Semi-retirement means that you still work but fewer hours and typically in a less-stressful job that also helps covering your and your family’s healthcare. Originally, that concept comes from traditional retirement. Here you don’t go from full-time work to stop working entirely from one day to another. But you transition smoothly by working a couple of years part-time before traditional retirement. The same is true for Semi-FI but in a different way.

Semi-FI or Semi F.I.R.E. has 2 primary goals:

• getting your time back sooner by having more time freedom when and how to work on something that is meaningful to YOU.
• taking the stress out of your work life as soon as possible.

On our blog, we show you how to semi-retire fast (5-10 years) as a European family using alternative ways to FI (Coast F.I.R.E., Barista F.I.R.E.) to the traditional path to F.I.R.E. while still retiring earlier than average. This way you achieve F.I.R.E. faster through semi-retirement first, aka Semi-FI, then you reach full FI, but later than with the traditional F.I.R.E. path.

Of course, we also show you how to achieve standard F.I.R.E. and EARLY retirement using the traditional F.I.R.E. path. This way you can decide what feel’s right to YOU and the family life YOU want to create now and in the future.

The benefits of semi-retirement:

1. You can retire earlier from your current job like within 5-10 years. 
2. You don’t have to work like crazy (or take on a side hustle) for up to 10 or 15 years to achieve F.I.R.E. if that doesn’t feel right to you for where you‘re at in your life right now.
3. That’s all because you don’t need to accumulate as much money in your investment accounts as with traditional F.I.R.E. so that you don’t need a Million-Dollar/Euro portfolio.
4. As you will continue to work that also helps covering your and your family’s healthcare.
5. You can reduce your “sequence of return risk” as one of the 3 biggest risks to run out of money in retirement. It refers to the return rates your portfolio generates during your first 10 years of retirement. Those determine your personal risk of depleting your portfolio during those first 10 retirement years. When times are bad you can afford to withdraw less or even 0 and use your cash reserves combined with your earning income to pay your bills.
   

The downside of semi-retirement / Semi-FI:

1. You will reach full FI later than with the traditional F.I.R.E. path.
2. You will continue to work to make a living BUT on your terms. You work on something you truly enjoy and that is meaningful to you. Typically, you choose part-time work to supplement your income from your investment accounts if you decide to start taking out money from your stock market portfolio.

Semi-FI or Semi F.I.R.E. is perfect for European moms and dads who struggle with the standard path to F.I.R.E. – not the exception as European culture:

• is not a hustle culture: Most have 1 job and for not a few that is part-time work. It‘s hard to save and invest thousands each month this way to have 1 Million invested for F.I.R.E.
• has a strong social security system: Many get state benefits for kids until moving out – a German example: 250€ p.m. per child. That can be an additional income in early retirement too.
• has no investment culture (with few exceptions): Living „only“ from your investments like passive income from a stock market portfolio is not something most can imagine.

If you say YES to the following questions Semi-FI might be just perfect for you:

• You don‘t want to work like crazy while raising (small) kids to earn and invest a lot? 
• Also, you actually don’t want to stop working. Instead, you want to replace your traditional career goals and the benefits your regular work environment provided with something else. That can be volunteer work, self employment or simply another part-time work you truly enjoy doing and find rewarding that makes around 10.000+ Euros per year.

We really appreciate that you value our opinion and are humbeled by the number of people already reaching out to us by e-mail – that‘s the fastest way to get our thoughts. We try our best to answer your specific questions but can’t provide (detailed) e-mail response to every request. However, we are already thinking about new ways you can get our thoughts in more detail offering you even more support than now.

• Reach out to us via e-mail. Only by knowing your pain points and how we can support you the best way possible, we can provide exactly what you and others need on their financial journey. Your feedback might make our products even more helpful for you and anyone else searching for help out there.

The moment we see many of our subscribers asking us the same questions, we will create new content for you on that topic! Up to then, we LOVE seeing you guys connecting and helping each other. Just leave a comment on our blog or connect with us and others in the community.

The short answer is yes and no – we have a rule for that as we have little kids in our family: safety first! We ONLY meet with people we:

1. get to know for some years as our subscribers and customers.
2. have been communicating directly for a looong time.
3. get to know really well before we meet.

Not yet. But we’re thinking about it. That’s why we are already collecting requests from all around the world. Write us an e-mail with the topic you want to write about on our blog and maybe even some content ideas on it. ONLY then you will get on the list. The moment we are ready to open the doors for guest articles, we will look through our list and contact you directly.