The FIRE community and my own personal situation prove you very, very wrong. It's absolutely possible for a upper middle class family to retire in their 50s, even in their 40s, if they live frugally.
The FIRE community and my own personal situation prove you very, very wrong. It's absolutely possible for a upper middle class family to retire in their 50s, even in their 40s, if they live frugally.
"Live frugally" , "FIRE" , "work in tech"
All incompatible with 99% of the upper class, neither do they want to eat ramen to retire early.
You're also one medical disaster away from being "very very wrong"
FIRE doesn't depend on having a tech job. Its all about income to expense ratio. Planning for medical events is something that gets talked to death in these communities.
How do you plan for a potential quarter million dollar medical bills over a couple of years?
Good insurance is one aspect including long term disability coverage if you haven’t retired.
That’s the thing medical expenses when young are unlikely enough insurance is a viable strategy. Long term it’s worthwhile to move to a country with a less expensive medical system. You can move basically anywhere in retirement and be better off.
Again like I have been saying, good insurance is predicated on the open market and ACA being around and not being killed by Republicans. Even if they don’t outright kill it, they are trying to put in a “death spiral” where only sick people use it and insurance companies don’t want to participate.
LTC not discriminating against pre-existing conditions is also post ACA.
In a hypothetical universe with different laws people would make different decisions, like abandoning the US. But you’re asking about medical conditions which rarely apply and laws that don’t exist. That’s not a failing of FIRE for the vast majority of people.
Further FIRE doesn’t mean crap if you get something serious and die at 23, that’s just the reality of human existence.
People didn’t abandoned the US before the ACA was the law in 2011-2012. And if there were an influx of US citizens to foreign countries, I can guarantee you other countries wouldn’t be as welcoming.
There are plenty of conditions where the difference between life and death is being able to get health care
Some did. The US expat community has been quite large for decades.
Most people didn’t do FIRE style early retirement while dealing with pre existing medical conditions. There however was plenty of expats pre ACA who very much left the country for early retirement.
US healthcare is ruinously expensive but on average it’s not particularly good if you’re in the income bracket where 1/4 million over a few years is a serious issue.
There is absolutely no significant number of Americans who left without ties to other countries. I find it rich that Americans who leave the US call themselves “ex-pats” instead of “immigrants”
There’s over 1/2 million former Americans living in Canada or the UK which doesn’t require learning a foreign language. You really can’t make those kinds of sweeping statements about populations that large. Many Americans without any prior connections fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam war for example and then made a home there.
Brit’s will also call themselves expats. https://britishexpats.com/forum/ ditto Canadians https://www.expatden.com/global/canadians-living-abroad/ Also, the US imposes taxes on Americans who leave until they renounce their citizenship on the upside they still get to vote. It’s an unusual relationship to your former country.
The same way that an employed person would plan for this. Catastrophic insurance plans put a cap on how much your medical bills can be.
An employed person since the ACA hasn’t had to worry about lifetime caps…
Oh and catastrophic insurance plans only have to cover pre-existing conditions since the ACA - which one party is actively trying to kill.
I know several people with normie jobs (not tech related or government) and normie lifestyles that saved up enough money to never need to work again by 50 while still maintaining their lifestyle. Most still work because they have no idea what to do with their time even though they don’t need to work anymore.
You can easily derive that this is possible from the median household finance statistics published by BLS, never mind the upper class. It isn’t that hard if you care to do it.
No one is doubting that it is possible to save enough to retire by the time you’re 50 - as long as the ACA and the open market is viable.
90%+ chance the person you are replying to has health insurance that will cover them in case of medical disaster.
I absolutely have health insurance, the most expensive available on my state. That doesn't protect me 100%, but what health insurance (including the ones available at most companies) does?
People who have poor money management skills believe that FIRE=Ramen and no health insurance... In fact, it's about getting a 30K car (the one I bought new 3 years ago) instead a 70K car despite having the money.
And what happens when the Republican Party gut the ACA and you have a pre-existing condition. Do you know what life was like trying to get insurance with a pre-existing condition before 2012?
Then they can just skip insurance. Most people don't need it, especially if they already have a lot of money (which is what FIRE means)
Obviously said by someone who is young and never had or knew anyone that had an expensive medical procedure like a friend who is 45 who I have known since 2003 and is a cancer survivor and now has to have open heart surgery
I don't believe your friend is most people. I have quite a few who haven't been to a doctor in decades.
So, in your 30s? My parents both had cancer in their late 50s/early 60s (including surgery / chemo) - and paid like $15 for some pain meds in Canada.
Even on a pretty good Kaiser plan, we're paying $200+ per day in the hospital, etc. On a high-deductible, more. They say they have a $1M annual limit, but that they've never enforced it. I hope we never have to find out.
But do you want to take the chance that you will never have major medical expenses between the time you retire early and you are 65 and eligible for Medicare? How many of your friends are over 50?
That plan works until it suddenly doesn't. When it doesn't it's catastrophic for your finances and your health.
If you have an extra couple million dollars above and beyond your regular retirement fund you could self-insure your medical costs. But then you could just buy the health insurance.
