For my part, at least precisely for that reason, so that I could do those things that were mentioned as a goal and towards which we are heading. My own situation is such that I could do all the things I want, but I don’t have time. The only thing preventing it is working.
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Ultimately, with FIRE, you buy free time. By working and simultaneously accumulating more in your portfolio, you would become significantly richer than by living off the returns of a previously built portfolio. It is thus a balancing act between free time and money.
In the FIRE movement, FI is the thing that must first be achieved before one can realize RE.
For many people, FI is already perfectly sufficient without full “retirement”. On the one hand, FI enables all sorts of nice purchases etc., and on the other hand, it provides peace of mind when you don’t have to worry about how you’ll manage if you were to become temporarily unemployed or similar. The feeling of freedom is the most important factor in it.
Then, if one also wants to retire, one must settle for a more modest standard of living than by continuing to work. And in addition to the feeling of freedom, one might feel a slight sense of insecurity when the standard of living depends on the portfolio. These are not only financial but also largely psychological matters.
An example of a bad scenario is retiring with a “small portfolio,” where the sufficiency of funds constantly haunts one’s subconscious, making it difficult to fully enjoy life.
So, FIRE is indeed much more than just euros in a portfolio; it’s also about psychology, and one must know oneself well to avoid a situation where one is rich but constantly stressed about the sufficiency of money.
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Hi, it’s been interesting to read this thread, thanks everyone. My goal is to achieve partial FIRE, and it looks like I’ll reach it in 5–10 years. Explaining my situation requires a bit of opening up.
By profession, I am a general practitioner (GP). I couldn’t imagine doing any other work than being a doctor. However, work is always work, and practicing as a doctor is very demanding. I applied to medical school purely out of interest in human biology, though a secure and good livelihood didn’t hurt. However, it wasn’t until the end of my studies that I realized how easily I could achieve financial freedom. Specializing would be professionally interesting, but the trade-off is currently too great financially. Of course, it’s not out of the question that I might specialize later, once FIRE is achieved. During my studies, I worked as a locum doctor, and now that I’ve graduated, I work in the private sector, mainly treating occupational health patients.
During medical school, I became enthusiastic about investing and now spend a lot of my free time on related topics. Currently, my stock portfolio is around 200k. I’m aiming for a 1M portfolio. I can invest at least 100k per year, so I’m not overly stressed about the FIRE timeline: 1M will happen sooner or later.
My plan is that once I have a million, it will mostly be left to sit in a global index fund ad infinitum. Alongside that, I would do some active investing, but at least initially with a small portion of the portfolio and adhering to Buffett’s two rules. Currently, there simply isn’t enough time for active investing, unlike during my student years. My investment style involves longer swing trades, based on momentum, turnaround companies, and changes in investment narratives. My results have been reasonably good and encouraging, pretty much on par with the SP500 for active investing between 2020–2025.
I wouldn’t touch the portfolio’s principal, but would work just enough to cover my expenses. I also want to maintain my skills throughout my life so that I can treat or help my close ones with health issues if needed – I also feel it’s my duty. To maintain skills and cover expenses, a workload of, for example, 1 week per month or one workday once a week should suffice; we’ll see what routine feels best then.
I’m particularly interested if there are other doctors in this thread pursuing FIRE or lighter financial freedom? I feel that financial matters are a huge taboo in my field, so it’s difficult to open up about this elsewhere – that’s why I’m writing here now.
I don’t believe I would get bored once I achieve my goal. I am naturally eager to learn, and there’s already a vast amount of interesting new things to learn. I think that if I ever felt the urge to go back to work, I could always specialize later or work as a locum even in the wilderness of Eastern Finland.
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Based on my own observations, as soon as your salary approaches or exceeds the median (~€4000/month), responsibility grows. If you have a deadline at work, whether you’re sick, your children are sick, or everyone is sick, it still has to be taken care of, with few exceptions. When your standard of living is scaled to match this, you’ve practically placed golden handcuffs on yourself. The more assets one has, the more one can rise against this, as there’s no need to worry about potential consequences.
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A lack of money can be an obstacle to making career changes. An acquaintance of mine said they would like to change jobs, try something new, but “when you have a big mortgage,” you can’t take risks by switching to roles that are too different and more uncertain. Large loans combined with a small buffer are indeed an effective brake on many things; one cannot take the same risks in their career as a financially independent person.
