Hi there and welcome to Captain FIRE! I thought I'd kick things off by telling you a little about our family and explain the motivation for this blog.
Both Mr. FIRE and I joined the military after graduating from the Air Force Academy. We were commissioned as Second Lieutenants with no college debt (more on that later!), something neither of us appreciated at the time. We joined to serve our country, called to commit our lives to something bigger than ourselves. We did not think about money.
Fast forward 15 years, and Mr. FIRE has gotten out, joined the Reserves, been a civilian spouse, and done a whole host of things. We've both gotten advanced degrees, deployed, moved a dozen times, renovated more houses than we care to think about, and generally loved our service. We're grateful for the privilege of serving our nation and have no intent to leave anytime soon.
However.
I'm saying all this up front because there's a culture in the military that says serving shouldn't be about you, the individual. Everything should be service and sacrifice and bad deals and feeling good about doing hard things. You shouldn't network, shouldn't find ways to make more money, shouldn't be... careerist. There it is, that word: careerist. As though thinking about your career in a job you'll spend 4 to 40 years in is somehow a bad idea.
And hey, that attitude is valuable when it comes to surviving hardship or running into enemy fire. After all, we all signed up to potentially make the ultimate sacrifice for our country, and that takes a habit of sacrifice as well as courage in the moment. But since many of us will not make that ultimate sacrifice, we have to think practically about our future after the military. And our culture does NOT encourage that.
As a result, most of us don't think much about money. We take our salary and our housing allowance and let that dictate our living expenses. Or we live in the dorms or on base, and never maximize our income. We DEFINITELY don't think about FIRE -- achieving Financial Independence to Retire Early. And the military certainly doesn't teach much about finances. That's left to banks and predatory lenders and word-of-mouth. Basically, terrible sources of info since the US military financial situation is so unique (Tax free? TSP? PCS? VA loans? GI Bill?) and presents so much opportunity.... and so much risk.
And finally, let's be honest: YOU NEED A PLAN, because someday you won't be in the military anymore. You can't serve forever.
So we learned by doing. Together, Mr. FIRE and I pushed back on the culture that says not to worry about your income or your retirement and instead set up a savings and investment plan that will allow us to retire -- REALLY RETIRE, as in do whatever the heck we want -- by the age of 40. That's 20 years -- two decades -- earlier than the standard retirement. And we did it on a military salary, which as we all know, isn't exactly Wall Street sized.
And here's the thing: you can, too.
So, come with us on our journey to financial independence. Hopefully what we've learned along the way will be helpful to you, too, and you can get on track to your own early retirement after you hang up the uniform!
Thank you for your service!
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