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* Updated in March 2023, originally written in Sept 2017.

We do have a grand plan! We were infants to the journey of FIRE (as we all are when we get started!) since the idea took form in 2014, we had a wish-list of an ideal life:

  • We want better working hours, if we had to work at all. We know we are not keen on working 50 – 70 hour weeks. Even the minimum 40 hours seems much!
  • We want to take longer vacations and slow travel for months. We know between 16-24 days of vacation days a year is not going to cut it.
  • We want to spend more time with our children and each other. We know that only seeing our children on weekends and a 2-3 hours on some weekdays (a painful reality for many parents) is not acceptable for us.

FIRE to us is gaining something absolutely priceless – the freedom to choose. The freedom to do whatever we want without being bound to decisions driven by financial constraints.

In order to live our life with purpose and passion, we charted out what is most important to us. A visual representation of that looks like this:

Yes, while we can do this now even as we work, when we have some free time, but we want to do this the majority of our time. Therein lies the dilemma. So FIRE remains the goal.

Along the way, as you would know, we decided on a Mini Retirement instead once we had saved up approximately 70% of what we thought we would need to reach FI.

What Was Our Initial Plan to Reach FIRE?

Largely our FIRE Plan is broken down into 2 phases:

  1. Phase 1: Mr.C makes the money grow
  2. Phase 2: Mr.C & Ms.K with the juniors in tow live off it.

Am kidding!! That is not the plan, not entirely at least 😀

So we actually started at 2014, Mr.C reminded me. I like how I forget these details so will leave the table as it is as an inside joke 😉

Phase 1: Accumulation Phase

When we started out Mr.C gave a timeline of 5 years to be safe. I instinctively said – 2 years. It’s all about having stretch goals 😀 Let’s just say I was overly ambitious!

Eventually we are planning the accumulation phase flexibly as there has been periods I have not worked while taking care of CocoJr #1 and we intend to have me quit next year to care for CocoJr #2. So flexibility is key to our plan, despite wanting to reach Phase 2 yesterday!

As it stands we’re looking at 5 years of accumulation all in all which would end in 2019, we should have a comfortable 4% withdrawal to live more than adequately in Asia and afford us temporary respites in more expensive countries.

2023 Update – Still accumulating! We decided on a mini-retirement in 2019 that pushed our initial plans slightly out of whack but totally, totally worth it and would do it again!

So here’s what we did!

6 Months of Mini Retirement & Our Reflections (Part 1) & Part 2

We’re Going to Call Mexico Home for a Bit (The kids are in school!)

Phase 2: Financially Independent, Retire Early (FIRE) Phase

This is where it gets fun. We will be living off our 4% and any entrepreneurial cash in-flows we have. Our biggest expenses would be:

  1. Healthcare – We intend to retain our private insurances for the entire family which covers personal accidents, hospitalisation and major illnesses. In Asia, medical bills for the run of the mill visits to the doctors isn’t very much. I reckon if we travel to more expensive countries for extended periods, we will consider additional insurance.
  2. Housing – We do intend to rent as we move around. Long term rentals can work out to our benefit and this will be more so in Asia. The 5-star hotel in some Asian countries for a month was still cheaper than what we pay in Singapore for rent in a month. But of course, just because you can’t doesn’t mean you should 😉
  3. Education – This is somewhat unexplored on our end. We have the option of homeschooling or the traditional schooling.

As we go along this path, traditional retirement benefits will kick in when we hit 55. The only ticker in our timeline that puts us on edge is that we want to travel with our family and possibly be back in Singapore when it’s time to enroll the kids in school – that’s age 7.

2023 Update – We have yet to reach this stage. Also in all honesty, the amount we were targeting has been raised. We took a more prudent approach to have a higher monthly passive income coming in, with the family size as it is and being practical about our monthly burn rate.

So as we stand, we still are on the FIRE journey to accumulate. Exciting times ahead, we hope to share more as we gain more clarity and go through this journey. We hope you stay with us through it!

IC: Feature Photo by Ylanite Koppens from Pexels

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