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I’ve been thinking that if I were to step down from management-level positions, my salary would directly drop by a couple of thousand. I would then move back to specialist roles. The stress would certainly decrease, as I could truly be sick in peace without a pile of problems waiting when I return to work.
It’s difficult because no one can promise that you’ll get back to higher-paying positions if you once “downshift.” Especially if you’ve worked for years to get to better positions, it feels both smart and foolish at the same time.
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From net salary?
I wouldn’t go into management work for cheap nowadays; it’s better to be a regular employee who can close their laptop lid at 4:00 PM every day and open a beer.
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From gross salary. Net, the difference is much smaller. Salary levels in the company are roughly:
€6500 managers, who supervise senior specialists and specialists.
€4500 specialists, who are senior specialists.
There are also managers without subordinates. Their salaries are likely between the above.
A couple of steps higher, and you’re already on the tabloid’s envy lists.
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A hundred grand to invest per year is an incredibly huge amount from a doctor under 30! Congratulations on that, because with 16k€ / month, even a specialist doctor cannot invest that much in Finland. There are quite a few expenses after taxes. The salary must be high, when a dentist cannot achieve the same with 16k€ income in a small town 
Regards, A doctor specialized in teeth.
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If your skills are sufficient for strong expertise, in companies that value their specialists, you can reach management salary levels and six-figure salaries with a senior specialist title.
However, this does not free you from responsibility, because in technical choices there is no longer a higher authority to escalate to; the buck stops at your desk even if your child is sick. A specialist is a grey eminence who guides decisions without formal decision-making power, decisions that management has to make with budget responsibility but weaker substantive knowledge of the product and project impacts of the decision.
“Raising the RPMs by downshifting” is an odd term for relaxing, but it’s not your fault that calm cruising by shifting up to overdrive is described with a technically inept term.
I, myself, made my choice when two tasks grew too large for one desk. I had it easier because I never gave up my specialist role; instead, I served for a few years as both lead designer and line manager until the growth in headcount and tasks forced me to choose between the two roles. So I didn’t have to return to the specialist path, but merely gave up the time-consuming people management that was not my field.
Both are challenging in different ways, and I don’t belittle management; rather, I admit that I’m not very good at it because I’m not as interested in it as I am in technical design.
My own suggestion is to gravitate towards what interests you. People are usually at their best when doing what genuinely interests them.
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Indeed, one must make a conscious choice about what aspect of life they want to focus on if they decide to downshift. It also requires the ability to adapt to accepting that, instead of a decision-making role, you will be in more of an executing role in certain matters. Suggestions for improvement can always be made, but honestly, the game isn’t managed from the sidelines.
I largely see this as a matter of character; some enjoy creating new things and bearing responsibility, while others enjoy more the opportunity to focus on details, and everything happening around them is more or less unnecessary noise to them.
The challenge here arises from other aspects of life and taxation. Where to find time for everything, and does that extra effort even concretely show itself anywhere for you? Do you get support for that role from home, does it work in everyday life? Or are you currently playing the same role there as in working life? I don’t mean that nothing is done at home, but rather what the dynamic is there. Who thinks about and plans larger purchases, who primarily takes care of unexpected problem situations? I would imagine that in this, opposites complement each other best, allowing everyone to fulfill themselves in their own area of strength.
Often, this is immediately perceived as an equation of a stay-at-home mother/woman doing less demanding work and a career-building man. Conversely, it can just as well be a hands-on man and a career-building woman. Two people building careers already require a really good support network and a desire to organize things.
If one considers the euros per hour remaining after taxes, with this taxation system, it wouldn’t be worth working as an employee after a certain income level.
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Your comment resonates beautifully with my own experience. Here, we seem to be talking about expertise at different levels, because I myself have experienced the bar for an expert role as RISING. That is, when the aim is first to know more about one’s own field than others, even to the extent of conference papers that expand human consciousness, professional literature, and patent applications.
I didn’t feel like I was downshifting; instead, I embarked on an expert path to leave my own fingerprints on the blueprints of a brave new world.
An expert absolutely must lead the development of their own field, because others cannot. An expert creates new things; others merely repeat what is already known.
You still beautifully encapsulated the attitude of the environment. An expert has to get used to explaining that they are more interested in technical challenges, even though the younger generation in the family overtakes them with titles from right and left, and they themselves are always just a Senior Specialist. The truth, however, is revealed on the envy day in November.
