About the acronym (and the story behind it):
FIRE = Financial Independence, Retire Early
So how does one obtain Financial Independence (FI) in order to retire early (if that in fact is ones goal)? From what I’ve gathered by the FIRE community, there are three predominant dogmas:
- Start by saving as much of your income as you possibly can – preferably 50% or more!
- Lower your living expenses as much as possible (live frugally, don’t own a car, don’t “splurge” on unnecessary luxuries like deodorant and personal hygiene. Wait, maybe not that frugal!)
- Invest your savings continuously
Okay, so that sounds simple enough, right?
Well, there’s a huge community of FIRE people out there, who are actually having great success following these dogmas. I see people retiring as early as in their 20s.
The math behind the idea is pretty simple too. In order to quit your day-job, and live off of your savings, you must accumulate a nest egg corresponding to 25x your yearly expenses, and then you’re golden…
So, regardless of your income – the key to your success, is your expenses. (Big surprise, right? No?). OK, I’m not going to bore you with anymore math and numbers – so now comes the difficult part.
HOW in the world am I going to accumulate a pile of money, corresponding to 25x my annual expenses?
You’ll find several answers to this question, in the FIRE community. I’m not here to sell you a certain asset or investing strategy. That’s for you to find out!
I am however going to tell you, how I intend to do it…
(STAY TUNED! – MORE TO COME)
*And so, a few weeks went by*
When I originally started this post, I didn’t really know how to end it, so I decided to leave it for a while, and then continue it, once I had a more clear vision of where I was going with “THE FIRE”.
After having spend a few weeks on making my first investments, I now have a little more clear picture, of how I want to try to build a portfolio, which could ultimately land me in early retirement. There are several proven methods out there (see for example MrFireStation.com), but what I’ve come to realize, is that YOU have to come up with YOUR strategy. Whether that be stocks, indexes, bonds, real estate, crowdlending, or a mix is all up to you to decide. Start small, try it out and see what works for you. I’ve tried stocks before, and I’ve recently invested in a handful of different crowdlending platforms as well, and it didn’t really take. My heart is definitely with real estate.
The problem with real estate, is that the “entry ticket” is fairly expensive. There a however several ways that you can dabble in real estate, without having to sit on a huge pile of cash first. One way, is what I’d like to call crowd real estate, like for example brickshare.dk offer. I’ve also put a little money into bulkestate.com and envestio.com (which is a mixed crowdlending platform – but they also have real estate projects). (EDIT: Envestio turned out to be bogus, but other platforms like crowdestate.eu and estateguru.co offers similar (actual real) deals.)
Brickshare (now known as The-Many) is long term real estate investments, which pay a dividend each year, while Bulkestate and Envestio is short-term (1-2 years) real estate loans, typically to fund the start of the development process. There are probably other similar sites, but those are the ones I’ve become acquainted with so far.
Then there’s the rental properties. I believe it’s here my future lies, but like I said, you’ve got to have a good pile of cash, before you can really enter that realm. Which is why I’ve decided to stick with the crowd real estate market short-term, and go for the rental properties long-term.
So for now, I’m going to start saving – and investing slowly in the crowd real estate market, until I hopefully one day have a big enough nest egg to buy myself a nice big building (with 4-6 rental apartments in it). (EDIT: Hello Property #1!)