The Origin Story

Every path to financial freedom starts somewhere. Mine started the “right” way — graduated high school, then college, landed my first job, and immediately started saving like my future depended on it. Because it did. My upbringing drilled the importance of saving for my future into me early, so while my peers were spending every paycheck, I was maxing out my 401k contributions from day one.

Over the next six years I stayed disciplined: paid down debt, avoided lifestyle creep, and quietly built a retirement account that most people twice my age would envy. Eventually I landed at the company I still call home today, and over the past ten years I’ve worked my way up to a role I’m genuinely proud of.

On paper, everything looks great. Good career, good savings, good life. But somewhere in the last year or so, I started to feel the walls of it. I’ve spent sixteen years trading my time for someone else’s agenda — and lately 40-50 hour weeks feel a lot less like building something and a lot more like a treadmill.

That’s what brought me to Coast FI. The idea is simple: if your retirement nest egg is large enough, compound growth handles the future on its own — so you only need to earn enough to cover your current expenses. No more aggressive saving. No more climbing. Just living. I think I’m close to that threshold right now. The math almost works. What’s been missing is the courage to actually start.

That changes today.