Member-only story
A woman who retired at 30 says 2 changes helped her save enough to leave work for good
A Purple Life was able to retire after just five years of saving by moving somewhere cheaper and using a budgeting software to save more.
By Liz Knueven
In the online Financial Independence/Retire Early community, reaching your FIRE number and leaving work is a coveted status. For many people, it takes years of saving and investing to reach their FIRE number, or the amount you need to live on investments and savings alone.
A Purple Life, an anonymous blogger who shares her journey on her blog of the same name, didn’t just reach her FIRE goal. In December 2020, she reached it five years sooner than expected. She left her career in marketing and retired at 30 with over $600,000 in savings and investments.
She talked to Insider about two of the strategies she used to make this goal possible even faster than expected.
She cut her living expenses by leaving Manhattan for Seattle
When she started saving for early retirement in 2015, she planned to retire by 35 (10 years later). But by December 2020, she’d reached her FIRE number. One of the reasons she was able to save so much so quickly was a move across the country.
