Find a partner for FIRE to Fastrack your Journey.

Second only to admitting you have a problem, finding a partner to travel down the FIRE path with you is the next most important thing you will ever do to obtain FIRE.  I don’t care if its your boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, husband, best friend, or family member, the best way  to safely pour gasoline on the FIRE is to find another person, or persons, with whom you can split all of your daily living expenses.  When you find this person, then instantly all your living expenses have effectively been reduced by 50% or even more for every additional asset you add to your team!  Suddenly your portion of rent, electricity, water, sewer, cable, internet, insurance, car payments, repair bills, appliance purchases, and all other bills has been reduced by 50%, or more.

Before my wife and I even moved to Alaska, we were already working on our mortgage of our new home in Alaska.  This was the first time in my life I had ever cosigned any financial document with any person, and it was a big scary step.  Shortly after signing the paperwork though, I noticed the advantages of having this partnership.  Suddenly instead of my mortgage and her rent for her apartment, we only had the one mortgage payment, which was less than half of our previous monthly combined rent/mortgage payments.  No longer did we have 2 cable and internet bills, we had one.  One garbage bill, one electric bill, and one water bill.  The excess we were able to save was then diverted to other bills, which helped continue the “snowball effect” on our debt.  Also keep in mind that this 50% or greater reduction in your monthly living expenses, is on 50% of your net income.  As we will often discuss, this is huge because your net income is quickly diminished by “penalties of success, or POS’s.”

The only issue with this step is you better be certain, or as certain as possible, that the person or persons you pick, uphold their end of the bargain.  While adding a great team member to your FIRE team will be the single best thing you can do to, adding somebody who becomes a burden or doesn’t uphold their end of the bargain, will set you back significantly in your quest.  Unfortunately, things can happen like divorce, death, disease, or just pure laziness, which can put your FIRE path in jeopardy.  Although we can never be certain about many things in life, just try your best when picking these people.  Consider contractual agreements, to help protect yourself should you have somebody who fails to uphold their end of the bargain.  

In summary, finding a partner for your FIRE journey is the single most effective thing you can do to lower your monthly expenses, and allow you the ability to save more of your extremely valuable and limited net income.  Since money for expenses comes from the few crumbs left over after the government takes most of your paycheck, having the ability to save these extra crumbs for FIRE is imperative.  Having this partnership, and reducing your burden will allow you, and your partner, the ability to increase 401k and IRA withholdings, further allowing you to decrease your tax burden, while simultaneously increasing your savings, making this a win-win financial situation compared to a lose-lose situation when you travel the FIRE path alone. There is no other single step you can take on the FIRE path that will be as effective and will even come close to reducing your daily expenses by 50%, other than finding a partner in the FIRE movement.