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What if you could retire at 37? That’s exactly what Chris Reining did.
Chris Reining retired at the age of 37 after working in cyber security for over 10 years. He slowly increased his savings rate, made sure to keep his expenses low and invest in index funds and a few stocks. Classic FI strategy, and now he gets to do pretty much what he wants.
You’ll love his story.
We also chat about…
- The difficulties of quitting your job
- The importance of focusing on your income increase
- Deciding what’s best for health insurance
- The misconceptions about FIRE
- Chris’ last two years as financially independent
Enjoy this chat with Chris, and please subscribe to us in iTunes if you enjoyed it!
Show notes and links from today’s episode
Key takeaways from our chat with Chris
1 – Quitting your job isn’t always easy
Chris tells us it took him 2 years to pull the plug because he didn’t feel ready. He wanted to make sure he had enough money to retire and that all his investments were in place. He wanted it to be all planned and disciplined in order to reach his goal – and the good news is that it has and everything has been going pretty smoothly!
But he does admit it takes courage and a certain kind of personality to quit your job.
2 – Focus on the bigger wins
Chris explains the importance of focusing on increasing your income instead of just being as frugal as possible. As he says, there’s a maximum at which you can decrease your expenses (diminishing gains), however your income can always increase. For this reason he encourages others in the FI community to focus on the income increase, on side hustles and bonuses, as well as removing the consumerism.
3 – People FIRE for different reasons
There is a misconception that being financially independent means sitting on a beach lathering yourself with coconut oil all day. But this is completely wrong; being FI means finally being able to work on the things you enjoy and value. This could be a job, it could be a side-hustle, it could be travelling around the world – it really is up to you. For Chris, it wasn’t his job, so he decided to quit and now focuses on enjoying the present.
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Mike says
Really enjoy the show and great guests!
I felt compelled to comment on the discussion of defining FIRE. I personally feel that FIRE mixes two topics which is part of why there is confusion when people talk about or try to understand the movement. Financial Independence is simply the point when an individual has financial assets in place which enables them to live off of those assets and no longer requires external income. The individual isn’t required to spend ANY further time to generate income if they so desire, they are fully self funded from existing assets. FI can then enable an individual to retire if they want to. We need to keep in mind that retire does have a definition, ‘leave one’s job and cease to work’. So when people hear individuals talk about FIRE yet in the same breath they talk about needing to generate income, have side hustles, have rental properties, etc. it can create confusion. In my opinion, if you are actively spending your time to generate income you are working! You may not be working in corporate America but you are working which for me means you are not retired, but you may be FI. In a perfect world everyone who retires should be FI already, but you don’t have to be retired if you are FI.
Hope this makes some sense.
Mike
Mike says
This looks to be the topic of the week, another post on the same topic at CanIRetireYet.com
Pretirement: What Is It and Why Should You Care?