Financial Independence with Business as Accelerator
Lean FIRE means financial independence on a small budget, which shrinks the number you need. Cutting spending works twice: it lowers the target and raises what you save. But it has a floor. Here’s the maths, and the lever with no floor.
Fat FIRE means financial independence on a generous budget, often around $100,000 a year or more. At a 4% withdrawal rate that’s $2.5 million. Here’s what it takes to get there, and why the saving it needs usually comes from a business rather than a salary.
In September I spent weeks sharpening a framework and collected five objections and zero buyers. The rule since: nothing gets built until ten people have said yes to a number, not to the idea. I’m running it on this site now, in the open.
A business counts toward financial independence in two ways only: what it pays you once it runs without you, and what lands if you sell it. Until then, it’s a job. Here’s the arithmetic, and why the sale is usually worth less than owners think.
An owner I know asked if I’d buy her practice. Full diary, loyal clients, years of work. When I looked for what would stay if she left, there was nothing to buy. I’ve been that business. Here’s the test, and what it means for your date.
Three weeks, a dozen tools, every one closed with the same verdict. Then I wrote. The bottleneck was never distribution. It’s the question I now ask before buying anything — and it’s the same question that stops people getting their first client.
Most people treat forgiveness and access as one decision. They’re two very separate matters, and mixing+welding them together is why so many people end up stuck in one of two bad places — carrying bitterness they don’t want, or carrying people they can’t (and shouldn’t) afford. They answer different questions Forgiveness is about what I’m … Read more
For about a decade I owned dividend stocks. Five+ percent a year, landing in my account, reliably. Tax-free too, for Singapore dividend stocks. I still love ’em – it just works. It was also wrong, and those two facts sat side by side for years without me noticing. Because the money kept arriving, and money … Read more
Work backwards from your FI number, not forwards from a valuation. A sale lands 60 to 80% of its headline price after earn-out risk, fees and tax, so the headline has to be roughly 1.3 to 1.6 times the gap. Here’s the arithmetic, worked through.
Barista FIRE is when your investments cover part of your spending and part-time work covers the rest. Here’s how to work out your number, what it does to your date, and why the part-time income is where most plans are weakest.