The Decibel - Meet the people who save aggressively to retire early

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

Would you work two full-time jobs and live off of ramen noodles if it meant you could retire at 35? That’s the image many people have of people who follow the FIRE path — that stands for, financial independence, retire early.In early September, Globe retirement reporter Meera Raman and Decibel producer Michal Stein went to a retreat at a camp near Toronto to find out how they make it all work. Today, Meera is on the show to talk about what she learned from some of the most devoted FIRE followers from around North America.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You're going to hear every different perspective. There are people in this room who live in a van down by the river, and there are people multi-millionaires in this room at the same time. You can't judge when you come to the person. Or they're the same person. You don't know what you're talking. I've got enough. What you're hearing is a conversation at a camp just outside of Toronto,

where people who follow something called fire gathered for four days. Fire stands for Financial Independence Retire Early. It's a movement of people who aggressively save. We're talking 50, 60, even 70% of their income. Their goal is to build a net worth they can live off of the rest of their life and gain financial independence as early as possible. Chad, Chad Doshanko. I live in a van.

I've got a home base in British Columbia, but it's rented out while I travel. Chad is one of the fire followers. And while he lives in a van, he's also a multi-millionaire who retired at 35. You know, you've got a little kitchen. You asked about the bathroom. There's a little toilet down here. All this floor is heated, right? Big fridge.

It's a bed in the back. It's a little messy, but, right? So, yeah, come on it. In early September, Globe Retirement Reporter Mira Rahman and decibel producer Mikhail Stein met Chad and others like him at this camp affectionately known as Camp Must. My first year with my first van, I literally came to the Camp Mustache, Toronto. I worked some numbers with guys, and they were just like, why used to working?

I was stressed. I was 70, 80-hour weeks kind of thing, and I was just done. So I quit. I quit from my first Camp Mustache, Toronto. If you're wondering what Camp Mustache is, who exactly these fire people are, and what they give up in order to stop working early, well, we're going to get into it. Today, Mirror is on the show to tell us what she learned. and we'll hear from some of the fire followers she and Michal met.

I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Mira, great to have you on the show. Yes, I'm so excited to be here. So, Mira, we just heard from Chad off the top. We hear about his van and that he's a multimillionaire. But can you just tell me what you learned about him as a person? Who is he? Yeah, so it was so interesting chatting with Chad and hearing his stories.

So he was born in Toronto. He actually never graduated high school, but turned out to be this really successful guy. He worked in the tech industry, worked his way up and actually had a really high salary, worked to make $100 to $150,000 a year. And he ended up retiring early. Yeah, at 35. At 35, yeah. I sit at dinners with people and everybody's on their phone. Nobody's present.

Everybody's thinking about other things. And, you know, for me, the harmony in life is just like serenity, quietness, people, like having a real conversation where people are hearing you rather than that, I got to be here. I got to go there. I got to do this. Got to, right? So. Okay. So I guess that's like that's Chad kind of explaining he can be present because he's retired. Totally. I think a big thing that we got out of the conversation with Chad was because he was working so hard for so long, like 80 hour weeks, he really noticed that so much of his life was just this rat race, this grind. So when he was. able to stop, he kind of had this perspective of, okay, what's important to me? And it's really just connecting with other people and with himself. Yeah. And so he got there by following the principles of fire, which stands for financial independence, retire early. Can you explain exactly what that means and how that works? Yes. So the fire movement is, you know, it comes down to having enough money, saving enough money, so that you can step away from work whenever you choose to do so. So having that control, not having work control you, but you control when you can retire.

And typically people step away from work decades before most people. And what is the goal here? Like what kind of nest egg are they trying to build up? Give me a sense of that. Yeah. So there's a formula that most fire followers abide to. So that looks like building a nest egg that's about 25 times your answer. annual expenses. So once you've hit that number in savings, that's known as being able to

have hit your fire number. So once they build that nest egg, they usually have that in different areas and real estate investing. And they draw on 4% of that nest egg annually. And that's supposed to help them, you know, make that last for their lifetime. I think a tangible example will kind of help us picture this. So what does that look like? Let's look at an example. Yeah, for sure. So let's say that your annual expenses are $100,000 a year. So basically, if you want to build your nest egg, that's 25 times that you would have to build a nest egg that's $2.5 million. So a lot, that's a big number. It's a big number, yes. It is pretty large. And people do that by saving a large chunk of their paycheck, cutting out a lot of expenses that they feel like don't serve them and

