How I Saved $380K By Age 29 To Retire Early | Fired Up

Tanner:If I had to guess, I would say in terms of theentire population, I'd probably be in the top 1% of most frugal people, maybe top 0.1%. Here's our couch. We got it free. We found this patio furniture for free onCraigslist. I don't really like to buy anything. And in fact, it kind of makes me anxious. Every year or two, I'll get a new pair of runningshoes. Last time I bought running shoes is actually aused pair. We've decided to invest in maybe cheaper hobbiesthan most people.

As eclectic as ever. How's it going, Mike? Board game Meetups led meto meeting a few folks that I really enjoy spending time with, and so we get togetherregularly to play board games. Chris:Ooh, sick burn. Tanner:Yeah. I don't really feel like we're missing outon anything. We have everything we need and we're generallyreally happy. My name is Tanner Firl. I'm 29 years old. I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

I plan to retire at the age of 35, and I've saved$380,000 for retirement. Our house is in south Minneapolis, and I livewith my wife, my kid, and three cats. I've always been the primary income generator inthe household. My wife makes a little bit of money from hobbiesand she definitely saves us a lot of money by being the primary cook and homemaker. Lean Fire is a subset of people that would liketo reach FIRE, financial independence, earlier than most people in the movement. Generally, by saving money at a higher rate thanmost people in the FIRE movement, I'd estimate we put about 50% or so of ourpaycheck, maybe a little bit more towards savings.

My personal brokerage account has $221,000 in it. My Roth IRA has $57,000. My health savings account has $26,000 in it andmy 401K has $75,000. A lot of people in the FIRE community have reallydefinitive FIRE numbers. For me, it's a little bit more flexible. My lower bounds for retirement is $625,000because I figure I need about $25,000 a year to live. So $25K sounds really low and it is for a lot ofpeople, depending on where you live and what your risk tolerance is, that might not be completelypossible.

Your life changes over time and you never knowexactly what to expect. And so there's a fair amount of variability. Retiring, it's not about sitting on your couchwatching Netflix all day or going to the beach and getting a really nice suntan. It's about getting to do whatever you want inlife. We were always very frugal. Growing up, I remember going to the bowlingalley. It was always a treat when we got a gum ball. Whenever we wanted something, we would have tospend our own money to buy it or wait until our.

Birthday or Christmas. That led to me and all my siblings havingnewspaper routes where we deliver newspapers every day. We looked for other ways to make money aswell. My parents just gave me a loan directly. So when I graduated from college, I worked onpaying that off for a number of years. I believe the interest rate was 3%. It took me about five years to pay my parentsback. I could have done it faster had I wanted to, butI figured that the difference would be better spent investing in index funds.

I always put in as much as I could in order toget the employer match on my 401K. Parallel to that, I was also investing in indexfunds at the time. A little bit after I graduated from college andstarted making kind of real money in a professional job, I took FIRE to an extreme thatI, I think generally it's safe to say is unhealthy. I would get very, very anxious aboutsaving as much money as humanly possible. I get really, really anxious about making moremoney so that I could retire as early as possible. I put things off in my life that I really wantedto do in order to try and and retire even earlier . I would spend all of my free time trying to makemoney. I had these ideas for side hustles and I wasdoing those things not because I enjoyed them, but.

Because I thought that I'd make a lot of money. And when those things weren't panning out, it ledto a lot of frustration. I was putting off like having kids because Iwanted to make money. Thankfully, I have kind of done a complete 180 onthose issues and I don't have that sort of relationship anymore. I'm still very frugal and spending money stilldoes make me a little anxious, but it doesn't affect me so much. And I've learned that it's okay if it takes me ayear or two longer, if that means that I can enjoy the present significantly more.

Oh my goodness. We were able to pay basically our entire mortgageand then some renting out the downstairs of the house on Airbnb. So that was really, I think, my first significantside hustle . Downstairs, so this used to be the Airbnb space. So we had just a bed down here and at one pointwe had a TV and a mini fridge and a toaster. I think as we've been together a little longer,my wife is becoming more frugal. In general, I'm definitely the more frugal one inthe relationship. I don't have too many things that I buy on aregular basis outside of just like food and the.

Mortgage and utilities. I know a lot of people spend a lot of money ongroceries, and we do to an extent as well, because I do like to eat healthy. That said, there's a lot of ways that you can eathealthy and cheap at the same time. Instead of eating a bunch of meat, you can eat abunch of beans. Beans are super cheap. You can buy a huge bag of beans for a couple ofbucks that'll last two months. And the same thing with rice. We're fortunate that we live in Minnesota becausethere's this awesome nonprofit called Ruby's.

Pantry. Hello, I'm here for pickup. I have two bundles. That takes a bunch of food that would otherwise goto waste. It's things that can't be sold in the grocerystores for whatever reason. You never know what you're going to get. But for 25 bucks a bundle, a bundle is about halfa carload, they just give you a ton of food. Thank you. Appreciate it. And then you drive off and you have probably halfyour groceries for the month, if not more. A lot of the free things we find for kind ofwhere you'd expect, Craigslist, online.

Marketplaces. But we also have kind of garnered areputation with our friends and family as being frugal and thrifty. And so we do end up getting a lot of free things. You know, a family member, will see somethingfree on the side of the road and will think that we might like it. That's how we ended up gettingour running stroller that I use to run with my son. We got a bunch of hand-me-downs from mysister who have had kids, and that's all the clothes that our son wears. My hobbies include running almost every day,listening to podcasts, playing video games with my wife, going for walks with my family.

I meditate daily, chat with my family on Zoomonce a week. I like to bake. Another one of my hobbies has always been boardgames. I think a lot of things that bring peoplefulfillment in life and happiness don't cost that much money. I think a lot of people look at theFIRE movement and they think that a lot of these people are just not living their lives atall because they are just so busy stashing away money. I don't think that's a fair representationbecause in life there's no short supply of experiences. Most experiences that will make youhappy are probably free or extremely cheap. Obviously, money can put a roofover your head, put food on the table, but when.

You're saving money, you're essentially buyingfreedom. So the best way that you can spend excess moneyis ironically, by saving it to give you more time in your life back to you to spend howeveryou want.

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