The 50 Best Financial Independence and Early Retirement Blogs

There is no shortage of resources out there to help educate yourself on personal finance. You can visit YouTube channels, read books, or attend seminars to learn about the topic. However, one of the absolute best ways to learn is by hearing directly from people who are already where you want to be in life. Listening to successful people allows you to learn not only from their success but also their failures. This is why blogs are such a valuable resource for learning.

We’ve filtered through the hundreds of personal finance sites out there and outlined our list of the 50 best financial independence and early retirement (FIRE) blogs that you can learn from. These are all blogs of people who have reached financial independence or are on a committed journey to achieving it one day.

Accidentally Retired

While most FIRE blogs usually follow the journeys of people who aspire to one day retire early, Accidentally Retired shares the story of a man who reached this goal abruptly and without really meaning to. The author does not identify himself by name but is a 36-year-old former CEO of a bootstrapped startup. After realizing that he/she was becoming too obsessed with being successful in business, they decided to leave the company. Suddenly flushed with money and no job, they faced the big question of “what do I do next”?

Author: N/A

Country: N/A

TicToc Life

TicToc Life follows two people with middle-class backgrounds who graduated college with a combined 6-figures worth of debt. At the end of their journey, their average salaries over the years never topped $77,000 per person. Despite this non-ideal starting point, they were able to transition from debt-laden college grads to financially independent millionaires in just 13 years later. On TicToc Life, they share the lessons that they’ve learned along the way as well as ways to find happiness despite the number of digits in your bank account.

Author: Jenni & Chris

Country: Virginia, United States

Retire In Progress

Giorgio started blogging about his FIRE journey in 2016 on Retire In Progress. He’s a software engineer who had that all-too-familiar epiphany that there has to be a better way to live life than working 40 hours a week. That day, he created a plan to become financially independent.

His current strategy is to keep his saving rate as high as possible (at least 50%) and invest this into a diversified portfolio of low-cost stocks and bonds passive index funds. Despite his intense desire to not work in order to live, Giorgio is also not the type to simply shut off his work ethic and call it quits. In his own words, “there’s no ‘work, work, work’ and then ‘stop, do nothing, and sip mojitos’”.

Author: Giorgi

Country: Switzerland

Mr. Tako Escapes 

Mr. Tako is an independent father of two boys who reached his FIRE goal at 38. After obtaining a net worth of $2 million, he launched Mr. Tako Escapes in 2015 to share his story. He claims that his journey doesn’t have any of the traditional narratives of wealth like making a fortune in real estate, selling stock options, or being promoted to CEO. In fact, for most of his earning years, he earned a salary under $100,000. Instead, he had an intense focus on saving 50% of his income and a distaste for “keeping up with the joneses”.

Author: N/A

Country: Pacific Northwest., United States

Root of Good

Is Money the “root of all evil”? Not according to Root of Good! They believe that money is a powerful tool and lets you do anything that you want to do with your life once you have it. For this reason, money is the “root of all good”! The writer and his wife earned financial independence by working hard, saving, and pumping money into their 401(k), IRA, and other investment accounts. Their combined earnings never went above $150,000.

Author: N/A

Country: Raleigh, NC, United States

Tread Lightly Retire Early

Angela’s blog Tread Lightly Retire Early is a combination of financial independence, frugal living, and living a zero-waste life. In her mind, all of these aspects are connected and if you are going to live frugally in hopes of retiring early then you might as well cut down the impact that you’re having on the environment at the same time. 

Author: Angela

Country: Pacific NW, United States

Retire By 40

Joe is a former computer engineer for Intel, where he had worked since 1996. However, as he rose through the ranks, he felt that his life was getting more and more stressful. He realized this wasn’t what he wanted his life to be and discovered that he could retire and live on the passive income sources he had built up over the years.

A few of the sources he leverages are real estate crowdfunding, dividend stocks, rental properties, online income (mainly through his blog, Retire By 40).

