(This is playful light-hearted teasing).
(I mean no offense to anyone).
(I wish real love to everyone, it’s better than fire money).
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Since I became an adult to be honest. Got more open with my ex-GF but now I‘m certain.
I guess you can plan for that, though I would anyway work a bit to cover the case that kids do come e.g. if you change your mind later.
Kids would change the equation. It would delay my FIRE target by 5-10 years (1-2 kids). Maybe less if I start a family with 1.0M NW when I‘m 40-41.
I think very similar to you Cortana.
Fire is the ultimate path to freedom for me. I like my work (most of the time), but I absolutely loathe being chained by it.
Also I hate having to conform to the societal 40 hour work week schedule, my natural self just wants to function differently. At the same time I am still incredibly thankful on where I can live and the income and work fufillment I can get here. Like I can’t stress this enough. That I can even think about getting to FIRE in 10 years in the most expensive country on earth, is incredible.
I have two goals for me.
One is Barista FIRE or 50% work FIRE. Meaning I could cut my work hours by half to pay for my fixed costs. That’s conveniently about half the money towards full FIRE.
I will probably not stop working even after reaching full FIRE, but I would gradually (likely even before) and then drstically start to reduce hours and only taking work I really want to do. Something like independent consulting.
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Re-read that. 25x. Current. Expenses.
Mine are 3’500/month. I struggle to see what to do with, hang on, 87,5k per month in expenses.
Maybe I just need a new lifestyle guide or an updated shopping list…
Much easier to set up reachable goals while an eye on the final picture. Nothing wrong with that. Keep in mind video games use exactly the same scenario. Don’t forget there’s a big boss at the end of each level and that you only have one life.
25x annual expenses as nte worht ( @Moustachienne special), not getting 25x current expenses as monthly income 
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4 posts were split to a new topic: How to factor in FIRE when kids may or may not be in the future?
Cortana your framing clicked with me. Spent years staring at one number too, and the closer i got the more it felt like nothing. The day i broke it into stages it changed.
For me it was three brackets, not a graph. First was just runway. How many months could we go without my paycheck. Second was bridge to AHV/PK at 65. Third was actual full coverage from invested capital. Same spreadsheet, three different questions.
What surprised me was how unevenly the milestones came. Runway was already there years ago, i just hadnt named it. The bridge number was further than expected because of healthcare. Full FI is the slowest one and probably the least urgent because by the time youve got the bridge covered the pressure is mostly off.
finalcountdown nailed it. its gradual.
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What did this mean for for? Some kind of lean FI because you could live of AHB/PK? (What’s PK?)
And didn’t you count pillars for general FI at all?
Well if you can’t bridge to when AHV/pension is available then you’re not FI.
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That’s what I’m trying to understand because they have this intermediate thing of bridging going on:
- Being able to live for X months/years off savings(not a level for me just a number)
- Bridging until pension
- FI
I interpreted 2 as either FI when considering pension, or FI until pension age and maybe pension itself is insufficient (less likely)
3 is FI without counting pension (in case of any concerns about pension rules changing).
United Kingdom
- The 1990s Pension Mis-Selling Scandal: Over one million individuals were convinced by commission-hungry financial advisors to abandon secure, workplace pension schemes in favor of inferior personal plans.
- Equitable Life: Once the world’s oldest mutual insurer, the company collapsed after failing to set aside enough capital for guaranteed annuities, shrinking the wealth of a million policyholders.
- BHS & Mirror Group: High-profile cases where corporate executives were found to have raided, mismanaged, or drastically underfunded workers’ retirement funds. [1, 2, 3, 4]
United States
- Public Corruption & Pay-to-Play: Sordid scandals have involved massive public pension funds, such as the New York State Common Retirement Fund, where officials directed billions in investments to firms in exchange for bribes.
- Municipal Bankruptcies: Cities like Detroit and Puerto Rico have seen their public pension obligations force them into bankruptcy. [1, 2]
Switzerland
- The Vera/Pevos Crisis: One of the largest collapses in Swiss history involved the Vera and Pevos pension funds, where directors misused the assets of 2,000 insured persons in the mid-1980s and 1990s, resulting in losses of over SFr200 million and implicating massive insurers. [1]
Other Global Cases
- Shanghai Pension Scandal (China): A massive corruption case in which hundreds of millions of state pension funds were diverted for real estate deals and political payoffs, eventually implicating high-ranking Chinese Communist Party officials.
- Dolphin Trust (Ireland): Thousands of Irish pension holders lost an estimated €150 million after their retirement funds were tied into a massive international Ponzi scheme based on German property investments. [1, 2, 3]
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I fail to understand the connection of this summary to this thread. In the end, nothing is life safe, except death.
Can we please get back to the actual topic.
I mean someone said the pension was „guaranteed", and Phil gave some counterexamples.
Seems relevant to me
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On this topic - I think most people vastly overconsume or overerstimate their expenses. I understand the reason behind treading carfully, but imho you need a lot of less money than people make it out to be.
For example - I think you can easily raise a family with 2 kids on about 1 median income (6000 CHF) with some planning, time and financial savyness. Sure, living in a city isn’t possible and you’ll need to optimize your shopping and cooking game, but let’s be real here - you learn that once and then this runs on auto pilot. The thought of spending 8K a month or so, seems very odd to me 
My goal is also 2.5M - but since my spouse and I bought our appartment, I feel like we need waaaay less. I’ll continue working until we cross 7 figures in IBKR, but I wonder if I can pull the plug much, much earlier - especially considering that my spouse to continue working, due to the need for a set day structure.
Oh and the 2.5M or 100K/y is for a family of 6 - so 4 kids in our case.
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