Posted on 11/07/2022 6:36:01 PM PST by nickcarraway
Tanner Firl doesn’t understand why anyone would need a budget.
“It never made sense to me,” the 29-year-old tells CNBC Make It. “Most people have a problem not spending money. We have almost the opposite problem.”
Firl and his wife, Isabel, who live in Minneapolis, are practically allergic to spending money on anything they don’t see as a necessity, a shared attitude that plays into the couple’s financial strategy.
Firl is part of the FIRE — short for financial independence, retire early — movement, and specifically adheres to a strategy known as “lean” FIRE. Practitioners of this version of FIRE look to supercharge their savings rate by cutting out as many extraneous expenses as possible.
So far, Firl stashed away roughly $380,000 and hopes to save at least $625,000 to fund an early retirement at age 35. A portfolio of that size would provide his family $25,000 per year in annual income.
Currently, Firl is the primary breadwinner for his family, which also includes his 1-year-old son, Teddy, and three cats. He earns $135,000 a year as a software engineer, and about half of each paycheck goes toward food and living expenses every month. He invests the rest.
Here’s how Firl says his super-saver lifestyle is setting him up for early retirement.
Pursuing FIRE from an early age: ‘It all seemed to make a lot of sense to me’ Growing up as one of six kids in Rochester, Minnesota, Firl learned about the importance of stretching a dollar. Family vacations meant packing into the van to visit family members or spend time at free-to-enter national parks or monuments. Lunch breaks typically meant pulling over for roadside PB&Js.
The Firl family wasn’t hurting for money. They just wanted their kids to learn to work for the things they valued. “Whenever we wanted something as a kid growing up, we would have to spend our own money to buy it or wait until a birthday or Christmas,” Firl says.
As a result, Firl followed his siblings’ lead and got a paper route as a school-age child and worked all the way through high school. By the time he got to college, he’d discovered a blog written by Peter Adeney, also known Mr. Money Mustache, one of the foremost figures in the FIRE movement. Something instantly resonated.
“It all seemed to make a lot of sense to me: basically just spending as little as you can so you can live your life as fully as you want,” says Firl.
Firl graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2015 with a degree in mathematics and scored a job at the National Security Agency that paid an annual salary of about $66,000 a year. That same year, he and Isabel, who had been high school sweethearts, got married.
Within two and a half years, the couple had saved enough to put a down payment on a house in Minneapolis, where they lived upstairs and covered mortgage payments by renting out the basement on Airbnb.
The frugal path to FIRE The Firls purchased their second home for $185,000 in 2018 and sold their first home not long after when managing it as a rental became cumbersome. They put up the basement in their new home for short-term rentals, but had to abandon that plan when Teddy arrived in 2021. The house’s floor plan is just 675 square feet — close quarters for a couple of new parents, one of whom intermittently works from home.
As Firl’s salary has risen to the $135,000 he currently makes, the couple have resisted “lifestyle creep” and maintained their commitment to frugality. If the family needs something, they hunt for it for free on online marketplaces such as Craigslist.
“We also have garnered a reputation with our friends and family as being very frugal and thrifty,” Firl says. “We do end up getting a lot of free things just because a family member will see something free on the side of the road, and they’ll think that we might we might like it.”
Additionally, the couple doesn’t have to shell out much for any of their hobbies. Tanner is an avid runner, podcast listener and board game player, while Isabel writes and runs a Twitch stream. They both enjoy playing video games in the evenings.
Plus, the couple have whittled their food and pet supply budget down to $200 a month thanks to frequenting a food waste non-profit to cover groceries.
“For 25 bucks a bundle — a bundle is about half a carload — they just give you a ton of food and then you drive off and you have probably half your groceries for the month, if not more, depending on how much you want,” Firl says.
Looking forward to a financially independent future Looking to the future, Firl acknowledges that aiming to live off $25,000 a year may not seem like enough. But he’s confident they can make it work.
The figure assumes the house will be completely paid off by then (he currently pays about $1,100 a month in mortgage payments, homeowners insurance and property tax) and that he’d theoretically qualify for deeply discounted health insurance through the state of Minnesota.
Still, given how his life has changed in the past few years, Firl understands that he’ll have to be flexible when it comes to the exact dollar amount and timing of his early retirement. If he and Isabel decide to have more children and move to a bigger home, for instance, that might change his calculus.