Author: Joe Udo

Country: N/A

Physician On Fire 

Given the intense time/money commitment to become a medical professional, you generally don’t hear about many in this field who want to retire early. Leif, as a former anesthesiologist, might be the exception that proves the rule. His goal is to hit retirement by 40 years old and thinks that people who think that saving for retirement is hard are wrong. The hard part isn’t saving, the hard part is being disciplined. He highlights his journey on his blog, Physician on Fire.

Author: Leif

Country: Northern Michigan, United States

Go Curry Cracker

Both still in their 30s, Jeremy and Winnie have ditched the two week’s vacation that their employers offered and instead take 52 weeks’ vacation every year. They attribute their success in retiring early to saving a large percentage of their income by minimizing expenses and teaching themselves new skills instead of buying things. The name of their blog is Go Curry Cracker.

Author: Jeremy and Winnie

Country: N/A

Think Save Retire

Steve and Courtney just recently achieved their dream of retiring early from their IT jobs in 2016. Now, their mission is to share tools, resources, and stories from experts about different ways that you can make your money work for you and live the life you want. They share this information on their blog ThinkSaveRetire. While they both admit that they are not personal finance experts, they have all the credentials needed in order to learn from them…they’ve actually achieved an early retirement!

Author: Steve and Courtney Adcock

Country: N/A

Our Next Life

Tanja is the author of the blog Our Next Life as well as the best-selling book “Work Optional, Retire Early The Non-Penny Pinching Way”. She has also been dubbed “The matriarch of the women’s fire movement” by the New York Times. Her blog seeks to build a community of FIRE followers where she can offer advice and support. Our Next Life also goes into the philosophical side of retiring early and explores some of the most fulfilling ways that you can live your life.

Author: Tanja Hester

Country: Lake Tahoe, California

Mr. Money Mustache

Mr. Money Mustache is one of the most popular blogs for FIRE followers. This is mainly due to the fact that he provides readers with a very detailed account of how he achieved an early retirement in his thirties. What stands out most about his journey is also the apparent ease with which he was able to achieve financial independence. His story is one that could seemingly be achieved by almost anyone.

Author: N/A

Country: United States

Early Retirement Now

Karsten’s background is much more finance-related than most FIRE bloggers and he even spent time working for the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta (The Federal Reserve is the central bank of the United States). A few of Karsten’s favorite topics to write about on Early Retirement Now are why he doesn’t like emergency funds, bonds, or Robo advisors. If you prefer to listen instead of reading, Karsten has also appeared on multiple podcasts, which you can find links to on his blogs.

Author: Karsten

Country: Washington, United States

Can I Retire Yet?

These two friends co-write for “Can I Retire Yet?” and have amassed 18,000 subscribers. Their main selling point is that they are two people who have actually achieved an early retirement by living frugally, saving as much money as they could, and investing. Darrow started seriously saving in his mid-30s and achieved an early retirement by 50. Chris achieved financial independence at 41 and decided to partner with Darrow in order to spread their messages of financial independence through safe, reliable, simple methods.

Author: Darrow Kirkpatrick and Chris Mamula

Country: N/A

Leisure Freak

After 31 years in the telephone industry, Leisure Freak Tommy finally achieved an early retirement at 51 years of age. Tommy had a few friends who had either a pension or plenty of money saved but were still unsure of whether they had enough to retire or not. Since so many approached Tommy for advice, he decided to start his blog Leisure Freak. His blog appears to be targeted at a slightly older demographic and has a lot of categories that speak on retirement plans. If you are someone who is already quite a few years down the traditional retirement plan but are thinking about changing direction, this is a great blog for you.

Author: “Leisure Freak Tommy”

Country: N/A

Financially Alert 

Michael Quan, the author of “The F.I.R.E. Planner” as well as Financially Alert, spent most of his life building an I.T. services company that he eventually sold to a larger provider. After spending a few years working for this new company, he determined that the 9-5 life wasn’t for him and was able to negotiate a severance package. Now in his mid-thirties, Michael hopes to share his lessons on dealing with early retirement and financial independence on his blog. 

