What is FIRE?

FIRE stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early. The idea is simple: save and invest aggressively until your portfolio earns enough on its own to cover your living costs — for good. Once you hit that number, working becomes a choice, not a requirement. Some people stop entirely, some go part-time, some just keep going because they enjoy it. The point isn't necessarily quitting your job — it's not needing it anymore.

The three steps

1. Figure out your number. This is the size of the portfolio you'd need for its investment returns to cover your annual spending, indefinitely. It depends on how much you spend, not how much you earn.

2. Build toward it. Save a chunk of your income each month and invest it — typically in a diversified mix of index funds, shares, or retirement accounts. The bigger the gap between what you earn and what you spend, the faster your number gets closer.

3. Hit your number, then choose. Once your portfolio reaches your number, you're financially independent. You can retire fully, cut back to part-time work, change careers without worrying about the pay cut, or keep working exactly as before — the difference is that it's now optional.

Where to learn more

This page is a starting point, not the whole story. If you want to go deeper or talk to other people on the same path, these are some of the biggest, longest-running communities in the FIRE space:

• r/financialindependence — a large, active discussion forum covering every stage of the FIRE journey, from just starting out to already retired.
• Mr. Money Mustache — one of the original FIRE blogs, focused on frugal living and the math of early retirement.
• Bogleheads — not FIRE-specific, but the go-to community for straightforward, low-cost index investing, which is what most FIRE portfolios are built on.