35岁提前退休的生活可能没有想象中的美妙
十年前，（现年33岁）格温·梅尔兹清楚地知道自己想要什么，也知道实现这一目标需要付出什么：在35岁时提前退休，名下有63.5万美元。至少，这是她以为自己想要的。
她刚刚在华盛顿特区的一家《财富》美国100强公司找到了一份工作。大学毕业后，由于奖学金和在军队服役，她没有负债。她告诉《财富》杂志，她在信用上的白板让她“可以全力以赴，立即开始储蓄”。这是受她在大学时读到的关于钱胡子先生（Mr. Money Mustache）等早期FIRE网红的启发。
她每年的收入从未超过8万美元，但在头五年里，她设法存了20万美元，同时按缴纳金额的上限在401（K）账户、罗斯个人退休账户和健康储蓄账户存入资金。但是，虽然这让她接近了账面上想要的理想生活，但却无法满足生活需求。
由于对工作环境不满意，她辞职自己当起了老板，一些副业让她感到振奋——主持播客、拥有一处出租物业、经营一家Etsy商店。但这些尝试大多没有成功，梅尔兹说这让她破产了。她靠自己的努力赚了大约1.5万美元，但她意识到这样的苦差事不值得，于是在九个月后重返工作岗位。
“我竭尽全力，把收入的70%存了起来。”她说。“我真的融入了社会的喧嚣文化，我真的筋疲力尽了。”
如今，梅尔兹是一名居住在圣路易斯的银行业信息技术审计员。她厌倦了喧嚣，对金钱有了新的认识，因此降低了自己的退休目标，选择了“Coast FIRE”生活方式——可以说是更A型FIRE运动中更冷酷、更年轻的姊妹。梅尔兹解释说：“这就是提前储蓄，这样复利和在市场上的时间结合起来，就能支付你退休后的开支。”
《财富》查阅的文件显示，她已储蓄了40万美元；她预计，到20年后她55岁提前退休时，她的储蓄基金将达到180万美元左右，储蓄的压力也会减轻。
虽然她仍保留着FIRE狂热时期留下的顽固储蓄习惯——她立即还清了汽车贷款，并将每月工资的10%存入401（k）账户（公司存入6%）——但“我不会再无谓地剥夺自己了。”她说，并补充说，她发现轻踩油门能带来巨大的回报，即使这些回报并不总是严格意义上的财务回报。“退后一步真的让我受益匪浅，让我有了余裕和能力去说'是' 。”
突破点
梅尔兹说，她很早就学会了理财，因为她的家庭并不富裕；她的单亲妈妈竭力供应生活起居。她补充说，类似的经济创伤，如父母失业或离婚，往往是吸引人们参加FIRE运动的原因——他们“真正想要的是拥有金钱带来的安心、安全和自由，以便能够经受住生活的任何考验”。
她说，这种成长经历带给她这样一种心态：要为未来存钱。“但是，如果你在到达那个阶段之前没有学会如何花钱，那么你就会遇到一些问题。”
20多岁时，她在华盛顿特区生活时意识到了这一点，这促使她在提前退休的快车道上踩下了刹车。她注意到，周围的人赚得更多，而且“不怕把钱花在自己身上，以提高自己”。这与梅尔兹在中西部中产阶级成长过程中形成的思维方式不同。
“我只记得自己在想‘为什么我要把这些钱都存起来？我看起来状态一般，我没有好好照顾自己，这有什么意义呢?’”她说。
她把自己的储蓄率降到最低，并聘请了一位私人造型师。她经常节衣缩食或向朋友借衣服，不知道自己穿什么才好看。她回忆说，仅仅在一节课后就看到了巨大的改善，她开始想知道生活中还有什么可以改变的。她补充说：“事实上，这让我在别人面前的感觉大不相同。”
停止储蓄让梅尔兹意识到她的预算是如何限制她的生活方式的。“我的银行账户确实受益于我在20多岁时采取的行动，但我认为我的社交生活也受到了同等程度的影响。"她补充说，”作为一个20多岁的单身女性，想在约会时不花钱真的很难……这让很多原本可能很适合我的人望而却步。”
FIRE之火逐渐熄灭后的生活
梅尔兹说，十年前，当她第一次进入FIRE世界时，做出细微改变的空间还比较小。她指出，2010年代的FIRE偶像往往符合某种刻板印象——已婚、双职工（通常是工程师）、非常理智。她解释说，他们遵循的思想是严格的预算编制、在电子表格中记录一切、每晚吃米饭和豆类、骑自行车出行。她补充说：“现在，FIRE运动的范围确实扩大了，涵盖了各种各样的人和对退休的态度。”她说，"人们有更多的空间来制定自己的规则手册，尝试而不是陷入这种生活方式。”
她找到了社区，这是她一直珍视的生活方式。虽然她仍在使用十年前参与FIRE运动保留的预算技巧和电子表格，但她说她不再那么频繁地使用它们了。这是因为对她来说，金钱不再是优先考虑的问题。
她补充说：“在我年轻的时候，我看世界的第一视角就是金钱。现在，当我试图在各种事情之间做出决定时，金钱很少成为我的首要考虑因素，因为金钱已经不那么重要了。”
