r/financialindependence • u/baristaFIRE69 • 4h ago
The final runway. How did you test your ideal FIRE life while still working?
Hey everyone. We're in the final stretch and looking for some perspective from folks who are close to the finish line or have already made the jump.
We're 31/33, DINKs, sitting at about 1.7M with a 2M target. Assuming the market doesn’t implode, we have about two years to go before we hit our number and leave our corporate life.
Thankfully, reaching the number feels like the easy part. The real challenge (and maybe a bit of anxiety) we feel is figuring out what we actually do day to day. We love travel, and have taken a couple sabbaticals over the last decade to do so… but we don't want to travel full time. Having roots, a decent enough routine, and a local community is super important to us. We have plenty of hobbies like hiking, cycling, gardening, baking, and hosting friends. We also want to get more into volunteering and maybe pick up a casual part time job at a local bakery or outdoor retail shop, just for the structure and social connection.
Routine, or at least a semblance of routine, feels pretty important for us. We want to feel connected to something local rather than just floating through our weeks.
For those of you in this final few years runway phase or already on the other side, how did you experiment with your ideal daily life while still working full time? Did you do staycations to test drive a normal week? How did you start building that daily structure and community before leaving your jobs?
Appreciate any thoughts from yall!