saving a large, large part of that from 50 to 60 percent of their paycheck. That is a huge number of 50 to 60%. To wrap my head around that, can you give me a sense of how much is the average Canadian household saving? Yeah, it is a massive number. We have some data from Statscan that actually shows that Canada's household savings rate in the second quarter of 2025 was just 5%. So comparing that to 60%, that's pretty crazy. Yeah. So it doesn't sound like something that everyone can do.

What are the entry requirements to be able to save like this? Yeah, so there's some unofficial entry requirements to be able to achieve fire. So the biggest one is having an income that exceeds your expenses. Also, you need to have a basic understanding of investing in financial literacy. A lot of people who are in the fire movement are investing and saving from their own knowledge. They seek out this knowledge on their own. And it takes a lot of hands on work to be able to achieve this. So, yeah, that basic financial literacy is a requirement for a lot of people. Do they get that at all from maybe online forums? I'm assuming these fire people must be connecting somewhere. So are they also kind of helping each other online with these investing tips? 100%. I would say that's one of the biggest things in the fire movement, actually.

It really started through online blogs in the early 2000s. A lot of people who were sick of working and wanted to be able to retire earlier in their lives, started these blogs and people found this and now there's so many of these different types of blogs and people lean on each other, learn from each other. There's a lot of forums. So I would say that's a massive part of this movement. Another thing to point out is also they need to have low expenses, right? Like maybe are they living at home? Because I'm thinking, like I'm in Toronto. We're in Toronto here. The cost of living is so high. Like how are these people making it work with their expenses? Yeah. So there is saccharacter.

that comes with being a someone who's trying to retire early and gain financial independence. So a lot of these people that I've talked to, a lot of them actually don't live in a place where there's high rent like Toronto, for example. They choose to live in different places with lower rent or a lower mortgage. But yeah, I've heard a lot of people have really cut down on expenses. They don't eat out as much. They don't go to concerts as much. They don't go on those Disney vacations that their siblings or friends might be going on. A lot of them say, like, hey, to be able to retire at 40 years old, this is worth it.

Have you heard of any extreme examples of people cutting down, like people eating, like, I don't know, very cheap foods? What have you heard? Yeah. So I talked to this 26-year-old woman who's based in Markham, Ontario, which is near Toronto. She works two full-time jobs. She works from, you know, a normal nine to five and then has, like, a one-hour dinner, which is usually, like, in her room, like, noodles, and then works another full-time job clocks in from, like, five to a. 11 p.m. And she told me that she, you know, doesn't sleep very much. She sleeps four to five hours a night. Her doctor has been like, you have very high stress. That's why she has headaches all the

time. When she goes out for dinner with her friends, which is not very often, she usually has to bring her computer with her. So she can, like, be clocking in working remotely. So she doesn't even feel like she can be super present with her family and friends. So, yeah, there is a lot of sacrifice that comes with this. So it does sound like there's a lot of sacrifice involved. What has Chad told you about that, like in terms of sacrifice? So Chad was saying that, yeah, he did save a big chunk of his income and that did come with a lot of sacrifice. But he doesn't feel like he actually sacrificed that much when he looks at in hindsight. And that's a big thing in the fire movement. A lot of people think that they're sacrificing so, so much, but they're actually

just sacrificing things that don't really align with their values. A lot of my buddy. said I was sacrificing and now nobody has time for anything, then you're in a rat race, right? And it's kind of a zero-sum game. Like, my car is nicer than yours. Oh, your car is nice than I have a bigger house. And is that really what you want, right? Like, I found that I was living for sort of my father and my mother versus what I truly wanted. So that was the big shift. That's a really interesting point he makes. It is. It is. And that's something that really comes up. When I talk to people who are in the fire movement, like they really scrutinize what matters. to them. They really want to pay attention to what they should be. They see their money

is like this really, really valuable thing as if it was like gold coins that they're holding in their hands and like how many coins are they going to put on things that really, really matter to them. So I think that's like something that is really interesting. So Chad is not alone, of course. And there are others that follow this method. And some of them you met at this camp, which you went to called Camp Mustache. So before we get into what you learned, can you just Tell me what's with the name. Yes, for sure. So it used to be called Kent Mustache.

