I’ve been reading and writing about personal finance for nearly twenty years. I’ve been interested in financial independence and early retirement for most of that time. This page contains some of the best high-quality material on the subject that I (and others) enjoy.
First up, here are some excellent books related to financial independence and early retirement.
- Cashing In on the American Dream by Paul Terhorst is out of print and hard to come by. It’s a first-hand account of a guy who retired early in 1984 and wrote about the experience.
- Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin was the first big book on the subject. YMoYL has inspired a generation of folks to pursue financial freedom.
- Early Retirement Extreme by Jacob Lund Fisker is a fantastical technical manual for financial independence and early retirement. If you’re math-y or engineer-y and/or frugal-minded, this is an excellent choice.
- The Simple Path to Wealth by J.L. Collins is the only book you need to learn how to invest for early retirement. Collins does a terrific job of distilling the investing philosophy that many in the FIRE movement have adopted.
- Work Less, Live More by Bob Clyatt is a guide to “semi-retirement”, by which the author means leaving a career but (possibly) supporting yourself through other, more meaningful work to supplement your income.
- Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice by Dennis Kimbro isn’t explicitly about financial independence, but it is a book about building wealth for an audience that is traditionally neglected in these kinds of conversations.
- Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi explores the conditions that lead to “peak experiences” in our lives and how we can foster these.
- The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey is an excellent manual on developing mindsets and habits that lead to success, in general. Many folks in the FIRE movement consciously apply these principles.
- Negotiating Your Salary: How to Make $1000 a Minute by Jack Chapman is an older book, but it contains great advice on how to get more money when you apply for a job or ask for a raise.
Next, here are some excellent websites about financial independence and early retirement. This by no means a comprehensive list, and I’ve left off many excellent blogs. But these are all high quality sources of FIRE info.
- Early Retirement Extreme was one of the first (the first?) blogs specifically about early retirement. It’s excellent. Jacob is technically-minded and frugal, so this is a good site for folks who like to optimize.
- Mr. Money Mustache is a spiritual successor to Early Retirement Extreme and probably the most popular FIRE blog of all time. MMM’s style is unapologetically “in your face”, which appeals to some but turns off others. Great material here.
- J.L. Collins has a site that covers FIRE topics but he’s primarily focused on investing advice. His “stock series” is a core piece of the online financial independence movement.
- Afford Anything is Paula Pant’s excellent blog about creating and funding the lifestyle you want. Even better is her Afford Anything podcast.
- The Mad Fientist podcast from Brandon Ganch is excellent. Brandon is deep thinker and thoughtful interviewer (and an all-around good guy).
- Choose FI is another popular FIRE podcast hosted by Jonathan Mendonsa and Brad Barrett. The two hosts have a good rapport and interview a variety of folks who are intent on reaching financial independence.
- Rich & Regular is written by a husband and wife team, Kiersten and Julien. The site is a lot of fun, but I also like their YouTube channel, which features frank discussions about financial topics.
- At Frugalwoods, Liz Thames documents her family’s experience with financial independence and simple living. As you might guess from the name, the site focuses on frugality and homesteading. I enjoy reading this one quite a bit.
- Physician on FIRE is specifically targeted at medical professionals and others pursuing “fatFIRE”, but it contains excellent info for everyone.
- Retire by 40 is Joe Udo’s long-lived blog documenting his own experience with early retirement. As of this writing, Joe’s wife continues to work, but he’s left the workforce to pursue other endeavors.
- ESI Money might be the most prolific FIRE blog at the moment. It contains articles on nearly every conceivable topic related to financial independence and early retirement. I particularly like the extensive series of millionaire interviews.
- The /r/financialindependence subreddit contains some great discussions but, like all of Reddit, the place can be dogmatic. Less dogmatic subreddits include /r/leanfire (for people who want to retire early with low expenses), /r/fatFIRE (for people who want to retire early with lavish lifestyles), and /r/FIREyFemmes (targeted at women in the FIRE movement but good for everyone).
Lastly, here are some FIRE-related resources that you might find useful.
At my own site (Get Rich Slowly), I’ve created a handful of tools for folks. This net worth calculator gives you a template for calculating your current “score”. This one-page PDF contains my exercise for creating your personal mission statement. And a few years ago, I created this one-page guide to financial freedom, which condenses all of the info in this course to a single sheet of paper.
The U.S. government’s Consumer Expenditure Survey is an amazing pile of information about the earning and spending habits of average Americans. There’s a lot here and the site might feel intimidating. If you have time to sit down and sort through things, however, you can learn a lot about how people handle their money — and how their habits compare to yours.
mySocialSecurity is the official U.S.-government Social Security site that allows Americans to access their contribution history and projected benefits. Very useful. (But remember: The SSA is very serious about security.)
The New York Times rent vs. buy calculator is the best tool of its kind that I’ve ever found. Plug in a variety of parameters and the calculator will project whether it makes more sense to own a home or to rent a place.
Kelley Blue Book is the ages-old source for calculating the value of your used vehicle. Many of us remember using the print version when we were younger. The modern website has all sorts of search tools and car-buying aids.
Franklin-Covey has an online Mission Statement Builder that walks you through a series of questions about your values, goals, and desires. When you’re finished you’ll have a rough draft of a possible mission statement. (You’ll need to massage the results to get a more concise statement.)
Numbeo collects a variety of stats for cities around around the world. If you’re curious about what it might be like to live somewhere else, this tool can help you crunch the numbers. Numbeo includes information on housing prices, crime rates, traffic, and more. For our purposes, the most useful piece of the site is the extensive cost-of-living calculator, which allows you to explore how much bang you get for your buck from one city to the next.
Zillow allows you to estimate real-estate prices (and rents) in your area. Lots of people use this website when they’re house-hunting, but it’s also useful for keeping tabs on the housing market in your neighborhood, and fur updating your home’s value when you’re calculating net worth.
This investment calculator at calculator.net is a handy tool for playing with all sorts of parameters related to an investment plan. The calculator includes tabs for modifying contributions, return rates, starting investment, final balance, and more. Nerdy but fun.
Finally, here are some tools for projecting your retirement needs. I’m generally not a fan of retirement calculators (because they use faulty assumptions and gloss over stuff), but these three are all useful. FIRECalc is free and quick to use. I also like two tools that offer more robust planning: NewRetirement and OnTrajectory. Both of these calculators come in free and paid versions. I’ve found their insights to be very useful for folks pursuing early retirement. (Full disclosure: I am an investor in NewRetirement. That said, I’m not being paid to mention the company here. I just like the product so much that I wanted to be part of its future.)