life-after
The Withdrawal Rate Was Never the Whole Plan
Barista FIRE gets talked about like a consolation prize — the community's own numbers suggest it could be one of the smartest levers in the whole plan.
Diana Marshall
life-after
The Balance Keeps Going Up. That Was Never Supposed to Be the Win.
The FIRE community built an entire discipline around not spending — and now the same people who mastered it can't figure out how to stop.
life-after
The Marriage Wasn't Built for This Much Togetherness
FIRE promises a shared life back — but the literature rarely accounts for what happens when "shared" means together constantly, with no external structure and one shrinking pot of money.
life-after
The Badge Nobody Warns You About Losing
The FIRE community talks endlessly about the number and barely at all about the fact that your name tag disappears with it — and what actually fills that space once you're there.
life-after
The Twelve-Month Cliff
The euphoria of early retirement isn't a myth — it's real, and it's also the reason the crash that follows blindsides so many people who did everything right.
escape-velocity
The Day You Quit Matters More Than the Number You Hit
Negotiating severance and bridging health insurance is a logistics problem with a calendar, a contract, and a deadline — and the FIRE community keeps discovering that too late.
escape-velocity
Your Number is Only Part of the Picture
Across FIRE forums, the moment people walk away rarely lines up with hitting a portfolio target — it lines up with a partner, a breaking point, or a regret nobody modeled.
life-after
The Number You Won't Pull the Trigger At
Having enough on a spreadsheet and feeling ready to quit are two different psychological states — and the community threads reveal why the gap between them often widens right when the math says you're done.
life-after
The First Ninety Days
Early retirement doesn't feel like freedom at first — it feels like vertigo.