Now they've made a change. It's CMTO FireScape, but Kent Mustache is catchier. So we can call it that. So this name, so it's based off this guy named Mr. Money Mustache. That's actually not his real name. Mr. Money Mustache, okay. Yes. His name is Peter Adney.

He's actually a Canadian, Canadian born. He's in the U.S. now. He's one of the big names in the fire movement. He has a blog, which is called Mr. Money Mastash, and he, you know, tells people how to retire early. He himself retired in his 30s, very, very young, and a lot of people have found the fire movement through him. Tell me he has a mustache. You know what? I think at one point he might have had a mustache, but I think it's odd and off.

Okay. Interesting. And what was the camp like? I mean, for extreme savers, I'm assuming there's no frills. What was it like there? Yes. So there was about 65 people there. Tickets are actually very reasonable. They're about $400 for four days, includes lodging and food, but it is not a five-star resort by any means. It's at held at this children's camp that's actually about 75 minutes from Toronto, north of Toronto. And these cabins are tiny. They're very small. They're cramped. They're unheeded. But honestly, the people who went there did not care at all. They were. were just so pumped to be around people who are on the same journey as them. It sounds very unbrand for these fire people. Yeah, literally.

It's like some of like the richest people in the country and they're like, yes, I will sleep on this children's mattress because they're used to, you know, making things work. Did you get a sense of what people liked about the camp and fire more broadly? Like what did they tell you? I imagine it must go beyond saving aggressively. Yeah. So that's like the main thing, right? is saving aggressively, investing wisely, kind of tracking everything that you do.

But that can be pretty isolating. Not many people do this. So, you know, you feel alone a lot of the time. So that's why these online forums are so popular. But also just being around people who get it, being like, oh, like you understand why I didn't go on that family vacation. At home, their family is like, I can't believe you didn't do this. How dare you?

But at this camp, people are like, hey, like my. sister got mad at me about this too and they can relate on that so that's something that is so valuable to them you're really zoning in on this idea of community community there folks are hooked in by the agenda and what's planned to happen but the reality is that the community is what keeps them coming back and keeps them wanting to be part of things so we end up with with people wanting to find like-minded individuals that they can openly talk with and not worry about you know sharing numbers or sharing ideas and having people roll their eyes to the back of their head and kind of yawn. The biggest value, I think, for particularly the fire community, financial independence, retire early,

is trying to talk to other people in a one-on-one environment that are doing the same things as you. Because often in the real world, we feel so weird, we feel so different. Sometimes people make us feel like we're awkward because we want to retire early. We'll be right back. Mira, how big is the fire movement outside of this camp? So the fire movement in general, it's still pretty niche. When you hear about people saving 50 to 70% of their income, yeah, not that many people in the world are doing that. But it is growing.

Like we don't have an exact number, but camps like this are popping up across North America and around the world. So that shows, you know, the interest in this. Just to put some kind of number on it, the fire subreddit has over 700,000 people as a part of it. So, yeah, a pretty big number is still niche, but yeah, more people are getting interested. And can we back up for a second? Like, when did this whole movement start? And what ignited fire in the first place? The movement traces back to the early 2000s.

That's when this idea got, you know, more popular. And it started off as, you know, like you were saying, those extremes, right? like living off a, you know, can of chickpeas for two days. You know, it started off is really extreme, but it's grown to include, you know, people who just want to be financially independent at a younger age so they don't feel controlled by a workplace. And, you know, when I've talked to people, my understanding is that it gained popularity in the early 2000s with, you know, older millennials, some younger gen Xers because they saw

their boomer parents having to, you know, work so, so. hard for a long, long time and just be able to comfortably retire in their 60s. And they're seeing how the world looks different for them. You know, housing is more expensive. The dot-com bubble just happened. And, you know, the oh, wait, recession was just a couple years ahead. So they wanted to, you know, get ahead of these world events that impacts their finances and being able to, you know, take control into their own hands.

