| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 4 hours ago |
| It’s almost impossible for an upper middle class couple to retire in the US before their 65 unless they have some type of government provided or private company provided health insurance like teachers, police officers, military etc. It’s about $25K a year for a decent plan which is doable. But you have to hope that Republicans - and yes this is a political issue - don’t successfully kill the ACA and make it impossible to get insurance at any cost if you have a pre-existing condition. If you are old - you will develop a pre-existing condition. My parents are 83 and 81 and retired at 57/55. But my mom was a teacher who still gets benefits through the government and my dad gets benefits from the one factory that didn’t shut down in our hometown. I’m 51 and even if I could retire early financially, I wouldn’t do it and stay in the US. Play the smallest fiddle for us. I “retired my wife” at 44 in 2020 8 years into our marriage when I did a slight transition to an industry where remote work with travel is the norm (cloud consulting + app dev) and we have traveled a lot including doing stints as “digital nomads”. We are staying in one of the countries that we might retire to as a Plan B for six weeks starting next week. Even now that we moved to state tax free Florida and my wife hasn’t had to work in six years, she keeps a current CDL because she can get a job as a school bus driver easily for the benefits and someone will pay me for independent consulting if I lose my job. |
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| ▲ | glimshe 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| The FIRE community and my own personal situation prove you very, very wrong. It's absolutely possible for a upper middle class family to retire in their 50s, even in their 40s, if they live frugally. |
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| ▲ | aprdm 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | "Live frugally" , "FIRE" , "work in tech" All incompatible with 99% of the upper class, neither do they want to eat ramen to retire early. You're also one medical disaster away from being "very very wrong" | | |
| ▲ | jandrewrogers 9 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I know several people with normie jobs (not tech related or government) and normie lifestyles that saved up enough money to never need to work again by 50 while still maintaining their lifestyle. Most still work because they have no idea what to do with their time even though they don’t need to work anymore. You can easily derive that this is possible from the median household finance statistics published by BLS, never mind the upper class. It isn’t that hard if you care to do it. | |
| ▲ | snake42 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | FIRE doesn't depend on having a tech job. Its all about income to expense ratio. Planning for medical events is something that gets talked to death in these communities. | | |
| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | How do you plan for a potential quarter million dollar medical bills over a couple of years? | | |
| ▲ | Retric 38 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Good insurance is one aspect including long term disability coverage if you haven’t retired. That’s the thing medical expenses when young are unlikely enough insurance is a viable strategy. Long term it’s worthwhile to move to a country with a less expensive medical system. You can move basically anywhere in retirement and be better off. | | |
| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 21 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Again like I have been saying, good insurance is predicated on the open market and ACA being around and not being killed by Republicans. Even if they don’t outright kill it, they are trying to put in a “death spiral” where only sick people use it and insurance companies don’t want to participate. LTC not discriminating against pre-existing conditions is also post ACA. |
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| ▲ | 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | snake42 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | The same way that an employed person would plan for this. Catastrophic insurance plans put a cap on how much your medical bills can be. | | |
| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 an hour ago | parent [-] | | An employed person since the ACA hasn’t had to worry about lifetime caps… Oh and catastrophic insurance plans only have to cover pre-existing conditions since the ACA - which one party is actively trying to kill. |
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| ▲ | mech998877 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | 90%+ chance the person you are replying to has health insurance that will cover them in case of medical disaster. | | |
| ▲ | glimshe 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I absolutely have health insurance, the most expensive available on my state. That doesn't protect me 100%, but what health insurance (including the ones available at most companies) does? People who have poor money management skills believe that FIRE=Ramen and no health insurance... In fact, it's about getting a 30K car (the one I bought new 3 years ago) instead a 70K car despite having the money. | | |
| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | And what happens when the Republican Party gut the ACA and you have a pre-existing condition. Do you know what life was like trying to get insurance with a pre-existing condition before 2012? | | |
| ▲ | scottyah 43 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Then they can just skip insurance. Most people don't need it, especially if they already have a lot of money (which is what FIRE means) | | |
| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 33 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Obviously said by someone who is young and never had or knew anyone that had an expensive medical procedure like a friend who is 45 who I have known since 2003 and is cancer survivor and now has to have open heart surgery |
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| ▲ | mattmanser 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | 99% of people have poor money management skills? It's statements like this that makes FIRE a fringe scene. | | |
| ▲ | scottyah 42 minutes ago | parent [-] | | you're saying 99% of people think FIRE = ramen? I doubt that many even have heard of it |
