The Fire Freedom Project

My FIRE Plan: I Don't Want Retirement. I Want Financial Freedom.

LJ — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 13:53:34 GMT

When people hear FIRE there can be the assumption that someone wants to retire decades early (it’s in the name!) and never work again. But that isn’t my goal.

My goal is Barista FIRE.

Ok, yes, I would love to full FIRE, but that just seems very unattainable — more on this later.

For anyone who is familiar with FIRE but not the different variations, Barista FIRE generally means building enough investments to cover part of your living expenses while continuing to work. Instead of accumulating a portfolio large enough to replace your entire income, you’re building one that takes on a meaningful portion of the financial load. The name comes from one of the original examples: working part time at Starbucks for the health insurance while your portfolio covered the rest.

What appeals to me about Barista FIRE isn’t the idea of escaping work. It’s having more freedom to choose the work I do.

For me, success does not look like sitting around all day doing nothing (I would be horrible at this). It’s being able to reach a point where I can make career decisions based on whether I want to do the work instead of whether the paycheck is large enough to survive on. I would love to spend more time working with children again or in a social services field. Those jobs are important, meaningful, and unfortunately often paid terribly. In many places, they pay so little that making them work as a long-term career can be difficult without another source of financial support.

I am building that support for myself.

My big goal was to reach Barista FIRE by 45. At this point, 50 feels more realistic. Life did not exactly unfold according to plan. Divorce has a way of messing sh*t up. I have had to do a lot of rebuilding.

Part of the reason I gravitated toward Barista FIRE instead of traditional FIRE is that I don’t think the version of early retirement that gets talked about online is particularly realistic for me. I have a fairly niche set of skills that don’t easily translate into the kinds of careers that produce huge salaries. Could I potentially earn more money by completely changing directions and spending ten years doing work I hate? Maybe. But I’ve known too many people who never got the retirement they planned for. None of us know how much time we actually have. Spending the next decade grinding through work I loathe so I can stop working a few years sooner just doesn’t feel like a worthwhile trade.

I don’t actually need a particularly expensive life. I rent a tiny house in a tiny house community, and I genuinely love it. I don’t want a giant home. I don’t care about luxury cars. My hobbies are generally inexpensive, with travel being the main exception, but I still do that cheaper than most people. Comfortable, for me, is not some extravagant vision. Comfortable means slower mornings. It means not feeling stressed every time I need to make a dentist appointment. It means being able to travel during school breaks without feeling like I’m sabotaging my future. It means having the flexibility to spend a few years living abroad if I decide that’s what I want, without feeling like I’m setting myself back financially or professionally.

More than anything, though, I want a life that stands on its own financially. I don’t want my ability to pay my bills, travel, save for retirement, or feel secure to depend on having a partner. After everything I’ve been through over the last few years, independence matters to me.

When I think about what success looks like, I don’t think about a specific portfolio number. I think about freedom of choice. I’ll know I have gotten there when I can take a job because I want to do the work, not because I need the paycheck. That’s the future I’m building toward, and it’s the reason I’m pursuing FIRE in the first place.

In the future, I’ll share my actual Barista FIRE target, my full FIRE target, and the numbers behind how I’m thinking about both. For now, I wanted to start with the bigger picture.

I would love to hear about your bigger picture as well. Are you going for FIRE, Barista FIRE like me, Fat FIRE, Lean Fire? I would love to know your goals.

Book Recommendations:

I wanted to recommend two books on this topic that might help if you are new to thinking about what an alternative life might look like for you or if you are curious about what Barista FIRE has looked like to others.

The first one is Work Optional by Tanja Hester. It can help you figure out the financial independence vision that would work for you and your family, and knowing what is enough.

The second one is Deep Creek by Pam Houston. This one might not be as obvious, it is about a writer trying to buy land on her own on a low income and then turning her life into the life of her dreams. She isn’t on a FI journey, but she is on a love-life-on-her-own-terms journey.

