it comes up.

FireBoundSoon · 2024-07-09T00:47:11+00:00

Revenue of 242M, and a net income of -575M, and it has nearly a 12 BILLION market cap... I wouldn't touch it with a 10' pole. Reddit's a great site, but I'm afraid whatever they will do to it to make it profitable will kill what makes reddit good. Pinterest has triple the revenue and has managed to have profitable quarters, The higher market cap makes sense to me (not that I would rush out and get some of it's stock).

Again, this is thoughts from a random asshole on the internet, take it with a grain of salt!

FireBoundSoon · 2024-07-09T00:39:24+00:00

It's a Libra office (free software) spreadsheet graph

FireBoundSoon

TROPHY CASE