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| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | And health insurance as soon as the ACA is gutted and you have a pre existing condition? Sure I could retire to Costa Rica or Panama. One of those are a plan B and we will be in CR for six weeks and we are both learning Spanish - I am. decent at it. I bet you also your idea of upper middle class is not statistically valid. https://dqydj.com/household-income-percentile-calculator/ | | |
| ▲ | chasd00 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Costa Rica is on my retirement shortlist. I really like it there and have taken the family for vacation a couple times. I've driven the whole country pretty much North to South. Puerto Jimenez is one of my favorite places but it's very rural. There's some nice areas an hour or two North of San Jose as well. I've met a handful of US families that, when the pandemic hit, just sold everything they owned and moved to Costa Rica. As far as central america goes Costa Rica is a bright spot of stability and like a functioning government. I live in Dallas so pretty much have to know a little Spanish but there isn't much of a language barrier at all. You could do a lot worse than Costa Rica. | |
| ▲ | glimshe 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I didn't get where I am by taking random bets, but I'll say you'd lose your money here. | | |
| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Were you around and trying to get health insurance before 2012? I was. The startup I worked for shut down and while I had a well paying contract lined up literally the next week, I couldn’t get health insurance at any price because of a pre-existing condition even though at the time, I was a part time fitness instructor and I had just gotten through running my first (and last) two half marathons. If you are betting on the stability of the US health care system outside of employer funded health care, that is a monumentally stupid bet with one party actively trying to kill the ACA. | | |
| ▲ | Jach 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | So what did you do? Clearly you didn't die. Did you just have no insurance for the week before the new job started, or what? This also happened to you while you were working and slightly between jobs. So it's not really a FIRE concern if the concern is the US messing up the health care system even more in that it would effect everyone whether working or not. Generally speaking, an answer to mitigating a lot of types of risk with a FIRE model is: you just go back to work for a while. This is easier the younger you are. Edit: Also I thought COBRA would have been a more recent thing but it was Regan era. So did you not have employer-sponsored coverage with the startup? | | |
| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | No, my then fiance/now wife and I canceled our wedding we had planned, and went to the courthouse and got married six months earlier so I could get on her insurance. Also, just so happen I did end up in the hospital three weeks later because something happened that affected my breathing for an entire year. And how do you “go back to work” if the entire reason you need to go back to work is that you have a health condition? If you haven’t checked, jobs aren’t that easy to come by quickly in 2026 in tech like they use to be. Sure I could find someone to give me a contract if not hire me full time - but we are still back to not having insurance . The US messing up insurance on the open market is the concern and it being back like it was pre ACA. That only affects the unemployed under 65. As far as being between jobs - usually you can get COBRA for a limited amount of time - not an option for FIRE. Oh yeah, that brings up another point, I did pay for COBRA for two months back then. The contract I had paid more than enough to afford it. Then the acquiring company shut down their insurance plan and COBRA wasn’t even an option | | |
| ▲ | scottyah 39 minutes ago | parent [-] | | You do know you can have a wedding even if you're already on-paper married? The ceremony really has nothing to do with the legal act. | | |
| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 27 minutes ago | parent [-] | | So wouldn’t it go against everything that FIRE stood for to spend money on a wedding after you lost your job? |
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| ▲ | bjourne 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Statistics! Can a person below the median income afford to retire early? The answer is a resounding no. Can a person the top 10th percentile (upper middle class) afford to retire early? Yes. | | |
| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | https://dqydj.com/household-income-percentile-calculator/ So the top 10% is a household income of $250K and most of those couples didn’t reach that until their 40s. They aren’t making $225K as an L5 at 25 years old like a former intern/new grad I mentored when I was at BigTech Most software developers won’t even see above $160K inflation adjusted during their career. Most work in second tier cities in the “enterprise”z. | | |
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| ▲ | carlosjobim 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Thanks for living frugally. Since you now have some spare money, I decided it's time for a rent increase. And a tax increase. |
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| ▲ | everforward an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Without digging into this too far, I do think it’s possible but it does require starting early and sticking to the plan. I’m not one of those people, but I know people who are. The mean household income for the 4th quintile is 115k a year. The mean of the middle quintile is 70k. There’s a theoretical 45k a year spread if you earn like the 4th quintile and spend like the 3rd (evidently possible since a lot of people live in the 3rd quintile). Even ignoring compound interest, if you can hit that 4th quintile at 30 and you lose half the spread to taxes, by 55 you have 25 years of saving 22.5k/year for 562.5k in savings. It’s probably not the most fun thing, but I do think it’s doable. |
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| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Here are the numbers for context: https://dqydj.com/household-income-percentiles/ The median household income doesn’t earn the median wage every year from when they started working. That’s just a snapshot and it’s highly correlated with age. I’m 51, I damn sure couldn’t afford to max out my 401K. That means I was 25 in 1999. I definitely could afford to max out my 401K - which was then $10K a year - when I was making $35K a year. Especially when new grads are coming out now with student loan debt. |