她现在已经订婚了，正在考虑如何更好地将自己的财务状况与伴侣的财务状况结合起来。她想，如果她在 22 岁时遇到他，考虑到她严格遵守FIRE生活方式，可能就不会有结果。最近，梅尔兹与一位朋友一起去车库拍卖会购物，当这位朋友指出过去梅尔兹严格遵守FIRE生活方式时是不会陪她来这里购物的，梅尔兹感到很难过。她说，这让她很难过，心想：“我到底错过了多少时光？就因为我想多存几百美元”。
尽管如此，梅尔兹还是从她的FIRE习惯和预算方式中学到了东西。虽然如果你在信用方面不是白板，可能需要很长时间才能加入这项运动，但她说，你不需要全力以赴，仍然可以将其中的一些经验应用到你的生活中。尽管这项运动往往是关于最终目标和银行账户里的资金，但她鼓励人们“超越数字”。
她说：“对于那些拼尽全力在30岁就提前退休的人来说，我真的会鼓励他们审视自己行为背后的动机。而且，他们退休是想逃离什么，还是为了什么？因为这是完全不同的概念。”（财富中文网）
译者：中慧言-王芳
十年前，（现年33岁）格温·梅尔兹清楚地知道自己想要什么，也知道实现这一目标需要付出什么：在35岁时提前退休，名下有63.5万美元。至少，这是她以为自己想要的。
她刚刚在华盛顿特区的一家《财富》美国100强公司找到了一份工作。大学毕业后，由于奖学金和在军队服役，她没有负债。她告诉《财富》杂志，她在信用上的白板让她“可以全力以赴，立即开始储蓄”。这是受她在大学时读到的关于钱胡子先生（Mr. Money Mustache）等早期FIRE网红的启发。
她每年的收入从未超过8万美元，但在头五年里，她设法存了20万美元，同时按缴纳金额的上限在401（K）账户、罗斯个人退休账户和健康储蓄账户存入资金。但是，虽然这让她接近了账面上想要的理想生活，但却无法满足生活需求。
由于对工作环境不满意，她辞职自己当起了老板，一些副业让她感到振奋——主持播客、拥有一处出租物业、经营一家Etsy商店。但这些尝试大多没有成功，梅尔兹说这让她破产了。她靠自己的努力赚了大约1.5万美元，但她意识到这样的苦差事不值得，于是在九个月后重返工作岗位。
“我竭尽全力，把收入的70%存了起来。”她说。“我真的融入了社会的喧嚣文化，我真的筋疲力尽了。”
如今，梅尔兹是一名居住在圣路易斯的银行业信息技术审计员。她厌倦了喧嚣，对金钱有了新的认识，因此降低了自己的退休目标，选择了“Coast FIRE”生活方式——可以说是更A型FIRE运动中更冷酷、更年轻的姊妹。梅尔兹解释说：“这就是提前储蓄，这样复利和在市场上的时间结合起来，就能支付你退休后的开支。”
《财富》查阅的文件显示，她已储蓄了40万美元；她预计，到20年后她55岁提前退休时，她的储蓄基金将达到180万美元左右，储蓄的压力也会减轻。
虽然她仍保留着FIRE狂热时期留下的顽固储蓄习惯——她立即还清了汽车贷款，并将每月工资的10%存入401（k）账户（公司存入6%）——但“我不会再无谓地剥夺自己了。”她说，并补充说，她发现轻踩油门能带来巨大的回报，即使这些回报并不总是严格意义上的财务回报。“退后一步真的让我受益匪浅，让我有了余裕和能力去说'是' 。”
突破点
梅尔兹说，她很早就学会了理财，因为她的家庭并不富裕；她的单亲妈妈竭力供应生活起居。她补充说，类似的经济创伤，如父母失业或离婚，往往是吸引人们参加FIRE运动的原因——他们“真正想要的是拥有金钱带来的安心、安全和自由，以便能够经受住生活的任何考验”。
她说，这种成长经历带给她这样一种心态：要为未来存钱。“但是，如果你在到达那个阶段之前没有学会如何花钱，那么你就会遇到一些问题。”
20多岁时，她在华盛顿特区生活时意识到了这一点，这促使她在提前退休的快车道上踩下了刹车。她注意到，周围的人赚得更多，而且“不怕把钱花在自己身上，以提高自己”。这与梅尔兹在中西部中产阶级成长过程中形成的思维方式不同。
“我只记得自己在想‘为什么我要把这些钱都存起来？我看起来状态一般，我没有好好照顾自己，这有什么意义呢?’”她说。
她把自己的储蓄率降到最低，并聘请了一位私人造型师。她经常节衣缩食或向朋友借衣服，不知道自己穿什么才好看。她回忆说，仅仅在一节课后就看到了巨大的改善，她开始想知道生活中还有什么可以改变的。她补充说：“事实上，这让我在别人面前的感觉大不相同。”
停止储蓄让梅尔兹意识到她的预算是如何限制她的生活方式的。“我的银行账户确实受益于我在20多岁时采取的行动，但我认为我的社交生活也受到了同等程度的影响。"她补充说，”作为一个20多岁的单身女性，想在约会时不花钱真的很难……这让很多原本可能很适合我的人望而却步。”
FIRE之火逐渐熄灭后的生活
