Hello, dear reader, and welcome to my first-ever “Road to Something”. This particular one is my “Road to FIRE”, which is my walkthrough of the learning and procedure I will follow in the next months/years to achieve the FIRE, i.e., Finance Independence and Retire Early.
About this first episode
This is the introductory episode that will hopefully work as a landing page for whoever wants to follow my journey and possibly enjoy the process with me. Here, you will find mainly three points:
- What is FIRE?
- Why FIRE? Why now?
- What do I expect from this experience?
What is FIRE?
From Wikipedia:
The FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement is a lifestyle movement with the goal of gaining financial independence and retiring early. The model became particularly popular among millennials in the 2010s, gaining traction through online communities via information shared in blogs, podcasts, and online discussion forums.
People who want to achieve FIRE work hard to save money by making more, spending less, and investing. They aim to build enough money to live off the income it generates without needing to work. People in the FIRE movement often follow the “4% rule” — not really sure about this rule —, which means saving enough to cover 25 times their yearly living expenses. Once they reach this goal, they can choose whether or not to keep working, retiring much earlier than most people usually do.
Why FIRE? Why Now?
Well, I guess the first question is relatively self-explanatory. Reaching financial independence is what will allow me to fully enjoy life and choose what to do.
The answer to the second question is strictly related to the first one. It’s been three months since I’ve been employed in my very first job (an article will pop up as soon as the internship is over). So far, I am enjoying what I’m doing, and I am more than sure that this is what I want to do. The thing is that I am not sure this belief will last forever. No one can be sure. Things might change, things might happen, and the world might end. To me, having financial independence means being sure to be able to choose what to do regardless of money.
Given that this is my first job, I delayed deepening the topic until now. Without savings and a salary, it is really difficult to invest and learn. But the moment is now. I have my salary (remember, I am still an intern, so nothing special), but I can save a little money each month I plan to invest.
I hope it is clear why I am doing all of this.
What do I expect from this experience?
First of all, I am an engineer. As such, I have everything planned.
Jokes on you, not true.
I am planning this to be a really long, maybe endless series. At this moment, I think I will be able to write a few articles to document my learning in the coming days/weeks. Anyway, I am not really sure about what to do and what steps to follow.
But yet, I am an engineer, so I think I will start with the math. I know nothing about finance and the math behind it, so these will for sure be the first steps:
- Introduction to Mathematical Finance
- Review of low-risk investments
- Review of high-risk investments
- Microstructure of financial markets
I already opened an Interactive Brokers account, as far as I know is one of the best and with the lowest fees, but things might change. Anyway, I want to be sure to know the tool before using it, so these will be other parallel steps:
- Introductino to Interactive Brokers
- My first investment
Other steps in the following days/weeks/months/years.
Conclusions
I hope it is clear to you now because it’s not clear to me. Anyway, I am looking forward to learning the most out of this and am pretty confident in succeeding (I mean, after Calculus 2, this looks relatively easy).
See you around!