Affiliate Disclosure: Some links in this newsletter are affiliate links, which means I may earn a commission if you make a purchase at no additional cost to you. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. I may also participate in other affiliate programs and only recommend products and services I believe will be valuable to my readers.

The information shared in The FIRE Freedom Project reflects my personal experience, opinions, and investment decisions. It is provided for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. I am not a licensed financial professional. Always do your own research and consider consulting a qualified advisor before making financial decisions.

How I Started Building My FIRE Plan in My 40s as a Single Woman

LJ — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 16:46:00 GMT

When I first learned about FIRE, I spent a lot of time looking at what other people were doing. Many of the stories I found were from couples, younger people who started investing right after college, or people following a very specific path that did not feel realistic for my life.

My journey looked different.

As a single woman in my 40s, I had to think about financial independence through the lens of my reality and the kind of future I wanted to build.

My plan feels far more possible than other people’s plans feel possible for me.

If you are starting your FIRE journey in your 40s, I want you to know that creating a plan is still possible. The first step is understanding where you are today and deciding where you want to go.

1. Start With Your Current Financial Picture

The first part of any FIRE plan is knowing your numbers.

For me, this meant looking honestly at my income, expenses, savings, investments, and net worth. Warts and all. It can feel uncomfortable, but having a clear picture gives you the information needed to make better decisions.

I first looked at my finances as a whole instead of focusing on one month or one expense.

Some of the questions I asked myself:

How much does my lifestyle cost each month?

How much am I saving and investing?

Where is my money currently going?

What changes would move me closer to my goals?

This will help you create a realistic plan instead of guessing (we often guess the spending is much less than it really is).

2. Decide What Financial Independence Means For You

One thing I have learned through my FIRE journey is that everyone’s version of freedom looks different.

For some people, FIRE means leaving work as early as possible. For others (and for me), it means having enough money invested that they can choose a different career or work part-time.

That is where Barista FIRE became my path. The idea is that you build enough invested assets that you can reduce the amount of income you need from traditional work while still covering your lifestyle with part-time or flexible work.

For many in their 40s, this approach can feel more realistic because we often have careers, responsibilities, and lives that have already been built (or we are starting our financial independence journey later than others).

3. Create a Plan Around Saving and Investing

Once you know your numbers and your goal, the next step is creating a system that supports your future.

For me, the automation of putting into my investments every month directly after paying any bills is what keeps me from spending on sh*t I don’t really need.

Your plan may include increasing retirement contributions, investing in taxable accounts, paying down debt, building an emergency fund, or finding ways to increase income.

The exact details will look different for everyone and change over time. Decide what matters most and create habits that support it.

4. Focus on Increasing Your Options

One lesson I have learned in my 40s is that income growth is just as important as cutting costs.

There is only so much you can reduce from your expenses, but there are many ways to expand your income. This can look like growing in your current career, creating a side income, or developing new skills that can help you earn more in the future.

Exploring different income streams is part of my FIRE journey. I want my financial future to have multiple sources of support instead of depending on only one paycheck.

Don’t poo-poo starting small. A few hundred extra dollars each month can create more room for investing and saving.

5. Give Yourself Permission to Start Where You Are

If you are discovering FIRE in your 40s, you might look back and wish you started sooner. I understand that feeling. The reality is that the most useful thing you can do is focus on what you can build from today forward.

Your FIRE plan doesn’t need to mirror someone else’s plan. Your timeline, your income, your goals, and your life experiences are your own.

My own journey has shown me that financial independence is not about following one formula. I needed to learn my numbers, and what I needed to live happily, and make intentional choices to support that life.

If you are beginning your FIRE journey in your 40s, I hope my experience reminds you that there is still time to build something awesome for yourself. A thoughtful plan created today can change the choices available to you years from now.

