My Journey Towards FIRE

In my last post I discussed the growing FIRE movement. As a millennial I always had a hard time envisioning myself working from 9-5pm for the rest of my life. I was thrilled to stumble upon the FIRE movement. And like most people, it took me a while to realize and accept that I could achieve FIRE as well.

I only discovered FIRE at the end of last year, and have already calculated that I will reach my FIRE number in 3 years! I will be in my early mid-thirties at that time. Apparently, I have been doing everything right this entire time. Being a traveling nurse practitioner has enabled me to save 85% or more of my salary each year. I max out all of my retirement accounts each year as well. I invest my savings in real estate and in the stock market.

It’s funny whenever I mention to the physicians at work that I will be retiring in a few years… they look at me as if I am crazy. They seem so burnt out and cannot fathom that there can be a light at the end of the tunnel. I think they all assume that they HAVE to work until their 60’s or 70’s. There may even be a stigma for a physician to retire early. As I have heard – “why retire early when you spent so much time in school to become a physician?”

I have started to think about what I will do once I retire early. For me, the most important part is being able to see my family on a regular basis. Not once a week after being exhausted from work type of family time. My siblings are going to start to have kids, so I want to spend as much time as possible with my nieces and nephews. My parents and grandparents are only getting older so I want to create many more memories with them too.

Of course, I love to travel, and will continue to travel abroad with my free time. I already travel hack as mentioned in previous posts, so this is completely affordable. I will also have the opportunity to spend more time volunteering abroad such as in Haiti, providing medical services for free.

I often wonder if I will actually retire once I hit my FI number. I think I may work just 3 months out of the year doing locums. This will be more than enough to cover my yearly expenses – and I won’t even have to touch my savings yet. I remember when I worked in Washington, there were traveling nurse practitioners that worked at my site 3 months on and 3 months off. They were partially retired and lived in Canada. They just came to work to keep up with their expenses and have something to do.

Join the FIRE movement! Even if you are already in your 50’s, it’s never too late to work on retiring even earlier than planned.