FI/FIRE links
Financial independence links
The financial independence and retire early crowd is similar to digital nomads in frugality, but they are conserving wealth to hit a ‘sweet spot’ number and run the math a lot to figure out a safe withdrawal rate for their early retirement. Some of these folks can retire in their early thirties and easily be financially independent until their 401k’s and social security kick in. The math is simple for FI this way, but can take from 5-20 years depending on your effective savings percentage.
The main concerns for FI folks is their saving percentage of income and what will help with that savings rate; frugality, cheap alternatives, home and life hacking, whatever helps with the savings percentage is priority.
Books
- Building Wealth And Being Happy: A Practical Guide To Financial Independence
Only $2.99 Kindle book, this is the definitive introduction to FIRE using Index funds, it’s a quick read and you will be on board with showing just how fast you can utilize compounding to be retired faster than you think.
Blogs
- Mr Money Mustache
Abbreviated as MMM, one of the big FI blogs that drops the mic on FI. Tons of tips and tricks and motivation to keep on going and going … and going. - Go Currey Cracker
Money tips, tax tips, travel tips (heavy travel focus) - Early retirement now
ERN, an actual banker, busts out the numbers and makes it very real including a 22 part series on safe withdrawl rates during retirement which is a must read for any FI. - Mad Fientist
sign up for an account and you can track your progress. - FrugalVagabond
Another blog about FI, Travel and real estate. - Frugalwoods
get frugal and move to the country. Track their spending along with them, learn to live with less. - Financial Samurai
Good real estate articles, great financial articles in general. - 1500 days to freedom
a completed journey of retiring in a little over four years, but one caveat they had a good starting amount. - jlcollinsnh
Author of The simple path to wealth.
tools
- When can I retire calculator
Shockingly simple math on how fast you can actually retire using index fund. - Feex
If you have current accounts, see what the cost of fees is doing to your retirement accounts. - CFIREsim
Plug in numbers and see if they pan out, this takes a bit of fiddling around to really grok. - Financial calculators
many different financial calculators you can use for auto, budgeting, retirement, credit, college, life, mortage, loans, savings and taxes. - Empower
Automated financial planner which will find places you are paying too much. It can negotiate a better rate on your phone bill review your insurance and find ways to consolidate your debt. All automatically. - Status Money
Compare yourself to your peers anonymously and see how you stack up. - Blooom
401k health check, help you re-balance your 401k.
Core sites
- ChooseFI Vault
a collection of files, spreadsheets and more shared resources for the ChoosFI community. - r/financialindependence/
definitely a great subreddit for FI. (see also: finance and personalfinance)
Getting out of debt
- Even Financial
Find low rate loans to pay off your cards.
Saving money
- Vanguard
Vanguard is where you need to keep any index funds you have, the fees are so low that over the period of time that most FI folks are working, it can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars difference simple by using only Vanguard. There are a few like iShares and them which show as lower, but often require trading fees.
Apps for helping to save
- StashInvest
Automatically ‘stash’ cash from your bank into investments, this would be for smaller chunks of cash automatically taken out. - Digit
Seamless, automatic and safe money saving, you won’t even notice. Also you can set up automated money moving to cover low balances in your checking. - Long Game Savings
Make a game out of savings and have prizes and such you can win. - MoneyLion
If you need help generating and maintaining good financal habits, this app can help, and it rewards you for doing things like paying bills on time. - ibotta
Get rebates at places you already shop on your everyday purchases.
Podcasts
- Mad Fientist podcasts
40+ podcasts, interviews, travel hacking, success stories etc.
forums
- /r/leanfire
this is for people who figure out how to live on less than 40k and plan to retire with less than 40k/year withdrawal - /r/cordcutters
community of people who have ditched cable and other traditional subscriptions to keep things low cost. - /r/TinyHouses/
The tiny-house movement is loosely related to FI in that they are trying to not pay a mortgage and/or rent for the rest of their lives.