If you know the original FIRE it means suffer first, even lick your bosses boot, work like a donkey and penny pinch and then retire at say 30+. Have another stream of income.

Not a lot of people can do it cause it's a tough and miserable life. I lived that life and intend to continue doing that until I reach FAT FIRE. Nothing come free. No free lunch. Why? Because it's trial and tested. It have been shown to worked. Not everyone can make lots of money especially salaried employee. Just need to bare with it. I am normal employee and I have always seen it bearing fruits.

This post has been edited by Ramjade: Sep 15 2025, 01:27 PM

must reply in context bro....

dont change the lifestyle in the above example mentioned is asking for trouble
people already said they finished their retriement money fast....


even in Ramjade case you tell him go spend like that,
you will spoil his plan and cannot retire early...
bad advice

is opposite for us... waifu n i frugal entire life... hard to spend more after fire/retirement...

but we started to eat out good food nowadays... once or twice a week cook at home only...

I see a lot of tips on how to fire investment wise, but dont seem to have a lot of tips on these 2 topics, which i feel is equally important:

1. Turbo charging your income/excel in your day job. This is even more important than excelling in your investment!

2. What to do after FIRE? I know many have retired here, come share tips on what you do in your daily life. I believe this is a huge challenge esp those that retired very young, because many of your peers are still in the rat race.

Pretty interesting watch, not necessarily on FIRE per se

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTGlde-Pbd8&t=3019s


This post has been edited by Relianne: Sep 15 2025, 05:28 PM

If you are like me, who refuse to climb the corporate ladder, can't really change job, number 1 is very irrelevant as you can't really max out your day job.

Hence that is why I max other place like savings rate and my investments add I have seen that they can move the needle more than whatever I can do with my job.

Er what to do? Depend on you lo. I am going to do organic gardening and having my own farm so no need to depend on supermarket. What you want to do is entirely up to you as you are the boss of your own time. No more bosses or company to answer to. That's the easiest thing what to do when FIRE. Do what you want.

This post has been edited by Ramjade: Sep 15 2025, 05:46 PM

1. See if you can put more effort to climb the ladder or job hop for better salary, or even consider working abroad. If not, the side hustles are the way to go. This can be many things that can generate extra income.

2.This prt is really important to know even before you decided to do FIRE. For me, this is basically your goal to acheive, and others are just means to achieve this. For example, some FIRE i know plan to live in other countries as digital nomads, enjoying life as they see fit.

I see myself in rather similar situation as TS...
- I am in my mid 40s, from mid 20s till now, been gainfully employed tax free.
- So after working for nearly 20 years, planned to retire early (maybe in another 4 to 6 years).
- I am financially independent already with no loans and no commitment.
- Life insurance premium on family member waived, wife had critical illness waiver (cancer) but thankfully recovered.
- All houses, cars fully paid.
- Only thing left is to see through my daughter's tertiary education in the horizon of another 6 years.

My secret?

Back in 2021 (same time as TS posted this thread), I heeded advice from Michael Burry and Mike Maloney. Inflation is going to burn with all the stimulus unemployment paychecks and Quantitative Easing. Instead of equities, I went all in into physical gold bullions. Even liquidated all insurance saving plans! Paid off handsomely and now I am in HODL mode watching all governments burn in debt....

Only gold is money, all else is credit - JP Morgan

All paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value .....ZERO - Voltaire

This post has been edited by kslee79: Sep 15 2025, 06:25 PM

I'm very curious... what do you mean by gainfully employed tax free? in Malaysia? is there a special case or in a special job scope (like arm forces) to be tax free?
or this is from working overseas that doesn't have income tax... ?

Why refuse to climb ladder and cannot change job? Any personal circumstances which leads to this, or just prefer lie flat culture?

How to get life insurance premium waived? In any event will you still need life insurance if you already FI and after your kids education is sorted?

Cause it will increase the pay by RM200 and lots of meeting and useless admin work. Very not worth it unless you are someone who loves meeting.

Funny you brought this up… before trying to convince you that promotions usually come with decent bumps, I thought its best I check my old records.
Turns out you’re right. When I was promoted, my increment was a glorious 5%. What a sad joke.

The good part came later though: raises every 6 months for some years. I suspect that was partly due to profitability, and partly to bring my pay in line with peers (most of whom were like 15 to 20 years older than me).

So maybe it’s still worth taking the chance and climbing the ladder...

I worked abroad in Oil & Gas industry, in countries that is tax free. My work schedule is on rotation so I still get to keep my home and family in Malaysia, I go work every month or so, and come back to rest for a month or so. Zero tax in working country, zero tax at home (Malaysia).

There is something called a waiver rider. It is an add-on option, have extra 'cost' or premium to it. Usually if you use / buy such feature in a policy, you do a family round-up protection, i.e. if anything happen to one of us (a critical illness - my wife got stage 1 breast cancer in 2023), then my policy premium is waived for life and so does the rest of the family members. Premium waiver means the policy will no longer charge you the annual 'premium' payment, and the policy is still active (jalan). The insurance company essentially paid it off for you when it is waive.

This post has been edited by kslee79: Sep 16 2025, 08:39 PM

your secret to FI is high pay lah... not switch to gold...

You need to buy ILP. If you see the news lately, ILP have been in hot news. Lots of unsatisfied people with ILP. With ILP you can add on waiver. Keep in mind a waiver add on additional cost into ILP.

You see the news about the ILP? It's basically you are paying the insurance company to manage your money and so that your premium is more or less stable but in reality 😂

Trust me you don't want to get the waiver. Cause usually that means you trigger some early cancer. Insurance is a lottery that you don't want to kena.

Not quite, I went in full with physical gold, starting 2021 by liquidating other savings/assets/saving plan insurance. Took 2 years to accomplish all that (buy some every 2 months or so), and it doubled my net worth in the span of 4 years.

You can imagine, in 2021 around Jan-Feb, a kilo bar was RM225,000. Today, it's RM500,000!

This post has been edited by kslee79: Sep 16 2025, 10:50 PM

Last time I also heard like only get annual increment x2 when promoted

And, at times they will 'adjust' slowly to 'weighted average'

For those above the average then GG the % become slowly lesser

Now looks like these practices are very common for MNCs

had you been say a teacher... quite likely you wont achieve FI... whilst a lot of o&g ppl are FI through pay alone...

double up your net worth with gold is still commendable... my remark doesn't diminish your accomplishment... good job there...

Wouldn't equities still work the same + the benefit of cash flow? There are quite a number of stocks that actually doubled or more.