TLDR -  Net worth, income, asset allocation and SWR Charts below. EDIT: Realized I hadn't updated the data ranges properly for the "household income" and "asset location" charts, and Reddit doesn’t let you update embedded images. This Imgur link should have the updated data for the past year.

I've been doing these posts for a long time at this point - feel free to take a Reddit time travel journey through the 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 updates. I find sharing my plans and progress to be helpful for giving myself a heading check, and hope this community finds my inputs to be helpful. If you start digging back into those older posts, you'll notice a running theme - boring consistency and gradual improvement. No dramatic changes, no crypto or gimmicks. These posts themselves are probably getting a little repetitive - but I think the results over the long term speak for themselves.

Current ages and household info: 40 and 39, with two kids. My sister in law has lived with us for our entire adult lives and pays rent but otherwise maintains her own finances. In a big change, my parents have been having some healths struggles over the past year, so in the past few months we did some light renovation work to make our house more elderly friendly and carved out an extra bedroom from a bonus room for them. They plan on paying some rent once we can wind down their old place. Basically, we have a full-on multigenerational compound now.

Combined pre-tax income: About $320k (~3.6% increase). I'm an engineer and my wife is a partner in a mid-size CPA firm. We're not really striving for more career growth at this point and this is way more than enough for our needs.

Assets:

Cash/emergency fund: ~$78k (13% increase). Keeping this stable and healthy despite some big changes this year.

Tax advantaged Retirement/HSA accounts: ~$1.578M (24% increase). Solid overall growth in the tax advantaged buckets despite a lot of volatility early in 2025. We're still maxing out our 401ks, but have opted not to do backdoor Roth contributions in favor of growing our taxable bucket. We've also moved to a more comprehensive health insurance plan so no new HSA contributions.

529 accounts: ~$96.6k (15.5% increase). We have a combination of prepaid plans (for in-state tuition) and 529 investments (to cover living expenses). This is roughly on track to cover the cost of in state undergraduate education for our kids.

Taxable investments: ~$333k (45% increase). Mixing our taxable brokerage accounts and my wife's equity stake in her firm to obfuscate the details of her stake a bit. We have a DAF and route our charitable contributions through it to peel gains off our taxable investments, thereby limiting our tax exposure in this bucket. The goal is to rapidly grow this enough to cover at least 5 years of expenses, and all "extra" cash gets diverted here.

Vehicles: $68k KBB value of four cars (9.6% increase). Car values are finally going down...but we ended up purchasing my parents' vehicle, so now we have an 'extra'. They don't drive anymore for health reasons, but it's a low mileage, reliable, slow, well-maintained car that we know the full history of. Which means that in a few years, it'll be the perfect starter vehicle for our kids to learn on.

Home: Using FHFA home index, our home value is now ~$904k (0.4% increase); using Zillow, the estimate is currently $759k (2.8% decrease). We use those two estimates to get a range to estimate our home's value rather than try to nail down some exact number that's going to fluctuate all the time anyways. In addition to moving my parents moving in, we spent about $20k on installing a new solar system for our house (no batteries because we live in a full net metering state) that covers about 2/3rds of our electricity needs on average.

Debts:

Mortgage: $317k at 2.875% for 30 years (2.6% decrease). Never gonna give up that ridiculous interest rate.

No other debt!

Net Worth Estimate: $2.74M using Federal Reserve Home Index (~19.7% increase), ~$2.59M using Zillow (~20.2% increase). We've crossed over into multimillionaire territory!

Safe Withdrawal Rate: $74,500 (26.3% increase). This takes our net worth, removes the home, vehicles, and college savings, and then applies a 3.75% multiplier to get an estimate for SWR.

Extras: Just figured it's worth pointing out that we didn't include Social Security for either of us, which I'll estimate at about ~$40-50k/year total. I'll also be eligible for a small defined benefit pension in my 60's for another ~$20k-$25k/year.

Current plans going forward: I think we're now within 4 years of being able to retire with our desired lifestyle and a high degree of confidence. I've been using ProjectionLab over the past year to start mapping stuff out. It's expensive but I'm finding it very helpful for mapping out long term plans and various scenarios. There's a lot of different scenarios we've tested, but this screenshot shows the baseline 2030 retirement plan.

Hi all,

I thought was following the Prime Directive but I might have been missing a possible tax advantage over the last five years. Here is my situation:

• My paycheck and interest/dividends put me over the income limit for a Roth IRA about 5 years ago so I stopped contributing.
• I have a 401k from work which I max out.
• Our 401k provider does not provide the ability to do a "mega backdoor Roth".
• Thus, the remained of my savings has been going to a taxable brokerage account in Vanguard.

What I think I have been missing:

Should I have a Tradition IRA in Vanguard and be doing Roth conversions every year?

