I think FIRE is the concept that retirement is not an age.
A lot of us go through the world thinking that when we turn 65, something
magical is going to happen and you get to retire.
And that's not true because if you don't have any money, you can't stop working
when you're 65. And the flip side of that, you don't need to wait until
you're 65 either. If you have enough money, you can retire at 55 or 45 or 36
like I did. And so it's just kind of turning this whole idea of traditional
retirement age on its head.
My name is Jeremy Schneider.
I'm 41 years old. I live in San Diego and I reached financial independence at
36.
I grew up in southeast Michigan, outside of Detroit.
My parents were kind of middle class.
I went to college at the University of Michigan.
I studied computer science.
I was in college from 1998 to 2002 when the dotcom boom was happening,
and I would see these young people just a few years older than me who were
making millions with tech startups.
And it inspired me to start young.
And then as I was graduating from Michigan, I turned down a job offer from
Microsoft to start my own Internet company.
But I recorded my bank account the moment
the wire came through. I clicked refresh and it jumped from $100,000 or
so to over $2 million, which was pretty surreal.
And it was very abstract.
I don't really know how much money that was.
The day after the company sold, I was suddenly in integration mode with this
very nice company that just gave me millions of dollars.
It was an especially busy time and so I couldn't just like ditch and head to
Fiji. I just saw that as like a finish line that when I sold the company and
made millions, I would just like be on this beach.
I was talking to the CEO of the company that bought our company and I told him
that vision. I was like, "All right, I'm going to be on the beach."
And he asked me, "What are you going to do when you get back?"
And what he meant was, you can't spend your life on a beach, you know?
I mean, you could, but that's kind of a crappy life.
So I guess it dawned on me that I couldn't just, like, spend the rest of
my days sipping Mai Tais on the beach because that would be really boring.
I worked for the company that bought us for two years, and then in April of
2017, I quit my job and officially was retired or financially independent at
the age of 36.
And that was the year when I played video games and traveled for a year.
That first year of being unemployed or retired or whatever you want to call it.
It was just kind of like every day was the weekend.
I would always get asked like, "What do you do all day if you're not at work?"
And my answer would be like, "What do you do on Saturdays?"
It's amazing how quickly your time fills up with meeting with friends or working
out or working on projects or playing games or traveling.
And so I kept really busy and it was really fun at first.
But as the year dragged on, I found that there's something missing in my life.
There actually was a moment where I had an epiphany where a year after I retired
and played video games for a year, I was on a vacation in Mexico and
for a week I wasn't playing this game Starcraft II, which I had become very
addicted to. And I realized what a massive waste of time that was and how I
basically just gave away a year of my life to play this game.
And so I decided that I didn't want to do that anymore.
And so I came back and before I played another game, I uninstalled it cold
turkey from my computer and haven't played it ever since.
Get it out of there. At the time, it wasn't very calculated that I needed
exactly $3 million.
It was more of just a sense of over the course of two years, the growth of my
investments were outpacing my actual W-2 income.
Now, with the benefit of knowing about the FIRE movement much more in depth, I
know about the 4% rule, which says you can live on about 4% of your investment
portfolio. 4% of $3 million is $120,000, which was like twice as
much as I'd ever spent in a year.
And so I think that I was easily FIRE at $3 million.
My net worth is about $4.4 million.
$1.1 million is the value of my home you see behind me.
I was a lifelong renter until I was 38 years old.
I was actually living in my friend's garage, which was converted to an
apartment. I have a traditional IRA with about $50,000 and a new 401(k) with
my new company that's got about $15,000.
The other $3 million or so is all in a taxable account just because it didn't
fit in the tax advantaged accounts.
I think my biggest expense is
probably travel right now.
I'm just going on vacation.
Restaurants, I think I spend about $800 a month.
I don't have a mortgage. My home that you see behind me is 100% paid for.
I actually applied for a mortgage and was denied because I didn't have a job.
And so I just wrote a check and paid cash.
I don't buy things if I don't think I need them.
So, for example, if I look over to my left, I see the keyboard on my computer,
which I use every single day, which is from college.
And so people walk into my house and they see this like 1998 era keyboard and
think it's ridiculous, but it's a great keyboard and it works fine.
And so why would I spend more money if I don't need to?
I live alone, don't have any roommates or a wife just yet.
Welcome to my home.
I live here in sunny San Diego in this two-bedroom condo.
Come on, I'll show you around.
This is my living room where I watch CNBC Make It.
This is my office.
I sit here. I make Instagram posts, TikTok reels.
The kitchens over here.
When I bought this house for $712,000, everything was different.
There was a gigantic wall that came right down here.
I knocked down the wall, remodeled the kitchen from this big built-in table.
It was about $100,000 in total for the remodel.
Guest bathroom.
I actually did the tile work in that bathroom myself.
One of the few parts of the remodel.
This is the master bedroom that includes the peak view of Mission Bay in sunny
San Diego way over there in the corner.
Over here is the master bathroom.
When I bought the place, this was all pink with a tub.
And I put in a total new shower.
Tile.
One of these fancy lighted mirrors so I can look at myself every morning.
Do my daily affirmations.
And that is the house tour.
I'm going to bed.
I started an Instagram account where my plan was to share daily personal finance
and money tips.
Every single day I would get the exact same question, which is like, "How do I
get started investing?
What's a Roth IRA?
What's an index fund?
What investment do I buy?"
And then after a year and a half, it was mid 2020 and I was kind of bored during
the pandemic. And I essentially started a company by mistake by launching a paid
product. I wanted to create just a video course that walked through it that
kind of was like a brain dump from my brain to everyone who was asking these
questions. So I decided to sell the video course for $79.
And the first week of launching this course, we made like $110,000.
And so I was like, "Oh, it took me four years on my first company to make
$110,000.
So this might actually be a real business."
I do a 25% profit share.
So 25% of our profit is split among the employees based on seniority.
I have a friend, and about 10 years ago we
started a website called What's That Charge?
Which helps you identify mysterious charges on your credit card statement.
My buddy and I own it 50/50.
And so it's been live for 10 years.
I think we're going to make like $7,000 this month.
I think that I've found peace with where I'm at in life financially.
I don't feel like I need more to be happy.
And so I'm not really chasing any big financial goals.
I'm still not totally immune to ideas of like a bigger place or a vacation home
or something like that. So that might be nice if the company does well or my
investments continue to grow.
If I didn't have income from my current job, I can live forever on my
investments. I'm living way below the safe withdrawal rate from my portfolio
short of some sort of economic apocalypse in the future, which no one
can predict. But I can live forever on my investments.