Steven and Lauren Keys don’t need to get up early much these days. Alarms are not that useful. “What day is it again?” they posted last month. Beach walks, bike rides and games are typical weekday activities for Steven, 32, a former public high-school teacher, and Lauren, 33, a former marketing manager. Both consider themselves retired from full-time work as of age 29.
Their to-do list shifts when they’re preparing for travel, as they were in December when they sold belongings, packed, rented out their Florida home, and left for an extended trip to Australia, arriving Jan. 1. Followers of the FIRE movement often use the “25x rule,” or 25 times annual living expenses, to determine their “FI” number, based on the general rule of thumb of 4% as a safe withdrawal rate for invested assets in retirement. The Keyses keep their annual expenses low and consider themselves “Lean FI,” which conveys a frugality, that for them, means owning shoes coming apart at the seams. “Using stuff until it’s worn out,” Lauren explained. Travel is one of their more expensive hobbies, and they’ve kept expenses in check there, doing vacations like a six-month extended honeymoon in Hawaii on the cheap, and driving and sleeping in the back of a converted Nissan NV200 van for much of their 2019 mega trip to all the U.S. national parks. They don’t feel deprived eating low-cost meals like their dinner of Gardein vegan chicken and frozen vegetables th …