Is $65K a year enough to find financial independence and retire early? How to make it work
But post-COVID, as inflation [5] and cost-of-living skyrocketed, is this advice still applicable to anyone actually trying to achieve financial independence? Teric233 believes FIRE can still be within reach, even if you’re not a tech bro.
“I get that not everyone wants to DIY, but I think people underestimate the more practical side of FIRE, the kind that doesn’t rely on a massive income,” they wrote. “You can make 65K a year and be super resourceful and still be able to save a large percentage of your income.”
User drewlb disagreed with their premise that the FIRE subreddit only focused on living a frugal lifestyle.
“I've been in the sub for 10+ yrs. It never really intersected much with r/frugal it was always much more with r/investing,” they wrote. “At the end of the day … FIRE does require excess income above expenses to be viable, and no amount of making your own laundry detergent is going to get you there.”
Read more: Here are the 7 top habits of ‘quietly wealthy’ Americans — how many do you follow?
Can you really FIRE on a 65K salary?
So, is it realistic to achieve financial independence and retire early on a $65K salary in 2025?
That depends on what your FIRE number actually is, and which brand of FIRE you wish to achieve.
As the FIRE movement gained popularity, different versions of FIRE developed as a way of tracking where you are on the path to financial independence.
A few variations, according to ProjectionLab [6], include:
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Coast FIRE: Having enough saved and invested that you no longer need to save and invest more. You don’t stop working, but you only need to work to cover your day-to-day expenses until retirement. You no longer need to save for retirement, meaning you can work fewer hours or take on a less stressful job, coasting into retirement.
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Barista FIRE: This requires having enough saved and invested to partially cover your daily expenses, and working part-time to cover the rest. This allows you to work as a barista, for example, rather than committing to a full-time 9-to-5.
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Lean FIRE: This means retiring on $1 million or less. When using a 4% withdrawal rate, this would leave you with $40,000 a year in retirement, requiring a frugal lifestyle.
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Chubby FIRE: This allows you to retire comfortably on $80,000 - $150,000 a year, using the 4% rule. It requires an investment account of $2 - $3.75 million.
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Fat FIRE: Considered the ‘luxury’ version of FIRE, this means having anywhere from $2.5 to $10 million saved for retirement, depending on your cost-of-living.
For someone earning a $65K salary in 2025, the first three might be within reach, but Fat FIRE and even Chubby FIRE could be tricky, depending on your lifestyle.
That said, it all comes down to your current expenses. If you live at home with your parents, rent-free, have no kids and save and invest all of your income until retirement — Chubby FIRE might be easily within reach.
But realistically, if you have to pay rent or a mortgage, utilities, food, childcare, travel and entertainment, that will take up a notable portion of your income, making it harder to achieve the luxury end of FIRE on an early timeline.
If you’re curious about your potential FIRE number, you can use a retirement calculator to find out what your number is, and go from there. Keep in mind, if your life circumstances change, that number and timeline will change, so it’s always good to reevaluate your number on a yearly basis.
Simple ways to build your FIRE fund
If you’re looking for an easy way to build the investment habits necessary to achieve FIRE on any income, a platform like Acorns might help.
Acorns helps build savings habits right into your everyday spending, allowing you to automatically invest spare change from everyday purchases into a diversified portfolio of ETFs managed by Vanguard and BlackRock experts.
It works like this — buy a coffee for $3.25, and Acorns will round up the purchase to $4 and invest the difference for you. So that $3.25 purchase automatically becomes a 75-cent investment in your FIRE fund.
Sign up today with a recurring deposit, and you can get a $20 bonus investment.
Another tool on the path to financial independence is a high-yield savings account, where you can stash your emergency fund without letting inflation erode its value. The highly-liquid nature of a HYSA means you can cash out when you need to while still making a tidy bit of profit. Many HYSAs also offer interest rates that are about ten times higher than a traditional savings account, based on the FDIC's September rates.
Budgeting is another important part of understanding your finances. While you don’t have to maintain a strict budget forever, setting up and monitoring it for at least a year will help you better understand your spending habits, which is a vital step in achieving FIRE.
Budgeting apps like Monarch Money can help you quickly set up a budget. You can use it to track spending, account balances, transactions and investments all in one place. It also allows integration with your partner’s finances at no extra cost, making it a simple way to manage money together as a couple.
They’re currently offering a seven-day free trial so you can see if Monarch Money works for you.
For a limited time, you can even get 50% off your first year with code MONARCHVIP.
Is homeownership a path to burning through your savings?
Some FIRE enthusiasts prefer to avoid buying property, as the hidden expenses involved in homeownership can make it harder to reach FIRE as fast as possible. According to the White Coat Investor [7], skipping homeownership also allows for geographic arbitrage — meaning you live in or travel through low-cost-of-living areas rather than stay in the higher cost-of-living city you’re from — which can help make FIRE possible sooner.
While this can help achieve FIRE on a speedy timeline, if you still want to benefit from the gains of the real estate market, there are alternative options that allow you to do so without owning a home.
Backed by world-class investors like Jeff Bezos, Arrived allows you to invest in shares of vacation and rental properties, earning a passive income stream without the extra work that comes with owning property.
To get started, take a look at their vetted properties, which have been chosen for their potential for appreciation and income generation. Once you select a property, you can start investing with as little as $100.
What to read next
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Robert Kiyosaki warns of a 'Greater Depression' coming to the US — with millions of Americans going poor. But he says these 2 'easy-money' assets will bring in ‘great wealth’. How to get in now
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Goldman Sachs says this asset class is behaving more like Manhattan real estate than oil — and here's how 'opportunistic' buyers can get in before its price keeps skyrocketing
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Want an extra $1,300,000 when you retire? Dave Ramsey says this 7-step plan ‘works every single time’ to kill debt, get rich in America — and that ‘anyone’ can do it
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You no longer need millions to invest in iconic properties like Walmart and Whole Foods — here’s how to tap into real estate at a fraction of the cost
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Article sources
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[1]. u/teric233. “Reddit post on r/Fire on Aug. 5, 2025”
[2]. Subreddit Stats. “r/financialindependence”
[3]. Investopedia. “FIRE Explained: Financial Independence, Retire Early – Rules, Types & Planning”
[4]. Mr Money Mustache. “Getting Rich: from Zero to Hero in One Blog Post”
[5]. CNBC. “Here’s the inflation breakdown for May 2025 — in one chart”
[6]. ProjectionLab. “What is FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early)?”
[7]. The White Coat Investor. “What Is Geographic Arbitrage?”
This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.
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