I am a little envious and very proud that my son received the Senior Specialist title 10 years younger than me.
Touché! My wife and I agreed back then that she would sacrifice her career for my international assignments, because there was more to achieve in my field. International experience turned into money, which grows both our pension portfolios at an equal pace, regardless of a 2.5 - 3 times income difference.
After two penniless individuals found each other, everything acquired since then has been shared. Due to a mutual right of administration will, not even death can separate it.
My wife took care of the children partly as a single parent while I flew around the world. Now it’s my turn to do the laundry and prepare food during her work shift. This doesn’t work without complete trust and commitment from both sides.
When a 55% marginal tax, along with other fiscal charges, takes about 2/3 of the last thousands, exchanging 1.5 days of net salary for an extra week off with family feels reasonably priced.
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Thanks, colleague! I realize that I am in a privileged position. I operate through an Ltd. (Osakeyhtiö), that’s why that 100k is possible.
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I thought about this more on a daily level.
A manager has their own tasks, tasks flowing down from the organization, and supervisory tasks. In the best/worst case, an expert can focus on operating within their own niche.
This is true. I was thinking more about activities at the organizational level here. Opinions can be expressed, but decisions about the company’s direction come from the manager/leadership level.
Absolutely. In this regard, I also felt it was better to move to an expert path. As long as the work can be arranged, holidays generally don’t need to be interrupted due to supervisory duties, etc., but you can, at your own discretion, either decide to advance matters during your holiday or return to them later.
If salaries are compared, there’s a net loss of ~500€/month, which I gladly pay. It might not suit FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early), but rather balancing work and leisure, as children are only small once.
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There are probably as many answers to this as there are respondents. I myself am in an expert role, my gross salary is between 4000-5000€, I don’t have to think about work in my free time, I can do as much remote work as I want, there’s no stress/rush when I get things done on time… But the actual work itself is like pulling teeth for me, I don’t like it at all. There are no flow states, no sense of meaningfulness, or whatever else consultants always advertise in their presentations. The work is simply boring, and has actually always been. The only motivation for going to work is the salary.
I originally entered the field because I needed to get a job after graduation, and then I progressed within the company. Changing fields isn’t really possible at this stage, as I have a family and loan repayment costs, as the topic was already touched upon in previous messages. I can only blame myself for not changing jobs earlier, but now I have to live with the decision. The plan is to grow my portfolio large enough so that I could someday change fields, study, or do anything other than my current tasks.
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Greetings, and thank you for the interesting discussion in this thread. There has been talk here about reducing working hours before actual “FIRE”. Today I wrote a text on the topic, “Economist Ponders”, where I reflected on the amount of work as a weak metric. I myself have been working 80% hours for several years now, which has been a very good decision for me. Feel free to delete if it strays too far from the main topic 
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I would like to hear more of these FIRE stories where FIRE has truly succeeded, like the VPK example.
It feels to me that usually a. the goal is never reached b. the goal slips away c. the goal is reached, but still nothing changes because people are who they are are so common and a bit boring. Of course, “it’s not the destination but the journey” is quite an apt saying here too.
To the young ones, uncle wants to advise, that if you plan to start a family, it’s advisable to postpone that phase until the children are teenagers. It’s a different matter to run the life of, for example, a 4-person family than to live alone. And here I’m not just talking about money
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A friend/acquaintance from a previous working life said that when they started running and growing their company, they noticed one thing. Namely, for Finns, the most important and sacred thing is permanent and full-time employment. It is the starting point for everything. Salary is a secondary matter, and people are willing to compromise even downwards on it, just so uncertainty doesn’t grow.
Furthermore, I have noticed over the years that people might have a thousand reasons to leave their current job, but Kafkaesquely they still return and stay there. Then they grumble something into their beards.
For these reasons, even going part-time is a really difficult FIRE-step for Finns (even though it is a rational and logical one). If you are part-time by your own initiative, it means that you are not as committed to the work or the community (this is the general assumption among employers and supervisors), and that quite effectively cuts off career developments, bonuses, and transfers. So you stay put.
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There’s a dedicated thread for this 
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Apparently, you need to have 10M accumulated there to live like a free man, so maybe this is a more realistic place to tell these stories 
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