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Where I started — debt, divorce, and rebuilding

LJ — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 18:09:10 GMT

For most of my working life I made a low income. Until my current job, I had never made more than about $20 an hour. For several years before my divorce I was only working part time while also trying to build a small business and dealing with health issues that made consistency hard.

When I got divorced, it was sudden and it was expensive. I had never been divorced before. I learned as I went and that lack of knowledge cost a lot. It was an expensive lesson. I paid to find out what had been hidden from me, and yes, I would still say that in the end it was worth it.

At the moment of separation I had a maxed out credit card, about $97 in my checking account and no car. We had recently moved away from my friends and family for my spouse’s job.

Over the months that followed, I had to rely on government assistance and stay with friends and family while I tried to rebuild a basic financial footing and look for work. My husband had controlled almost all of our finances, so I also had to learn how to manage everything again from scratch. Rent, bills, accounts, decisions, all of it. I take accountability that I was a willing participant in this arrangement, but I just didn’t know then what I know now, like about how important it is to be in control of your finances.

Eventually there was a settlement. That settlement helped me restart my retirement savings, but it also came after I had already spent most of my own small retirement funds paying off debt and surviving the transition. For a long time I thought I was working toward financial independence in a shared plan. I was living modestly, tracking spending for over a decade, and assuming the direction was stable.

It wasn’t.

After using my retirement money to clear my debts, I made a decision: I never want to carry debt again.

Photo by Christoph von Gellhorn on Unsplash

Recently I took a new job across the country that allowed me to get back out on my own. Starting over has not been easy, but it has given me the opportunity to build a financial life that belongs entirely to me.

I am building now. I am unwilling to tie my financial life to someone else again. I still want to come out on top, on my own terms, and I am willing to make decisions that match that goal over a long timeline.

I am going to make my own damn dreams come true.

Resource Recommendation:

One of the first books I ever read on FIRE and one of the OG’s of the movement, Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin may not be as fun a read as some other FIRE books, but it’s a must-read if you are on this path like me.

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Why I’m writing this while I build toward financial independence

LJ — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 00:05:13 GMT

I started The FIRE Freedom Project because I am building toward financial independence on a modest income while working full-time in a public education environment, and I needed a place where I could be honest about what this looks like while I am still in it, not after the fact when everything was already achieved.

I went through a divorce a couple years ago and it really f**ked shit up for me. I work in a community education setting that I care about deeply, especially the connection to people that comes with it, even though it’s a field where financial pressure and job uncertainty are part of the everyday reality. That divorce shifted a lot of what I thought my future would look like, and since then I have been rebuilding step by step while trying to stay with the work that I am passionate about.

I discovered the idea of financial independence about eight years ago and originally thought I was building toward it in a shared path. That changed. Since then, I have been figuring out what this looks like on my own, with a lower income history than what most people in FIRE spaces tend to talk about. That gap is part of why I am writing this publicly instead of keeping it private.

Photo by Alexander Mils on Unsplash

Barista FIRE is the direction that feels realistic to me. The idea of reaching a point where I can step out of full-time pressure and return to library paraprofessional work in schools, or similar roles working with children and communities, feels like the life I want to aim for. My goal is to Barista FIRE around age 45. It is an intense goal and one that many might think is unrealistic, considering everything. But it is the big goal I am pushing myself toward.

I am investing in the stock market, doing additional side work, and tracking my progress closely. I am not writing from a place of having reached financial independence. I am writing from the middle of it, from a place of discomfort, not comfort. That is the part I want to document, because most of what I see online starts after the work has already been done.

This Substack exists for a few reasons. It keeps me accountable. It gives me a place to document monthly progress, including savings rate changes, mistakes, and decisions that worked in my favor. It also gives me a way to share resources that have helped me get this far, especially for people who do not see themselves reflected in high-income FIRE conversations.

People usually don’t land in FIRE content by accident. I’m interested in what led you here, and what you’re hoping will be different in your own life. If you feel like replying, I respond to every thoughtful letter.

I’m glad you’re here for this journey.

-LJ

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