Fat FIRE: financial independence without giving anything up
Fat FIRE sizes the target to a life with no trimming in it. Take your current spending, multiply it by whatever your comfortable life costs, then apply the standard formula. At two times €3,500 a month, the target is €2,100,000.
The formula
Current annual spending × your comfort multiple ÷ withdrawal rate.
Assumptions: 4% withdrawal rate, 8% growth before inflation, age 35 targeting 60. Stated in full in the methodology.
Worked example: €3,500 a month
This is not a round number. It is what my own living costs were at the point passive income covered them, which is the moment I would call being free.
2× today's spending at a 4.0% withdrawal rate.
And here is how long that takes, by what you put in every month.
| Invested each month | Time to Fat FIRE |
|---|---|
| €1,000 | 34 yrs |
| €2,000 | 26 yr 3 mo |
| €3,500 | 20 yr 3 mo |
Look at what changes between those rows. The gap between them is a pay question, not an investing question, and that is the whole argument of this site. The calculator works out how much more you could be putting in without changing job.
Who it suits
High earners who do not want freedom to cost them anything they currently enjoy.
What I think of it
Fat FIRE is the only model where the earning lever is not optional. You cannot save your way to two million on a normal salary in a normal working life, and the arithmetic says so plainly. If this is the target, the next ten years are a career question, not an investing question. That is the whole argument of this site, arrived at from the other direction.
Questions
What multiple should I use?
Price the actual life. Write down what the house, the travel and the schooling cost per month, and use that. A multiple picked out of the air produces a target you will not believe in.
The other eight
- Traditional FIREI never have to work again
- Lean FIREI need very little
- Coast FIREWhen can I stop needing to save?
- Barista FIREI only need to work a little
- Flamingo FIREThe halfway strategy
- FI, not REWork because you want to
- Slow FIDon't sacrifice your 30s for your 60s
- Geoarbitrage FIRESame portfolio, cheaper life
None of this is financial advice and I am not an adviser. Read what this is and what it is not.