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| ▲ | kelvinjps10 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| https://mrmoneymustache.com/blog/
Read this story and more in the fire community, it's not impossible |
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| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Does that answer the question about what happens when the ACA is gutted and you can’t get insurance at any price with a pre-existing condition? That happened to me right before the ACA went into affect. I was engaged to my now wife and we moved our marriage up early so I could get on her insurance. |
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| ▲ | kelvinjps10 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| With health marketplace you can get insurance, or you can get a PPA service, or save money into a HSA, like there is multiple ways to do it. |
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| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Until the Republican Party finally succeeds at gutting the ACA or make it so bad that insurers wing cover it. Let’s say you maxed out your HSA for 20 years and have $200K - that can be wiped out with one uncovered major medical incident the HSA max is relatively low. |
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| ▲ | apercu 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| So Texas also doesn’t have income tax but my siblings house (assessed at a lower value than mine) is assessed property tax almost triple wha mine is, dwarfing my state income tax plus property tax. Not sure about Florida - YMMV. |
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| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | My property taxes are $3000 a year. They were around $7K a year before we moved. We also downsized to a two bedroom condo -1200 square feet - from a 3500 square foot house in the most expensive county in GA (Forsyth) after my step son graduated in 2020 and after Covid. We sold our house for twice what we had it built for 8 years earlier and bought our condo for the same price as we paid for our house in 2016. Florida - especially when you live in the same county as DisneyWorld - is heavily subsidized by tourism |
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| ▲ | throwway120385 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| The other way to avoid a pre-existing condition is to just avoid medical care entirely. |
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| ▲ | atomicnumber3 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Ah yes, the 4chan retirement plan. Die of a preventable cause at age 42 while waiting for your captcha. | | |
| ▲ | paulddraper 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | If you accept that cancer is a death sentence, it’s not absurd to “self fund” your insurance with a nest egg. You can shop around quite a bit for non urgent care, and get good cash discount. | | |
| ▲ | greedo 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | If you accept cancer as a death sentence, you're an idiot. I had cancer at age 41. If I left it untreated, sure I'd be dead, probably by age 43. But I'm not an idiot, I had good health insurance, I was treated, and now that health event is over twenty years in the past. Had I self-funded with a (non-existent) nest egg, I would still be in debt over $600k. Instead, my insurance had to deal with that... | | |
| ▲ | mothballed 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 600k once in 40 years is cheap compared to the total cost of insurance, especially when you consider the compound interest you could have made on premiums not paid, plus with the freedom to get cancer care cheaper someplace privately outside the US. Your insurance company got the last laugh by a long shot. A typical family on insurance would pay $600,000 (between their take-home and the reduced wages paid by employers to cover insurance) in just 25 years, and that's before considering the opportunity cost of lost investments/yield. | | |
| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Are you really suggesting that a family should not have insurance at all and save the money? I have been working for 30 years and have never once paid more than $10K a year for insurance across 10 jobs 15 of those years were a family plan. Hell one of those jobs was with Amazon - the company with the shittiest benefit package in all of BigTech and even then I only $12K with a family plan. Right now we pay around $10K - my wife myself and my adult but under 26 (step)son |
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| ▲ | paulddraper 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | While I won’t argue insurance wasn’t overall beneficial in your case… There is no way that $600,000 is the cash price for cancer treatment (especially 20 years ago, but also today). The average cost of cancer treatment is $150k [1], and lower with cash price + shopping. [1] https://treatcancer.com/blog/cost-of-cancer/ |
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| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | How much of a nest egg do you think would let you afford a major operation like heart surgery or cancer care? | | |
| ▲ | paulddraper 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Read the qualifier. And heart surgery is ~$60k. [1] That's <36 months of insurance premiums according to the earlier poster. [1] https://cost.sidecarhealth.com/ts/heart-bypass-surgery-cost-... | | |
| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | I have never in my 30 year career paid more than $10K a year for health care across 10 jobs and that’s including working at Amazon with their shitty benefit package | |
| ▲ | mothballed 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It cost $30k for a loved one just to go to the hospital when their heart "felt weird" but absolutely nothing turned out to be wrong and all they did was run a couple quick scans and tests. I do agree with the overall idea of what you're saying that usually the premiums are way more than what you could get care for if you just saved the money, but the numbers on the website seem very wrong. I realize it's a total anecdote but from loved one's bills it is $20-30k just to get in the door and that is if actually nothing is wrong and there is no heart attack yet they're quoting $30k for an actual heart attack care. | | |
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| ▲ | watwut 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Even a minor one. |
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