F.I.R.E. movement stands for financial independence, retire early.
The goal is that your assets can cover your living expenses for the rest of your
life.
I'm Jillian John's room.
Me and my husband live outside glacier national park in Montana with our five
kiddos.
We've got a four year old to seven year olds and 11 year old and a 12 year old,
and my husband and I left our nine to five jobs just over four years ago now.
We became financially independent, which meant that.
Our passive income covered all of our living expenses indefinitely.
So when we got married, we had combined at $55,000 in debt between student loan
credit cards, medical debt.
We were both working full time jobs with long hours in stressful situations.
We never made $100,000 a year, but someone gave me this little piece of advice.
We should try to save one of our income.
So the very first year we were both in college, we only made $12,000 but we tried
to save half.
And at first we put that towards all of that debt repayment.
It took us about two years to pay off our debt, and then we just.
Kept saving.
We built up an emergency fund and we started investing in our 401k accounts or
Roth IRAs.
If you put money into your Roth IRA, you're going to be able to pull those
contributions every year.
So the great thing about early retirement is you can be really a lot more flexible
in your tax planning.
And eventually we bought rental properties.
So we had been on this journey towards financial independence for awhile, and we
were getting really close.
And we had one biological kiddo.
We did adopted three kids, and then I found out I was pregnant and it was really
a catalyst.
I just kind of felt like I was drowning and I had a little bit of a mommy meltdown
and said, honey, we need a new plan.
So we started by just taking a year off.
As kind of an experiment of do we like early retirement?
Do the numbers actually work?
And one year turned into two years and two years has now become kind of indefinite.
We don't spend a ton of money.
We spend on average about $30,000 a year, which isn't a lot for a family of seven.
But our lifestyle is so much richer than it ever was when we were making $70,000 a
year.
We tend to travel for about 10 to 12 weeks every year.
We have a Kimber.
We love going to national parks.
We own a camping spa in Montana that we park our camper out for the summer and
just kind of swim in the river and go hiking every day.
When we go on these trips and when we're gone for long periods of time, we're able
to rent out our house on Airbnb or to longterm sub letters, and it typically
covers 100% of our travel costs.
Well, it can be complicated and a little intimidating at first.
The reality is.
I have people start with a very simple plan and the plan is grow the gap and the
gap is the difference between your income and your expenses and then guard the gap
and guarding the gap might be paying down your debt, investing, maxing out your
401k, maxing out your IRAs.
Because reality is once you have all these assets, you'll figure out the rest of it
over time.
Like you don't have to have all the answers.
I remember we've saved our first $10,000 like I was blown away.
When we saved our first hundred thousand dollars so every good decision you make
creates more flexibility and more freedom in your life.
Our kids love us being home and being available, and honestly, we're just more
happy parents now.