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What FIRE actually means
FIRE stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early, and the two halves of that phrase mean different things. Financial independence is reached when your invested assets are large enough that the returns they generate can cover your living expenses indefinitely, without you needing a paycheck. Retiring early is the choice some people make once they get there, to stop traditional full-time work well before the usual retirement age, though plenty of people who reach financial independence keep working anyway, just because they want to rather than because they have to.