And for a lot of people who start this fire journey, it actually is a pretty dramatic entrance for them. Something happens that really throws their finances out of whack that brings them to this intense journey. For example, Chris Potvin and his wife, Leslie, who actually run CMTO, they had a similar experience. My story is that my wife and I were both working in the same place, different departments, and we, ended up on strike and although we were making engineers wages we found that we didn't have enough money to to live beyond a week-to-week kind of thing we were instantly in trouble as soon as we went on strike and decided we need to turn that around I found myself delivering pizzas and newspapers working you know

20 hours of a 24-hour day it was really bad she went and started I got a job with a crew cleaning offices around the city the strike lasted about a month and by the end of it we were just dead and we looked at each other and said we make good money. We shouldn't be this tight. Something's got to change. Did some research and found the Mr. Money Mustache.com blog and from there started turning things around. So how exactly did Chris do that? Like, how did he turn things around? They really scrutinized all of their expenses and said, okay, what can we cut? Things they decided to cut, their boat. They were like, we don't need this boat. Let's cut it. They sold their car. And they started small. They started building an

emergency fund. And from there, they were just saving aggressively and have been really able to gain financial independence from focusing on what they can cut out and how much they can save. So over that 10-year journey, we'll call it, things have changed an awful lot for us and the outlook, you know, the positivity around our house, the way our relationship with money is changes, the way we think about challenges, you know, the furnace went down, what do we do? Well, now we have an emergency fund. We know that we have a way to pay for that. We don't have to go into debt. They say money can't bring you joy, but it can take a lot of problems away. Interesting point. Something I'm thinking about because, yes, it's one thing to be saving aggressively, but life

happens, right? Like what happens when life gets in the way? People can get sick. You can lose your job. How does it work when that happens and you're also trying to save aggressively? So someone we actually chatted to at camp, Allison, she told us, her story that she was, you know, kind of interested in budgeting and in the fire movement and had saved a good amount, but then was diagnosed with cancer and had to pay for cancer treatment. But she actually was saying that she was in a position where she could pay for those bills because of the savings that she'd saved inspired by the fire movement. So it doesn't only give you, you know, control to walk away from your job, but also to pay for these unexpected

things that happen in life. I was on the forums with everybody else and actually I got sick and I was going through cancer treatment and that was the first time I actually decided to journal. I'd never done that before so I needed another spot and the journal section of the Money Mustache Forum. People are a lot more open and share about their circumstances. So I went through my cancer treatment sharing with people on there and they decided to do this camp and I said that's my line in the sand. I'm going to be done my treatment and I'm coming to camp. And so my first time out here I came out. I was completely bick-balled. Everyone's like, she's so badass. I'm like, no, it's just cancer treatment. And so I got to come out here and meet a whole bunch of these people in person

that had like supported me and everyone's like, you're just going to go. And there was 75 of us that year. And like, you're just going to fly to Toronto and go to some camp in the woods with 75 people you've never met or that you've met online. And I was like, yeah, absolutely. What have I got to lose, right? So it came out here. So it was less about finance and more about community. There's that community bit again. So it's interesting because it sounds like, you know, maybe your goals change, right? It's not about retiring early here, but it's this financial independence to be able to pay for something that comes up when life happens.

Exactly. Again, there's this divide between the financial independence part and the retire early part. One doesn't mean the other. So these people are really, really focused on that financial independence part and the freedoms that that all. offer. Let's talk about the retirement part because I think many people will think retiring early sounds like the dream. But quitting does come with its own sorts of crises, right? Like Chad, who we heard in the first half, talked about this with you. What was it actually like for him when he stopped working at such a young age? Like, did he feel fulfilled? Because a lot of people

have some of their identity tied up into work. So what was his experience? Yeah, it's a great question because, I mean, retirees even in their 60s, when they retire, they have an identity crisis, right? This is not something that is unique to young people, but it's actually sometimes even harder for when you're younger and you quit work because unlike in your 60s, when everyone's retiring, if you're 35 and retiring and you're the only one, it becomes a lot, lot harder. So, Chad, he left his job and thought that he would be, you know, elated, so happy, right? He was working 80-hour weeks. He's like, oh, I'm going to be free. It's going to be awesome. And then it was kind of a free fall.

