With markets down at one point nearly 20% in 2025, is this the sequence risk moment we feared? In this episode, we reflect on recent market volatility, how it’s impacted our early retirement finances, and whether our original FIRE strategy can still hold up. We also catch up post-Liberation Day and share how our thinking has evolved after real-world stress testing our withdrawal plan. If you’re navigating FIRE in 2025—or just wondering what a 20% portfolio loss feels like—this one’s for you.
Show Notes
As Eric and Jason discussed, times like there are good opportunities for stress testing your plan and modeling alternate scenarios. We find ProjectionLab an essential and easy-to-use software package to support this practice. You can get your own free trial here. Want more info? Here’s our episode, How We’re Using ProjectionLab in (Early) Retirement.
Essential Background:
- If you haven’t seen our most recent episode, What Should We Do With Bonds and Cash in a Crazy Market?, it’s a natural pairing with this video. In it, Eric talks with Jason about an unexpected opportunity to update his early retirement portfolio.
- This wasn’t the first video of ours to address market volatility. In 2022’s “Our FIRE Portfolios Are Down 20%, What Now?” followed by Stock Market on FIRE: What We’re Doing in a Downturn, we talked about what we were doing and thinking about during a downturn as Jason neared his two-year post-FI mark and Eric was seriously contemplating pushing his FI date back.
- In the subsequent episode, My Plan to Retire Early is ON HOLD, Eric talked with Jason about pushing back his FI date, whether BaristaFIRE could be the answer, the possibility of redefining work, and advice for others in a similar position.
- Once again, the idea of safe withdrawal rates and Big ERN’s Safe Withdrawal Rate Toolbox came up in this conversation. For practical help with modeling your own safe withdrawal rate plan, don’t miss our very popular multi-part tutorial series on the SWR Toolbox. You can find them all here.
- Rebalancing is natural counterpart to any conversation about asset allocation. Are you interested in a free copy of the rebalancing tool that we use? That link will take you to it, as well as the episode in which it was discussed, Stock Market on FIRE: What We’re Doing in a Downturn.
- Buying Stock in a Down Market is a part of show guest, Fritz Gilbert’s, post-FIRE strategy, which he discussed in a recent conversation with us. In this episode highlight, we discuss how he felt during the 2020 market decline and learn about his approach to continue buying in order to take advantage of low equity prices.
Empower (formerly Personal Capital) is a commonly used free tool for tracking your various investment accounts, understanding your asset allocation + rebalancing opportunities, and monitoring your net worth. PC has simple to use account linking to make it a more automated experience. Give it a try risk-free!
Have you checked out the Two Sides of FI Discord server? If you’re not familiar, this is an instant messaging social network. Ours is meant to be a community for viewers of our show, as well as a space to discuss all things relation to FIRE. It’s totally open, free of charge, and is anonymous as you’d like. This makes it a safe space to talk about financial topics you might otherwise be sensitive about sharing. Come check it out and see if it fits your interests! There are both desktop and mobile apps available.
Did you know Jason resumed blogging? To be notified of his future posts, please consider subscribing here. He’s also archived his old blog, which documents the first two years after he retired from his career, which started even before Two Sides of FI began. Get more information on those archived posts here.
- Links + Resources
- Eric’s business: 30X40 Design Workshop
- Jason’s blog: the next phase is now
- Eric’s YouTube Channel
- Our podcast