u/CobaltCrestStudio

I grew up in a lower middle class household, first in my family to go to college, graduated with about 40k in student loans and no financial knowledge whatsoever. I didn't know what an index fund was until I was 26. I spent my early twenties making reasonable money and spending basically all of it because that's what I saw modeled around me and nobody told me there was another option. At 27 I stumbled onto this community and it genuinely changed the trajectory of my life. I'm not exaggerating when I say that. Today my net worth crossed 900k which is the number I calculated as my FIRE target based on a 3.5 percent withdrawal rate and my actual annual expenses, which run about 31k a year. I'm not retiring today, I'm going to work another year or two to build in a bigger cushion and because I actually don't mind my job when I know it's optional. But hitting the number feels like something I needed to acknowledge. My salary is 118k in a MCOL city. I max my 401k and Roth IRA every year, have for seven years, and put the rest into a taxable brokerage. No inheritance, no windfalls, no crypto. Just boring index funds and time and saying no to a lot of things that didn't matter to me as much as the freedom did. If you're early in this journey and it feels impossibly far away, I was you eight years ago and I promise the math works if you let it.