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Financial independence (FIRE)

Playing with FIRE

Scott Rieckens

One young family s true story of walking away from the 9-to-5 grind toward financial independence.

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Chapters

13
  1. Chapter 01Work, Eat, Sleep, RepeatA big income spent on a costly lifestyle is a treadmill - you can earn a lot and still have no time and no freedom.Read this chapter →
  2. Chapter 02The Million-Dollar IdeaSave a large slice of your income and invest it, and you can buy your freedom in about a decade instead of forty years.Read this chapter →
  3. Chapter 03Ten Things That Make You HappyList what truly makes you happy, compare it to what you actually spend on, and cut everything that doesn't overlap.Read this chapter →
  4. Chapter 04I Spend How Much on Coffee?!When you actually track every rupee, the small daily habits turn out to cost a fortune over a year.Read this chapter →
  5. Chapter 05BMWs and Boat ClubsThe fancy car and the club were about status, not joy - and nobody was actually impressed anyway.Read this chapter →
  6. Chapter 06Goodbye, CoronadoHousing is usually your single biggest cost, so moving to a cheaper place can cut your spending in half in one move.Read this chapter →
  7. Chapter 07The Journey BeginsChanging your whole money life is scary and messy - expect doubt and pushback, and take the first step anyway.Read this chapter →
  8. Chapter 08What the Heck Is an Index Fund?Once you've saved the money, park it in cheap, broad index funds - don't try to pick winners.Read this chapter →
  9. Chapter 09Getting Schooled in FIRESave about 25 times your yearly spending and you can live off roughly 4% of it each year without running out.Read this chapter →
  10. Chapter 10Family and FrugalitySpending less is not going without - done together as a family, frugality feels like freedom, not sacrifice.Read this chapter →
  11. Chapter 11Dream House or Dream Life?The big dream house everyone chases can cost you the real dream - a life where your time is your own.Read this chapter →
  12. Chapter 12Finding Our FIRE FriendsFind other people chasing the same goal - a community keeps you going when willpower runs out.Read this chapter →
  13. Chapter 13The FIRE Is SpreadingFIRE isn't about hoarding money or quitting work forever - it is about buying the freedom to choose how you spend your days.Read this chapter →

This is my own plain-English understanding of the book’s ideas, in my own words with my own ₹ examples, laid out against the book’s real chapters so you can relate the two. It is not the book and reproduces none of its text - if it helps, please buy the book. Not affiliated with the author or publisher. The author is not SEBI-registered; nothing here is investment advice.