梅尔兹说，十年前，当她第一次进入FIRE世界时，做出细微改变的空间还比较小。她指出，2010年代的FIRE偶像往往符合某种刻板印象——已婚、双职工（通常是工程师）、非常理智。她解释说，他们遵循的思想是严格的预算编制、在电子表格中记录一切、每晚吃米饭和豆类、骑自行车出行。她补充说：“现在，FIRE运动的范围确实扩大了，涵盖了各种各样的人和对退休的态度。”她说，"人们有更多的空间来制定自己的规则手册，尝试而不是陷入这种生活方式。”
她找到了社区，这是她一直珍视的生活方式。虽然她仍在使用十年前参与FIRE运动保留的预算技巧和电子表格，但她说她不再那么频繁地使用它们了。这是因为对她来说，金钱不再是优先考虑的问题。
她补充说：“在我年轻的时候，我看世界的第一视角就是金钱。现在，当我试图在各种事情之间做出决定时，金钱很少成为我的首要考虑因素，因为金钱已经不那么重要了。”
她现在已经订婚了，正在考虑如何更好地将自己的财务状况与伴侣的财务状况结合起来。她想，如果她在 22 岁时遇到他，考虑到她严格遵守FIRE生活方式，可能就不会有结果。最近，梅尔兹与一位朋友一起去车库拍卖会购物，当这位朋友指出过去梅尔兹严格遵守FIRE生活方式时是不会陪她来这里购物的，梅尔兹感到很难过。她说，这让她很难过，心想：“我到底错过了多少时光？就因为我想多存几百美元”。
尽管如此，梅尔兹还是从她的FIRE习惯和预算方式中学到了东西。虽然如果你在信用方面不是白板，可能需要很长时间才能加入这项运动，但她说，你不需要全力以赴，仍然可以将其中的一些经验应用到你的生活中。尽管这项运动往往是关于最终目标和银行账户里的资金，但她鼓励人们“超越数字”。
她说：“对于那些拼尽全力在30岁就提前退休的人来说，我真的会鼓励他们审视自己行为背后的动机。而且，他们退休是想逃离什么，还是为了什么？因为这是完全不同的概念。”（财富中文网）
译者：中慧言-王芳
Ten years ago, Gwen Merz, now 33, knew exactly what she wanted and what it took to get there: to retire early at age 35 with $635,000 to her name. At least, that’s what she thought she wanted.
She had just landed a job at a Fortune 100 company in Washington D.C. after graduating from college debt-free thanks to a scholarship and time spent serving in the military. Her clean slate allowed her to “just to go all in and start saving immediately,” she tells Fortune, inspired by the early FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) influencers like Mr. Money Mustache that she read about in college.
She never made more than $80,000 a year, yet managed to save $200,000 within her first five years while maxing out her 401K, Roth IRA, and HSA. But while it got her close to what she wanted on paper, it wasn’t getting her what she needed from life.
Unhappy with her working environment, she quit and became her own boss, feeling buoyed by a few side hustles—hosting a podcast, owning a rental property, and running an Etsy shop. But most of those endeavors didn’t work out, which Merz says left her broke. She made about $15,000 on her own, but realized the grind wasn’t worth it and returned to work nine months later.
