A man from Fremont, California shared how he was able to retire early at the age of 37 with $1.2million (£962,760) in savings and investments. Francis, who is now 42, heard about the FIRE movement in 2013 and was able to meet his savings goal at 37 by 2017.
FIRE, otherwise known as Financial Independence, Retire Early, is a financial movement which sees people adopt a more frugal lifestyle and save more money to avoid retiring later in life.
His first goal to successfully reach an early retirement was to pay off the mortgage on his house which came to $22,000 (£17,650.60) annually.
While going through this, Francis found various ways to cut his daily expenditure with the final goal of achieving FIRE.
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He told CNBC Make I: “I jumped through a lot of hoops in order to save money and get my expenses as low as possible.”
With his home paid off, Francis was able to reduce his yearly spending to around $15,000 (£12,034.50).
Unsatisfied with the way his career was going, Francis opted to quit his job as an electric engineer.
While in the role, he was earning a $120,000 (£96,421) base salary, on top of an extra $30,000 (£24,000) to $60,000 (£48,000) in equity and bonuses.
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He was able to make significant savings thanks to his previous position as an electric engineer.
The 42-year-old shared: “I never call a handyman because I am the handyman.
“All my appliances are really, really old because they never break. If they break, I fix them and they’re good as new.”
However, the early retiree soon discovered that life without a full-time job was becoming “really boring”.
To mitigate this, he decided to make his YouTube hobby side hustle his full-time career and is able to make money from it.
Despite successfully reaching FIRE, Francis is sceptical about whether the goal of early retirement is a worthwhile one for the majority of people
He explained: “I think pursuing FIRE is probably the wrong idea. I don’t think most people want to retire early.
“I think what most people want is a sabbatical of sorts. They’re disgruntled with their careers and they want to take a really, really long time off. Maybe a year or two.”
During his most successful months on the website, Francis is able to earn almost $10,000 (£8,023).
However, he is still able to keep his old $15,000 (£12,034.50) yearly budget which pays for his living expenses, with the rest of the money being invested.
