Joney Talks!

And are you already FI in the first place?

In today´s episode, I am speaking with my friends Dragon Gal and Dragon Guy from The Dragons on FIRE. They recently reached FIRE and have left their jobs in their early 40s, 25 years ahead of schedule!

The Dragons have been married for 17 years and they have been doing the right things all along such as not spending more than what they earn, investing a portion of their income monthly in the stock markets (even throughout the 2008 market crash), paid off their house,… they just did not have a specific money goal or a specific savings amount to reach. It is only when they started to think about leaving their jobs that they dived into the FIRE blogs. And interestingly enough, once they found out about the financial model and calculated their “FI number”, they discovered that they were already FI (or “unknown FI”). The fascinating thing is that they reached FIRE living a simple life, without depriving themselves and their journey did not involve complicated or risky investment schemes neither.

Could you be unknown FI as well?

Listen here.

…or listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

This episode is for you if you are curious about reaching FIRE in general, want to find out your FI number and see if it could make sense for you as well.

Here are my quick takeaways from this episode

• Have a goal with your money, that is when things will become clearer to you and you can redirect your efforts in the right direction.
• Track your expenses and cut costs on the things that do not bring value to you. It does not mean living a life of deprivation. The Dragons still play tennis, travel and eat out.
• Your FI number is 25 times your yearly expenses (or 300 times your monthly expenses). So if your monthly expenses are 1500 EUR, your FI number is 450 000 EUR. The Dragons were unknown FI!
• Bump that number up a bit to include for inflation, unexpected expenses, we never know what the future will bring.
• Reaching FIRE will offer you a way to escape the so-called rat-race and provide you with the flexibility to travel and work on your own terms. If you are Financial Independent, there will be less need to impress the people around you for promotions, it will reduce your stress level, etc.
• Not financial advice here, but they have been able to accumulate a substantial amount of their FI number by automating their monthly contribution to the stock markets. They used the dollar-cost averaging (putting a fixed amount into an investment regularly) method for more than 17 years without overthinking it.

Who are the Dragons on FIRE?

RESOURCES 

• Main site: Dragons on FIRE
• Their Fincon wrap-up: Fincon19 Fairy Tale
• Twitter: @DragonGuyAndGal
• Favourite books: Maybe You Should Talk To Someone and Flight 232

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