“I went at it really hard, and I saved 70% of my income,” she says. “I really bought into the hustle culture that is part of society and I got really burnt out.”
Today, Merz is an IT auditor in the banking world living in St. Louis. Tired of the hustle and a newfound perspective on money, she’s since scaled back her retirement goals, opting to live by the ‘Coast FIRE’ movement—arguably the chiller, younger sibling of the more type-A FIRE movement. It’s all about “front loading savings early on so compound interest and time in the market will combine to cover your expenses in retirement,” Merz explains.
She has $400,000 saved, per documents reviewed by Fortune; she anticipates that nest egg will compound into about $1.8 million by the time she retires early 20 years from now with her pension at age 55, creating less pressure to save.
While she still has strong savings habits from her intense FIRE days—she immediately paid off her car loan and socks away 10% of her monthly into her 401(k) with a 6% company match—“I don’t deprive myself unnecessarily anymore,” she says, adding that she’s found great returns to easing her foot off the pedal, even if they’re not always strictly financial. “Stepping it back really benefited me and gave me the flexibility and the ability to say yes.”
The breaking point
Merz says she learned to be good with money early on since her family didn’t have a lot of it; her single mom struggled to put necessities on the table. Similar financial trauma, like parents losing jobs or getting divorced, is what often pulls people to the FIRE movement, she adds—they “really want that peace of mind and that security and that freedom of having money to be able to weather whatever life throws at them.”
This upbringing gave her the mentality that money is to be saved for the future, she says. “But if you don’t learn how to spend it before you get to that point, then you’re gonna have some issues.”
She realized that while living in D.C. in her 20s, prompting her to put the brakes on her fast-track to early retirement. She noticed that the people around her made a lot more money and “weren’t afraid to spend it on themselves for their own improvement.” It was a different mindset than the one Merz developed growing up middle-class in the Midwest.
“I just remember going ‘Why am I trying to save all this money? I don’t look my best, I am not taking care of myself as well as I should, what’s kind of the point?’” she says.
She bumped down her savings rate to as little as she could and turned to a personal stylist. She often went thrifting or borrowed clothes from friends, and had no idea what looked good on her. Seeing a huge improvement after just one session, she recalls, she started to wonder what else could change in her life. “It actually made a really big difference in how I felt around other people,” she adds.
The break from saving opened Merz’s eyes to how her budget was constraining her lifestyle. “My bank account really benefited from the actions that I took in my 20s, but I think my social life suffered an equal amount,” she says, adding that, “It’s really hard to be a single woman in your 20s in dating and not wanting to spend any money…it turned off a lot of people who might have otherwise been probably a pretty good fit for me.”
Life as the FIRE’s flame dwindles
When Merz first entered the FIRE world a decade ago, she says there was a bit less room for nuance. The 2010s FIRE icons often fit a certain stereotype, she notes—married, dual income (often engineers), and very cerebral. The ideology they followed was one of strict budgeting, logging everything in spreadsheets, eating rice and beans every night, and biking to get around, she explains. “Now the FIRE movement has really kind of expanded to encompass a wide variety of people and attitudes towards retirement,” she adds; there’s more room to make your own rulebook and to wade, rather than dive into, the lifestyle.
She found community, something she continues to treasure about the lifestyle. And while she still uses some FIRE budgeting tips and spreadsheets from a decade ago, she says she no longer turns to them as much. That’s because money is no longer the priority it once was for her.
“When I was younger, the number one lens that I viewed the world through was money,” she adds. “Now, money is very rarely my first consideration when I’m trying to decide between things, because money doesn’t matter as much.”
She’s now engaged and figuring out how to best merge her finances with her partner. She figures it might not have worked out if she met him at 22, given how intense her lifestyle was. During a recent shopping excursion to a garage sale with a friend, Merz felt sad when the friend pointed out that Merz wouldn’t have accompanied her during her past FIRE lifestyle. She says it made her sad, wondering, “How much of that time did I miss out on? Because I wanted to save an extra couple $100.”
Still, Merz learned from her FIRE habits and budgeting ways. While it can take a long time to join the movement if you don’t have a clean slate, she says you don’t need to go full hog to still apply some of its lessons to your life. Even though the movement is often about the end goal and what’s in the bank account, she encourages people to “go beyond the numbers.”
“To somebody who’s going super hard for early retirement at age 30, I would really encourage them to examine their motivations behind their actions,” she says. “And, are they retiring from something or are they retiring to something? Because those are pretty different concepts.”
