The journey to FIRE is a marathon: it takes years of hard work and perseverance to reach the finish line. After initial motivation, you can get into a dip full of doubts while you execute the plan. Making that part fun is a must. Gamificiation can help!
It is an idea originally from BITA: 10 FIRE games that got me thinking about this. Time to start an overview of random milestones we already reached!
Where can we already live today?
There are some nice websites, Mrs. BITA uses the earth awaits. There are some nice filters that you can set.
When I Look at our nest egg and use the 4 pct rule, we can derive from that a monthly budget. When I plug this and some other parameters into the site, I get exactly one match. Anyone already been there?
I did use some very strict parameters on pollution and crime and off course, I want to live like a king, having an opulent life style! When we pick ample or modest, a whole range of cities opens to us.
Of course, limitations would apply. So what, there will always be limitations, even for the 1pct of the world.
Conclusion: we are in fact already fIRE! It is an intentional choice not to go there.
I checked my hometown and it is confirmed: we are not FIRE yet when we stay. One day…
Are we coasting already?
This refers to a nest egg that, when left alone would reach the target amount for FI at your pension age. Or said otherwise: when you stop saving now, you will have an independent retirement as from your pension age. And actually, each time you add money to your nest egg, you get to the FI point sooner. This is actually a magical point to be at.
Depending on the returns that I plug into my simulator, we are just coasting or still far away. That is actually a bummer. I was quite convinced that I would be coasting by now… bummer. Maybe next year, as the graph is based on early 2017 figures and a lot has happened since then.
The Bayalis FIRE date
Another ay to track the progess is the Bayalis FIRE date.
We are almost in May. As the tool allows it, I added a May surprise.
What is your progress?
amber tree leaves 
Looks like we are comfortably FI when going to eastern Europe or Morocco, not bad, some very nice places to live in the selection we had available.
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the tool makes you dream… I will be hosting a party as soon as my town pops up!
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It certainly makes you dream…..looking forward to the party 🙂
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For me, not only the process of reaching FI but most of my career and life feels like a strategy game.
You know those games? empire earth, age of empires…
I am pretty sure playing them taught me to handle resources with care. That if you take small wrong decisions early in the process you can fuck up your whole life…
To be honest I wasn’t even very good at them… Now we’re FI.
And boy, there are some really shit players out there in real life who due to lack of financial education take massive loans for 30-35 years and struggle to pay it back. At the end, all they have is an old apartment/house and nothing else. I wish more of these people would try to understand the system and make better choices in life…
There are many intelligent people I know though who could beat the shit out of me in one of these games, still, because of their lack of unerstanding risk taking, they don’t use their strategy skills in real life.
Treating you financial planning AND your life as a whole as a strategy game is, I think a very good way of handling it.
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Over and above our regular 401K contributions, we play what we call “The Money Game” growing $5 5% at a time. Each “time” means we leveled up. It takes 251 levels to get from $5 to a million; we’re at level 167 in just over a year. It’s great to see other posts on gamifying the “task” of growing money. It’s fun to do it this way and fun keep you at it. https://homemoneygame.wordpress.com
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Funny, i have been playing around with the sliders on earth awaits. There are some places we could already retire at and would actually want to live for some time but that would involve selling the house which we do not want to do. Another fun site for this is https://nomadlist.com/
We are definitely already coasting if I use my historic return rate. A great comfort to know.
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cool, coasting already. We are damn close. In a year or two, we should be coasting. Thing is, I foresee a really big FIRE budget. When I would tune up the frugal knob, we would be there already. And travel is 24pct of the budget. Most likely waaaaay tooooo much for the two of us
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Going abroad to low cost countries would make us FIRE as well. But nahh, not dojng so…
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For an extended holiday, I would consider it. I do not plan to self teach the kids or pay expensive school in English locally (that would kill the case of moving)
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