He felt depressed, anxious. He didn't really know what to do because his mind was so geared to grinding, working, being in that rat race. And without having that purpose, it was really confusing for him. When I quit work and I thought I achieved all these things, I went through depression, anxiety. Like, for the first three years of that, my friends thought I was crazy. My family thought I was crazy. Right. So I disconnected. It was very, very isolating kind of thing, right? So it took some time to kind of get back to whatever you want to call normal sort of thing, right? So it was tough. It was tough. But like I wouldn't change it for the world. Right. So I literally. This makes me think about fire followers and life more broadly. Like are fire followers going too far at the expense of life? Like what's that saying? It's like everything in moderation. Right. And I think sometimes the line of.

where that moderation is can get a little blurry. So we actually spoke to this man named Luke. He's based in Sue St. Marie. He's a father of six and he's financially independent. But he actually has a pretty tough time spending that money. When we went to New York, that was kind of when it really hit me. We went to New York for the first time about two years ago. And there was all these beautiful museums, the Guggenheim. We were walking past. It's like, oh, it's like $40 to go inside there, $50 to go inside there. Let's just look from the outside. But after that experience, like I feel I missed out on a lot not going to the $300 shows that everyone loves to. And I was like, you know what, I probably should just have done it.

And I felt bad afterwards. And I was like, you know what, I need to make a change in my life. I need to start deciding that live in the moment, we've got the money. Let's just start spending it. So since then, I've kind of tried to be a little more open. It is hard. I'm still transitioning, even two years after that experience. But that's, that was my turning point.

We also heard this similar sentiment from Allison that, you know, really scrutinizing what she was spending, kind of messed with her head a little bit. I will say there was a time in the early days when we got downright and I got downright miserly. I was counting every penny. I was stressing about it. And it wasn't until my experience with getting ill and then having family members go through stuff that I had to adopt a little bit more of that. Don't forget about the here and now. It's okay to spend a little more, go out, be generous. It actually feels really good. and, you know, going from that miserly little box to, oh, wait, no, we can go out for family dinners, we can go out to this show, we can do this trip.

We're not doing them five times a year, so the experience is totally worth it. Yeah, but it took me getting sick just to, like, wake up that here and now matters too. These are so interesting, right? Like, it's like moderation is so key, right? because people can get obsessed with anything. And in this case, being obsessed with saving seems to be like the issue with some of these fire followers. Exactly. It's actually this really interesting paradox of fire followers that they're working so hard to save all this money.

And then they can't spend it. Yeah. It's really interesting. Samira, after spending the day with these diehard fire people, what did you take away from this experience? Like, are you going to become a fire follower? Are there things that you might be adopting because you've spent this time with them? I mean, I won't lie. I walked away from that day being like, I need to go look at my budget again. I wasn't inspired to get out some expenses. But the main thing walking away from that day was just, I mean, we've already talked about it, but like community, community, community. How important it is for these people to be around like-minded people because in the quote-unquote real world, they are the weird ones. They are the outcast of being. saving this much money of not spending as much money.

They miss out on experiences, but that's something that they've chosen to do. And being able to be around people who get that was just really, really beautiful to see and how much joy there is and being around people who are on the same journey as you. And what about for us regular folk, us non-fire followers? Is there something that we can take away from what they do? Like, is it something we can adopt in our own lives? I think something that really stuck out. out to me, which Chris said actually was, you know, this reframing of your relationship with

money, not feeling like money controls your life, but rather you control your finances. You do not want money to be in control of you. You want to be in control of it and in letting that dictate your life. So I think being mindful about how you're spending your money and also evaluate what you are spending your money on. Is this actually something that's bringing value to your life? Or is it kind of that impulse by kind of, you know, seeing what really does bring you joy, maybe not to the extreme of these fire followers, but you can always start somewhere. Mira, this has been really interesting. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Yeah, this has been awesome. Thanks for having me.

That was Mira Rahman, the Globe's retirement and financial planning reporter. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Our producers are Madeline White. Michal Stein and Ali Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.