After years of scrimping and saving, one Redditor thought he had done everything right. He lived below his means, followed the Financial Independence, Retire Early blueprint, and reached his target, expecting to safely withdraw $40,000 per year.
A Shifting Target
“I had it all planned out,” he wrote on r/leanfire recently. “$40k/year withdrawal rate, safe and sustainable. Then I sat down to actually crunch the numbers based on current costs. That $40k budget? It’s now $55k.”
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He said he didn’t account for inflation properly. “I based everything on costs from when I started the journey, not what things actually cost now,” he added. “And I definitely didn’t predict how fast prices would climb in just a few years.”
Now, he’s left wondering if he should keep working longer, cut back even more, or accept that he may not be truly financially independent just yet.
Plenty of others in the subreddit chimed in with support and shared their own similar experiences. “I quite literally am a 40k’er who turned into a 55k’er,” one person said.
Another Redditor sympathized but tried to reframe the situation: “You may have reached some amount of freedom or choice that you didn’t have before.”
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Many commenters pointed out that inflation has hit everyone hard, but that doesn’t mean the dream is dead. One person said the original poster is actually in an enviable spot. “With zero additional contributions, he just needs to let it capture the market returns for four more years and it will cover his new retirement number, inflation adjusted.”
Some suggested moving abroad to stretch the budget. “$40k/yr can live like a king in most of the world,” one said. Another added, “Rent a penthouse in Bangkok or Ho Chi Minh City, or a villa with a private pool in Phuket. Healthcare and health insurance both are about 10% of the U.S. cost.”
Others said part-time work might be the way to go. “If you clear 15k per year in a fun part-time role, now you’re hitting the 55k mark you needed while increasing your free time tremendously,” a commenter suggested.
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Some debated safe withdrawal rates altogether. The original 4% rule, popularized in the 1990s, has come under scrutiny recently. “The same person that helped define the 4% rule is the one who has now defined it as 4.7%,” one person explained.
The underlying message in most of the comments was that FIRE is not a fixed number, it’s a flexible path. “You should stop sacrificing. You’re at a point now where you don’t have to save as hard,” one said.
While it may not be the retirement he imagined, the original poster isn’t alone. As another commenter said, “Better to learn this now than after you left your job and told everyone goodbye.”
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