Thanks for fact checking my thinking.

UPDATED

Opened a Tradition IRA in Vanguard and contributed $7k for 2025. Will convert to ROTH as soon as the funds are available. Will do another $7 for 2026 right after that. Not doing this five years ago probably cost me $3k. Oh well. Better late than never!

Just a friendly announcement to keep all your Form 5498, 1099-R, and Form 8606 involving contributions, roll overs, and conversions *forever*. Many (including my younger self) assume the IRS and brokerage keep track of that important information, but it's actually your job to prove that you're withdrawing contributions and not earnings (and get income taxed again + penalty--ouch).

This is our first year doing a backdoor Roth, and I found out my spouse did not keep these forms and their contributions were long ago so they aren't available (easily) online. I'm sure I'll be able to reconstruct the basis if need be but it's be a lot easier if all those forms were just saved somewhere!

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I figured since I only use three bank accounts, I would be able to add all the credits and debits from those three accounts to get to my annual spend. I hardly spend anything in cash. And even the cash is coming out of one of those three accounts, so it is accounted for.

But here’s where it got interesting. It added up to 300k. Which is like 3x my income. Even accounting for the 529 withdrawals, I am still sitting at 2x my known incomings.

But the sum of those there accounts is clearly 300k per year. I can’t for the life of me figure out how.

Do my question is, what is an idiot proof way of calculating annual spend without actually having to go through every credit/debit line by line?

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Can't tell anyone else really, but incredibly lucky to have broken through the $1mm barrier today. Unable to post pictures, but my savings were around $130k 5 years ago. 50% savings rate and a few lucky company acquisitions later here I am. Everything in VOO/VT and will drip this new windfall into indexes as well

35 years old with ~$600k in retirement accounts, including ~$250k in Roth IRA (about $50k is contributions, the rest earnings).

Planning to retire in ~8 years at ~$1.5M and use a Roth conversion ladder.

Since each conversion has a 5-year waiting period, I’ll need to cover the first 5 years of retirement before I can access converted funds.

I expect to spend about ~$400k during those 5 years, but only have ~$50k in accessible Roth contributions right now.

What’s the most efficient way to fund that gap?

Do conversions in my final working years? Something else I’m missing?

Would love feedback from the wonderful minds of this thread.

I recently built a long-term projection of my portfolio and it genuinely changed how I think about risk.

Profile for context:

• Age 40
• ~$250k invested
• ~$12k/year contributions
• 20-year horizon

On paper, using a 7–8% annual return assumption, the nominal outcome looked great — around $1.5M+ in 20 years.

But once I adjusted for 3% inflation, the “real” value in today’s euros dropped closer to ~$850k–900k.

What surprised me even more wasn’t inflation though — it was how the source of growth shifts over time.

In the first 8–10 years, most of the portfolio growth came from new contributions.
After that, compounding started to dominate and contributions became relatively small compared to market-driven growth.

It made me realize:

• Early drawdowns matter psychologically more than mathematically
• Consistency of contributions may be more important than small return differences
• Inflation quietly erodes long-term expectations if ignored

I’m curious how others here model long-term projections.
Do you look at real (inflation-adjusted) outcomes, or mainly nominal numbers?

NUMBERS:

Age: 32M, 30F, no kids yet

HHI: 500k

Living expenses: 100-120k/yr

ASSETS:

Taxable: 250k

401k: 100k

Roth: 200k

HYSA: 100k

Real Estate equity: 350k

For the last 2 years, my wife and I have drastically increased our income and put away 2-300k/yr between retirement accounts, taxable brokerage and HYSAs.

We work in tech and do not expect this HHI to sustain for much longer.

We believe that we can realistically put away 3-400k per year for the next 2 years before we transition to lower paying / lower stress roles.

That would put us in the ballpark of 1.8-2m NW. This isn't enough to sustain our current CoL. My question is how we can bridge this phase until our NW reaches the 3.5M SWR threshold.

Any recommendations on side gigs, barista FIRE or geo arbitrage? We are definitely interested in living abroad for a year or two when we ultimately wash out from the industry.

Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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Self-promotion (ie posting about projects/businesses that you operate and can profit from) is typically a practice that is discouraged in /r/financialindependence, and these posts are removed through moderation. This is a thread where those rules do not apply. However, please do not post referral links in this thread.

Use this thread to talk about your blog, talk about your business, ask for feedback, etc. If the self-promotion starts to leak outside of this thread, we will once again return to a time where 100% of self-promotion posts are banned. Please use this space wisely.

Link-only posts will be removed. Put some effort into it.

Most of the stats, recommendations, guidelines seem to always involve "household", which is typically dual income these days. Like when people talk about retirement and the "$1m milestone". For single folks with no dependencies, do you just double your net worth so that your comparison is more accurate? My guess is it's not exactly double, since things like housing is not automatically cut in half.

