About 10 years ago, Andy Hill was looking for a change.
Hill, now 44, was feeling burnt out from her job in corporate event marketing. When Hill was in her 20s, she enjoyed frequent trips and weekend events, but once she got married and started a family, those gigs began to lose their luster.
In 2016, Hill began a side gig hosting the podcast “Marriage Kids and Money,” where he and guests discussed their travel and family finance stories. Around this time, he became interested in FIRE, which stands for “Financial Independence, Early Retirement.”
This strategy typically involves saving a high percentage of your income for active investments. Once you have enough savings, you can buy income-producing investments, such as real estate, or start withdrawing from your stock portfolio to replace income from your 9-to-5 job.
Hill was giving it his all.
“I was really interested in FIRE, like traditional FIRE. Charge it hard and get it out of here,” Hill told CNBC Make It, referring to the early FIRE model that prioritized cutting expenses to maximize savings and retire early. “I want to save as much money as possible and I don’t care what happens now. It hasn’t worked out for me in life.”
Hill and his wife saved more than 50% of their working income, often cutting out many of life’s benefits to do so. They shopped at low-cost grocery stores and sold everything they didn’t need at home. When family, friends, and colleagues invited them to events that didn’t fit their tight budget, they said “no thanks.”
In many ways, it worked. The couple erased $50,000 in debt and built a portfolio worth $500,000. But when Hill suggested saving more to retire as soon as possible, he says the money discussion started turning into a money fight.
“We had been doing the ‘super frugal’ thing for a while, which led us to marriage counseling,” Hill says.
Talking in counseling gave Hill and his wife a new approach to navigating their marriage, one based on compromise, communication, and empathy for each other’s feelings.
They also embraced a new approach to money that he and other financial experts call “Coast FIRE.” Once you’ve saved enough to grow your portfolio the way you want in retirement, it’s time to “coast” from a savings perspective and take your foot off the gas.
This is the philosophy he shares in his new book, “Valuing Your Time: 10 Financial Steps to Prioritize Your Family and Escape Corporate Torture.” For couples in particular, he says, this approach allows them to spend more money, or time, pursuing the things they value in life together.
“Start from a place of personal dreaming, then share that dream with your spouse and ask them to do the same, so you can come together toward a great family goal that is mutually beneficial,” says Hill.
find a compromise
Hill discovered that his aggressive FIRE strategy meant sacrificing both ends. Not only did the pressure to cut spending limit what his family could do, but his desire to keep as much money in the bank as possible meant that work took him away from those who loved him.
“I traveled for my children’s birthdays and worked with a boss who judged my performance based on how late I could stay in the office. Overall, I was devoting more time to work than to my health or family,” he says.
Still, abandoning this strategy seemed to have thwarted Hill’s hopes of quitting her job for good. His plan, he says, was to save enough to invest in rental properties to earn passive income.
Mr. Hill’s wife suggested he use the money he had been saving for rental properties to turn a side hustle he enjoyed much more than his day job into a full-fledged business.
“It was a lightbulb moment,” he says. Rather than waiting for the finish line of early retirement, he was able to use some of his savings to buy time and space to pursue his passions.
Hill continued his podcast, added financial coaching and speaking engagements, and went full-time on his own in 2020. When he quit his job, he was working 40 to 50 hours a week and earning about $180,000 a year. These days, he pays himself about $100,000 and works about 20 to 25 hours a week.
“We found a compromise” on the savings rate, Hill said. “We said, ‘You can keep saving and investing, but let’s go back to like 20%, 25% and put some of that back into your lifestyle.'”
unleash the freedom of time
Hill says transitioning to the Coast FIRE lifestyle has given him and his wife the freedom to focus on their time. The idea is that once you’ve built a large enough nest egg for retirement, you can put it aside and use the money you’ve been saving to enrich your life, either by spending more or finding a different approach to work.
“Do we want to enhance our lifestyle and just have more fun? Or do we both want to work less?” Hill says. “Wouldn’t it be nice to work 20-25 hours a week until you’re in your 60s and then enjoy more time?”
Hill and his wife both took the latter approach. The couple had accumulated about $500,000 by the age of 40, and their net worth has since grown to more than $1 million. They used their financial flexibility to downsize their jobs. While Hill was building his business, his wife found herself tired of working 24/7 for clients at a marketing agency.
“She said, ‘I’ve always wanted to work with my hands, and when I’m done for the day, that’s it,'” Hill says.
So she went back to school to become an esthetician. She currently works part-time at a dermatology clinic and returns to her own life once the clinic closes.
The goal, Hill says, is to find a balance between saving for the future and living a fulfilling life now. The two spend Monday drinking coffee after dropping their kids off at school and working out together. Hill cooks dinner for his family twice a week. They take dance classes together and are learning pickleball.
“If you take 20 to 25 hours off from work, you can take care of your health,” Hill says. “We can invest time in our marriage and actually talk to each other and not be surprised by arguments. We can be more present as parents and be there for our kids in their important moments.”
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