Kristy Shen Quotes

“Becoming financially independent actually facilitates you towards doing what you love. If you try to rely on a job and it’s this essential part of your identity, and that job goes away, what do you do? If you become financially independent, you have what I call 'FI armor': If you lose the job, that is perfectly fine. You can freelance, work for free, volunteer doing what you love. The fact is that we can’t rely on our employers and we have to rely on ourselves: That is the new future.”

“It comes down to the 4 percent rule: You can safely withdraw 4 percent out of your accumulated money each year, if it’s invested through index funds, and have that money last for the rest of your life. To figure out your 'FI number', or how much money you need to accumulate before you can achieve financial independence, use the 4 percent rule of thumb: You take your yearly expenses then multiply by 25. My yearly expense is $40,000. That means my FI number is 40,000 x 25 = $1 million.”

“Learning to invest and get into the market, through index investing, as quickly as possible.”

“Pick the right industry. There can be a real danger to following your passion right away. My passion was creative writing, but I went into computer engineering.”

“The biggest three categories that you need to nail down are housing, transportation and food. Once those three are in a good spot, optimized and cut down as much as possible, making a splurge of regular lattes or avocado toast,... none of those things will really make any difference in terms of slowing you down towards retirement. So just drink the coffee, it’s totally going to be fine.”

“The first year my partner and I retired, our friends were like, ‘Ha-ha, that’s adorable. We’ll see you in a year'. By the third year everyone was like, ‘Can you come look at our finances?’”

“The media likes to make fun of millennials, saying we are all are entitled, complaining about not having job stability, not being able to afford a house. But in reality, all the rules our boomer parents followed, the status quo of, “Go get a job ‘till your 65, get a pension, buy a house” those rules don’t apply anymore. Houses might have cost our parents two or three times their annual salary. Now in major metropolitan areas, houses are often 10 times the average salary or even more. And there is no longer such a thing as a golden pension.”

“The thing is that the stock market always goes up. If every single company on the S&P 500 goes bankrupt, we’re basically in the Hunger Games. Time to buy some shotguns. The aliens have attacked, and we’re all screwed anyway.”

“The time it takes to reach FI depends on your savings rate and not your salary. If you save 50 to 60 percent of your salary, you are only 12 to 16 years from retirement. But if you save only 10 percent, you are 46 years from FI. The more you save, the faster you get to FI.”

“There aren’t that many plumbers out there, and everyone needs them. So if everyone is going off to get English degrees but no one knows how to fix a sink, then maybe it does make sense to be a plumber. Don’t be so enamored with the idea of getting a degree. Getting a degree doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to get a prestigious job.”

“Women have a timeline, men don’t. But women who decide to have kids probably just have to take a bit longer before becoming FI. Within the FIRE community, there are people who have been able to do it with kids. You definitely have to be practical about it.”

“You shouldn’t necessarily just go for the jobs that pay well. Take a doctor, for example: Yeah, you get paid a lot, but you’re in school for 10 years and come out with so much debt.”