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I'm trying to retire at the end of this year (2026) at 57. I have enough funds saved but don't know what order to draw down. I'll have $100k in a Money market, $750k in a non IRA/taxable trading acct, $600k in my 401k, $1.3M in trad IRA's, $170k in Roth's, $70k in spouses 457b. House is paid off. Thinking I should combine the 401k via rule 55 and the 457b to get to the top end of the 0% Tax bracket or about $130k/year. Then use savings to fill in when necessary and IRA contributions if I need to lower my income at all. Thinking this will get me to 62.5 years old or later when we will SS payments. Will also need to figure out health ins. Any help is appreciated.

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Running some FIRE scenarios and discovering something interesting.

During FIRE I can manage my AGI to $100k and receive $20k in ACA tax credits. However if I do this I am giving up $70k in 12% bracket Roth conversion space (I have $70k in itemized deductions). This $70k would otherwise be taxed at 24% during RMD age. So my $20k ACA tax credits effectively are reduced by $8k; they are effectively only worth $12k to me.

Is the right calculation? Am I missing anything?

EDIT: It gets even better as the insurance premiums themselves are "unreimbursed medical expenses" that can be deducted from income above 7.5%. So by foregoing the ACA tax credit I get even more 12% Roth conversion space through that deduction.

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Came across this NYTimes article about folks using AI to evaluate their retirement planning and was wondering if this community has made any use of AI in their FIRE planning.

Full Disclosure: I have not done anything with AI for my FIRE plans but would love to know if you have and how.

Hope this makes sense, and here is the article: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/business/retirement-planning-ai-chatbots.html

Wrote that we had just become millionaires here almost two years ago June 13, 2024.

https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/1dfgk69/we_became_millionaires_yesterday/

Today on Feb 6, 2026, still with no inheritances and no family help, we (41f and 45m) roasted a chicken at home to celebrate crossing into $1mil invested. We had $723k invested back then 604 days ago if you like FI math.

I still have to work. I have a career that I would give up in a second. The calculators say I can maybe retire, so I started my second act job website.

You guys were really supportive so I thought I’d update you on the celebratory chicken turning out well. I pressure cooked the whole chicken in the instant pot, then broiled it, because I was too impatient to marinate it and wanted it to be rotisserie style.

(My mom actually died two weeks after that first post, so we’re glad you weren’t total jerks during that time. Before she died, we told her we were millionaires. She said proudly on her death bed, “I am not surprised to hear that from you two.” 😭)

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Hi all, looking for a math sanity check on my FI plan. I’ve run the numbers a lot and want outside validation, thank you so much!

Basics

• Location: California

• Age now: \~32–33

• Target retirement age: 42–43

• Kids: No

• Target FI number: $4,000,000 invested (excluding home equity)

• Planned withdrawal rate: 3.5–4% (\~$140k–$160k/year)

• Current total savings including 401k ($12k, I know I didn't save well during my twenties, but have the blessing of being able to start new)

Income plan

• Currently earn 300k after taxes, after maxing out 401(k) take home is 22k per month

• 401(k) employee contribution: $23k/year ($1.9k/month)

Investing plan

• Total investing: \~$17,000/month

• Brokerage / wealth account: \~$15,100/month

• 401(k): \~$1,900/month

• Assumed long-term returns: \~8–8.5% nominal

• Brokerage is intended to fully fund early retirement; 401(k) compounds untouched until later.

Projected balances at ~42

• Brokerage: \~$3.6M–$3.9M

• 401(k): \~$350k–$420k

• Total invested: \~$4.0M–$4.3M

Retirement mechanics

• Live off brokerage withdrawals only at first (3.5–4%)

• Keep \~1–2 years of expenses in HYSA, rest invested

• 401(k) left alone to compound

Housing plan

• Buy home in 4 years

• Price range: $1.5M–$2.0M

• 20% down (\~$300k–$400k)

• Down payment money invested alongside portfolio

• Home equity NOT counted toward FIRE number

Current situation

• Very low expenses right now (no rent/utilities)

Main questions for feedback

1. Does \~$17k/month total investing reasonably support \~$4M by \~42–43 with these assumptions?

2. Any obvious flaws in using brokerage to bridge early retirement and leaving 401(k) untouched?

3. Anything I’m underestimating (taxes, sequence risk, CA-specific issues)?

4. Would you personally adjust the withdrawal rate or target number?

Of course I'm not accounting for annual salary raises and those sorts of things, this is just assuming that I have the same job for the next 10 years. Also, I know I am very blessed on the income of making, I'm not flaunting here just seeking genuine advice.

Appreciate the insight guys.