When Firl does hit $625,000 in savings, he doesn’t necessarily plan to switch to a life of leisure. “Retiring … is not about sitting on your couch watching Netflix all day or going to the beach and getting a really nice suntan,” he says. “It’s about getting to do whatever you want in life.”
For Firl, that means having the power to walk away from a job that isn’t bringing him fulfillment or taking a gig that he’s more passionate about, even if it pays less money.
Ultimately, no matter what his retirement looks like, you can be pretty certain of one thing: The frugality isn’t going away.
“In life there’s no short supply of experiences, and most experiences that will make you happy are probably free or extremely cheap,” he says.
I guess it’s OK. Not the lifestyle I would choose.
All things in moderation. Including moderation.
I have a son who lets money burn a hole in his pocket and a daughter who saves everything she can.
She doesn’t deny herself and live at poverty level, but doesn’t waste money either and she is saving a LOT of money and doesn’t even earn at this guy’s level.
I lean far more to the frugal side. We don’t eat out much. I can cook well enough and I know what’s in my food that way. I hang out my laundry and it’s impressive how much money one can save by not running a dryer.
I found an older model microwave at a thrift store one day for $8. Works great and is the older technology that is less likely to catch on fire and is more reliable.
Yes, it does take some effort, but planning and being aware of opportunities plays a big role in it as well.
Doesn’t seem like being a software engineer would be a job that you HATE each and every day, and it clearly isn’t the sort of job that wrecks you physically. So they deny themselves the fun and pleasures of life on this obsession with retiring at 35; then what? Watch Netflix for 40 years? He’d be smarter to find a job that provides the kind of satisfaction that he’d actually want to do - past 35, which is really, really young to hang it up.
that isn’t even CLOSE to what someone would need to retire, much less retire early.
You semi-retire by buying a turnkey business that has 2-3 hours of real work/day.
That’s my plan, if I was ever able to do that.
Making a good living and taking advantage of a program clearly designed to help those far less fortunate than his family, is pretty selfishly low-class.
.
He’s shortsighted.
His family is likely to fall victim to the horrible crime in the area, and the schools are unsafe.
That area is a hellhole, and the inmates are running the asylum.
That’s the Truth!
Obamacare was passed a dozen years ago.
You don’t even have to wait in an Emergency room, right? And all those savings made Healthcare and Surgery dirt cheap.
Barack said his cost savings would ignite the Economy like never before.
I work sometimes in a Hosp. Doesn't cost me anything to work there.
And I trade the stock market....I have the funds to make the trade..but I am not spending any money to trade. Well...I take that back it costs me some $ to get in and out...but it's low.
Once he pays off his house entirely he’ll be entitled to deeply discounted health insurance from the state of Minnesota? How does that work? Plus he’ll have $500,00 in the bank?
Being stingy bastard will definitley up your prospects in ladies dept.
I tell that to people all the time
Car accident, medical diagnosis, shoot even a divorce and ..... gone
This is the reaction I get:
🙄
I have a great plan:
Marry a rich woman.
🤪🤪🤪😬😬😬
Amen!
My husband and I labored under catastrophic medical debt due to the premature birth of my second child. Then came life, cancer, miscarriages, another child, we could not get out from under.
We are in a good place now. I’m socking away about $5K a month while still enjoying life. I’ve only got 10 years left (or so the doctors estimate- thanks, Fauci, you evil troll), and enough life insurance to set my husband up for retirement.
My, I don’t have to worry about that anymore, so we are hitting the bucket list while we can.
They can’t imagine it. It has to happen to them for them to understand it. Some people are just like that. Theres a blinder on certain parts of their worldview.
This is extreme saving but it appears to be effortless for this guy. Some people are wired to be able to save. I was.
The amount he needs to retire depends on his spend rate. If he is used to living on almost nothing he won’t need as much saved to continue doing that in retirement.
Good for him.
Supposedly one of the things that holds marriages together is matching credit scores. If one has a low credit score and the other a high one, the marriage is less likely to last.
I was told to expect 3-5 years. That was 11 years ago.
Here's hoping we have many more years to enjoy with the people we love.
Nope.
Everyone I know who does such things are moving to Real estate.
Less drama and regulations IF, big if, you have the right tennants.
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