Medical expenses are less expensive when you don't have insurance. Insurance is just for catastrophic events, if you do some regular risk analysis you can come to a balance that works for you. If you know a major medical expense is imminent then get the insurance. Most procedures don't happen immediately anyway.
That’s not how insurance works even with the ACA. You have open enrollment is the only time you can get insurance on the open market. Good luck if you find you have a major medical issue right after open enrollment ends - which the Republican administration has shortened and you have to wait 9-10 months.
i think you can get a pretty decent prius from 5k to 10k and a fantastic nearly brand new tesla model 3 for 17K. That's what i did. it was 8 years old, practically brand new, FSD prepaid included! it drives me to work and i only paid 17K for it!
99% of people have poor money management skills? It's statements like this that makes FIRE a fringe scene.
you're saying 99% of people think FIRE = ramen? I doubt that many even have heard of it
you don't need to eat ramen. there are many cost effective options out there: oatmeal, beans, rice, you could grow your own fruits and vegetables, etc.
and as for the medical disaster: heart attack and stroke are actually preventable with a plant based diet (keep your LDL under 80 and you'll vastly decrease your chance of a heart attack). i know a lot of people will hate on that, but those are the facts and any evidence based nutritionist can tell you this.
How do you prevent random accidents, cancer, etc?
And health insurance as soon as the ACA is gutted and you have a pre existing condition? Sure I could retire to Costa Rica or Panama. One of those are a plan B and we will be in CR for six weeks and we are both learning Spanish - I am. decent at it.
I bet you also your idea of upper middle class is not statistically valid.
https://dqydj.com/household-income-percentile-calculator/
Costa Rica is on my retirement shortlist. I really like it there and have taken the family for vacation a couple times. I've driven the whole country pretty much North to South. Puerto Jimenez is one of my favorite places but it's very rural. There's some nice areas an hour or two North of San Jose as well. I've met a handful of US families that, when the pandemic hit, just sold everything they owned and moved to Costa Rica. As far as central america goes Costa Rica is a bright spot of stability and like a functioning government. I live in Dallas so pretty much have to know a little Spanish but there isn't much of a language barrier at all. You could do a lot worse than Costa Rica.
I didn't get where I am by taking random bets, but I'll say you'd lose your money here.
Were you around and trying to get health insurance before 2012? I was. The startup I worked for shut down and while I had a well paying contract lined up literally the next week, I couldn’t get health insurance at any price because of a pre-existing condition even though at the time, I was a part time fitness instructor and I had just gotten through running my first (and last) two half marathons.
If you are betting on the stability of the US health care system outside of employer funded health care, that is a monumentally stupid bet with one party actively trying to kill the ACA.
So what did you do? Clearly you didn't die. Did you just have no insurance for the week before the new job started, or what?
This also happened to you while you were working and slightly between jobs. So it's not really a FIRE concern if the concern is the US messing up the health care system even more in that it would effect everyone whether working or not. Generally speaking, an answer to mitigating a lot of types of risk with a FIRE model is: you just go back to work for a while. This is easier the younger you are.
Edit: Also I thought COBRA would have been a more recent thing but it was Regan era. So did you not have employer-sponsored coverage with the startup?
No, my then fiance/now wife and I canceled our wedding we had planned, and went to the courthouse and got married six months earlier so I could get on her insurance.
Also, just so happen I did end up in the hospital three weeks later because something happened that affected my breathing for an entire year.
And how do you “go back to work” if the entire reason you need to go back to work is that you have a health condition?
If you haven’t checked, jobs aren’t that easy to come by quickly in 2026 in tech like they use to be. Sure I could find someone to give me a contract if not hire me full time - but we are still back to not having insurance .
The US messing up insurance on the open market is the concern and it being back like it was pre ACA. That only affects the unemployed under 65.
As far as being between jobs - usually you can get COBRA for a limited amount of time - not an option for FIRE.
Oh yeah, that brings up another point, I did pay for COBRA for two months back then. The contract I had paid more than enough to afford it. Then the acquiring company shut down their insurance plan and COBRA wasn’t even an option
You do know you can have a wedding even if you're already on-paper married? The ceremony really has nothing to do with the legal act.
So wouldn’t it go against everything that FIRE stood for to spend money on a wedding after you lost your job?
Nope, it's just mindful capital allocation. There are plenty of ways to spend money wisely on a wedding. It's just a big party, and maybe a traditional ceremony. It's whatever you want it to be.
Statistics! Can a person below the median income afford to retire early? The answer is a resounding no. Can a person the top 10th percentile (upper middle class) afford to retire early? Yes.
https://dqydj.com/household-income-percentile-calculator/
So the top 10% is a household income of $250K and most of those couples didn’t reach that until their 40s. They aren’t making $225K as an L5 at 25 years old like a former intern/new grad I mentored when I was at BigTech
Most software developers won’t even see above $160K inflation adjusted during their career. Most work in second tier cities in the “enterprise”z.
there are still tribes in the amazon that have very little money, like the hazda. they may not call it retirement but they don't need to go to the office everyday.
Serious question, what makes us so addicted and dependent to money that we can't imagine any way of life without a lot of it?
Thanks for living frugally. Since you now have some spare money, I decided it's time for a rent increase. And a tax increase.