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You Asked, We Answered. FIRE Q&A

Answering your financial independence, retire early (FIRE) questions, including the one we’re asked most often. This special Ask Us Anything format commemorates the 50th episode of Two Sides of FI. THANK YOU to all who submitted questions and for your continued support of the show!

Show notes may be found below the video

Show Notes

First, THANK YOU so much again for all your support of Two Sides of FI. We’d never have achieved this 50 episode milestone without all the engagement and encouragement we receive from you, our community. We truly appreciate you and are thankful for your constant support.

We are often asked how to support + promote the show. Here are three simple ideas which we humbly suggest: 1) Share a link to our channel with people who you think can benefit – via social media, 1:1, or however works for you. 2) Use the ‘like’ feature on videos and subscribe (click here!) to the channel. The YouTube algorithm sees these signals as indications of merit, and they play a vital role in helping to promote our content. 3) Consider rating + reviewing the podcast – even if you always watch it on YouTube. Apple Podcasts is the most important tool out there to drive visibility on the audio format. We get thousands of podcast downloads each month yet have <80 total reviews at the time this episode went live. Thank you!

Essential Background:

  • Our first episode, “Our Financial Past and our FIRE Present – Two Sides of FI“ is where it all began for the show. 50 episodes later, there certainly have been plenty of changes – and improvements (particularly on Jason’s side of the screen, as he likes to point out). This episode is the best place to learn about our financial backgrounds a bit better.
  • “So, What’s Your Financial Independence (FI) Number?“ was one of our early popular – and controversial videos. We’ve got a long history with this question, and you won’t want to miss the end of today’s episode to hear our current thoughts on it. But this earlier installment sets the stage for this essential question + many FIRE fundamentals.
  • We’ve actually done another Q&A episode: “Answering Your Financial Independence Questions”. In this video, we tackled topics including changing withdrawal rates, our FI numbers, redefining identity in early retirement, rental real estate, and more.
  • In today’s episode we referenced a fun experiment, captured in “We Each Hired a Flat Fee Financial Advisor. Was it Worth It?”. Prior to this video, we each hired the same fee-only, advice-only advisor to evaluate our portfolios and answer our questions. We then shared how we found this advisor, what the process was like, the specific questions + answers we had, and who we believe could benefit from such a service.
  • Safe Withdrawal Rate has been an ongoing topic for us on 2SFI, and naturally it came up here as well. Did you know we spoke with SWR expert, Karsten Jeske? To see that episode, our follow-up conversation, and get the best collection of all the resources we have on this topic (including the free SWR Toolbox), you’ll want to see this show notes page.

As a complement to Two Sides of FI, Jason’s milestones blog posts are perhaps the easiest way to understand what his journey has been like since retiring early. In these articles, he discusses candidly what he’s felt, experienced, and achieved in the 2+ years since he left his career behind. If there’s a specific topic you’re seeking, don’t miss this list of all his blog posts to date.

Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing is a book by Bronnie Ware that we mentioned in this episode. It originally started as a blog post, outlining the most common regrets that the people she had supported through palliative care had expressed. The post quickly blew up and was viewed by more than three million readers worldwide in its first year. Bronnie subsequently wrote this fascinating and meaningful book capturing all that she learned.

CoastFI came up in a question we addressed in this video. This is a term used to describe someone who isn’t yet FI but has already put in the necessary effort to mathematically achieve that goal without further contributions. Did you know we talked with someone on this topic in an podcast-only episode last year? If you missed it then, you’ll definitely want to check out A CoastFI Path to Financial Security: An Interview with Catherine.

Eric has talked about his “Possible Futures” Notion page in several episodes to date. Here is a screenshot of the kind of information he and Laura track here

In today’s episode, we shared footage of what Eric’s filming setup looks like. For the full details on the equipment he uses, check out this page.

By his own description, Jason’s filming setup is more “bespoke”. They say a picture is worth a thousand words:

You can find information on the tools we mention in each episode along with additional information in the Resources section of this site.

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Answering Your Financial Independence Questions

You asked, we answered. Bringing the Two Sides of FI together to discuss changing withdrawal rates, Jason and Eric’s own FI numbers, redefining identity in early retirement, rental real estate, and more.

Want your question featured on an upcoming show? Drop a comment on the video or reach out on our contact page.

Show Notes

Given the diversity of topics and tools discussed in this episode, it was challenging to go into much depth on any one of them. We’ve shared more information below on several of these items so that you can get the full details on each.

  1. Our FIRE numbers: We only briefly touched on this topic in this episode, but we’ve actually done an in-depth two-part series in the past. “So, What’s Your FI Number? Sharing Ours Here” is the first, and addresses the question of how to determine how much you need to achieve financial independence. We decoded the math used to calculate our own FI targets, talked about the different flavors of FIRE, and shared where our numbers fall on the FIRE spectrum. The second part of this series, “Discussing our FI Numbers : Changing our Minds, Talking to Family”, goes a step further. There we talked about how our early FI goals and calculations underestimated today’s needs. We then went beyond the math of financial independence to discuss the psychological aspects, including important conversations we had along the way with family and friends.
  2. Modeling your FI plan’s success: In this episode we showed some examples of modeling using cFIREsim, one of our favorite tools for examining the likelihood of your assets lasting the duration of your retirement timeline. This is a commonly used and highly regarded tol among the FIRE community. Newretirement.com is another great site (with both free and subscription options) that provides similar functionality, while including more in depth planning options. Both can be found on the Tools section of our Resources page.
  3. Modeling rent vs. buy decisions: While this wasn’t a major topic in this show, it is a question that comes up often both pre-FIRE and when thinking about modeling housing costs post-FIRE. It’s easy to model scenarios using the Rent vs. Buy calculator at SmartAsset.com.

You can find information on the tools we mention in each episode along with additional information in the Resources section of this site.