When they ask you about your plans in life, does retiring by the time you’re 33 by any chance enter your mind? As outworldly as this appears, an Indian man who’d been working in London has actually opted for an early retirement in India, following the Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) lifestyle. He’s shared a detailed account on whys and hows on Reddit explaining the BIG decision.
But first, for the unversed, FIRE is like a financial movement of sorts driven by excess savings and investments and economic spending. According to Investopedia, “By saving up to 70% of their annual income, FIRE proponents aim to retire early and live off small withdrawals from their accumulated funds.”
The Redditor, by the username u/Burner_123_123_123, revealed he graduated from IIT Delhi in 2012. He has a work experience of 11 years, seven of which are from an investment bank and the tech industry in London. Recently, he decided to retire early and move back to his parent’s place in India. His primary motivation being the epiphany that he could make ₹2Cr+ annually and how low the burn rate in India was going to be.
Technically, the Burn Rate is the index of the pace at which an enterprise spends its cash reserves. Here, he referred to the same in the context of personal finance. Consider it as the rate at which you ‘burn’ cash every month. Before making the retirement decision, he charted what his burn rate in India was gonna be –
His primary desires behind wanting to retire and return home were to get married, have kids, spend the maximum time with his ageing parents, and fulfil his future goal to help underprivileged children in India. He mentioned there are three main ‘meta-priorities’ in life – Health, Relationships and Wealth. And he wants to emphasise the first two now.
Not only this, he briefly summarised his existing portfolio. Even though he didn’t really invest per se in most of his 20s, he says he ended up being “50%+ invested due to pension contributions, getting stocks in compensation, parents pushing for things like PPF, investing in real estate etc“. After moving on from Banking to the Tech World, he began actively trading and investing, as a result of which he now has substantial sight of his net worth.
He has everything supremely sorted to the extent he knows his goals for the next 30 years, including starting a family, writing a book, creating more content, and adopting kids.
Doesn’t it appear incredible? To be honest, life as meticulously planned as this appears to be ‘GOALS’ at this point…especially to people like us who’re still figuring out WTH to do in life.