Your FIRE plan worked — so why is spending still so hard? In this episode, Jason (year 7) and Eric (year 2) share a candid early retirement update. Both portfolios have grown well above their FIRE numbers despite years of withdrawals, and a fee-only advisor delivered a surprising verdict: spend more. Learn why unwinding the accumulation mindset is harder than the math, how “life support” for adult kids reshapes the budget, and why unstructured time might be the truest form of wealth – and much more.
Show Notes
Essential Background:
- Are you new to the show? To find out where our FIRE paths began along with more on our backgrounds, you’ll want to watch our first three episodes: “Our Financial Past and our FIRE Present – Two Sides of FI“, “Two Careers, Two Paths to Financial Independence“, and “Financially Independent. Retire Early? Let’s Discuss!“
- We’ve released a number of milestones-related episodes, charting our FIRE journeys, a number of which are among our most popular content. These are a great way to get caught up on our backgrounds. Here’s the list of all of them.
- Spending vs. the plan was a central topic covered in this video. As you might expect, this is heavily covered group for us on 2SFI. Here are the links for some favorites, each of which have links to other essential content on their show notes page linked in each episode’s Description:
- In “So, What’s Your Financial Independence (FI) Number?” we went through all the details of how to calculate your own FIRE number. But the number is only the beginning. In “Discussing our FI Numbers : Changing our minds, talking to family“, we discussed moving beyond the math of financial independence to discuss the psychological aspects, including important conversations with family and friends
- As Eric and Jason discussed, ProjectionLab is their favorite tool for stress testing their FIRE plan and modeling alternate scenarios. You can get your own free trial here. Want more info? Here’s our episode, How We’re Using ProjectionLab in (Early) Retirement.
- 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.
- “Retiring With $2M: Here’s How We’d Spend It” is a budget deep-dive chat. Don’t miss the show notes for all the numbers and details discussed in this episode.
- Travel is a high priority for both Eric and Jason, so it’s no surprise it came up yet again! Key episodes on the topic include: Thinking About Slow Travel After FI? Watch This First, How We Travel: Pre + Post Financial Independence, Did We Budget Enough for Travel in Early Retirement? and Early Retirement + Group Travel: What Works, What Doesn’t.
- In addition to our regular episodes, we released a series of “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) videos. In chronological order: 2021‘s Answering Your Financial Independence Questions was the first time we reached out to our audience for their input. We celebrated episode 50 in 2022 with You Asked, We Answered. FIRE Q&A. Additionally, Jason hosted a solo AMA in 2023 called Ask an Early Retiree Anything! Live Q&A with Jason from Two Sides of FI. Finally, in 2025 we released Life After FIRE: Your Toughest Questions, Answered, to celebrate our 100th episode. You won’t want to miss the extensive lists of links in each of the show notes for these as they reference key financial and lifestyle content for both Eric and Jason.
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