Author: Michael Quan

Country: San Diego, United States

Tawcan

Tawcan (a combination of “Taiwanese” and “Canadian” is a FIRE blog focused on dividend investing. The author is still in the middle of his journey of retiring with his wife and two kids in Vancouver, one of the most expensive cities in the world. So far, they have built up a passive income stream of about $2,250 through the form of dividends which covers about 55% of their expenses. If you are interested in learning about dividend investing or getting tips from someone who has been doing it for years then Tawcan is a great blog to check out.

Author: N/A

Country: British Columbia, Vancouver

1500 Days To Freedom

The name 1500 Days To Freedom came about because of the author’s goal. Their goal was to build up an investment portfolio worth $1,000,000 in just 1500 days after creating the blog. One of the cool parts of the 1500 Days To Freedom blog is that the author outlines their investments in real-time so that others can copy their strategy. His biggest holding right now is Tesla (with almost 20% of his net worth in Tesla) and other big holdings include Facebook, Amazon, and Google. However, the author also claims to be a big fan of index funds.

Author: “N/A”

Country: Colorado, United States

Millennial Revolution

This author brings a unique perspective to the FIRE movement with her history as both a software engineer as well as a children’s author. She and her husband have accomplished their dream of retiring early and traveling full-time. They did this by building a 7-figure investment portfolio and retiring off of the dividend income. She states that her journey is one worth following because she “isn’t a genius, didn’t start the next Facebook, or inherit a huge sum of money.” As you might be able to guess from the title, Millenial Revolution, this blog is a good one for younger generations.

Author: FIRECracker

Country: United States

Route To Retire

Route To Retire is written by Jim, who recently achieved his dream of retiring early and moving his family to Panama. He was able to achieve this dream through a strong savings rate, not living an extravagant lifestyle, and investing in real estate. Jim is an advocate for posting his net worth and how it has changed over the years. He doesn’t do this with the intent to brag but instead wants to help people realize that it’s possible to become a millionaire even if you start out in student loan debt and work fairly standard jobs (like he did).

Author: Jim

Country: Panama

Early Retirement Earl

Earl, the author of Early Retirement Earl, is in his mid-forties and a father of three kids. Earl had his FIRE revelation a little bit later in life and early on admits to be cavalier with his finances. He accepted that his reality would involve working almost every day until he was into his sixties and would pass his time with generally unproductive activities like drinking, buying “crap I didn’t need”, and taking expensive vacations whenever possible. Eventually, the hours of time that he was spending commuting/working built up enough that he decided he needed a switch. Now, he’s all about Early Retirement.

Author: Earl

Country: N/A

Retire Early Lifestyle

The authors of Retire Early Lifestyle have a much more financially-centric background than most followers of FIRE. Before achieving early retirement at the age of 38 to travel the world, they were both retirement experts and internationally published authors in the subject of finance. It’s important to learn from both people who are real-life examples of FIRE as well as experts in retirement and finance. Billy and Akaisha are rare examples of people who check both of these boxes.

Author: Billy and Akaisha Kaderli

Country: N/A

Mr. Free At 33

Jason, the author of Mr. Free At 33, definitely did not have the easiest upbringing. He grew up in Detroit on welfare, lost both his parents at a young age, and later ended up dropping out of college. At 27 years old, he found himself in debt and recently unemployed due to the 2008 Financial Crisis. This sparked him to do some soul-searching and he became motivated to turn his life around. In his thirties, he was able to retire using dividend investing. His story from broke at 27 to financially free at 33 is definitely one to listen to.

Author: Jason Fieber

Country: N/A

Wealthy Healthy Life

This author is a late starter to the FIRE movement but hopes to retire by 2028. They advocate that the most essential aspect of achieving FIRE is a positive mentality. Once you have adjusted your mentality to focus on the positive side of life, you will be able to take way more control over it. Wealthy Healthy Life is great for people who are looking for a “mentality” approach to joining the FIRE movement.

Author: N/A

Country: New Zealand

Savvy Dollar

SavvyDollar offers plenty of very practical advice when it comes to things like side hustle ideas, ways to make/save money, banking tips, investing, or managing money. Nermeen, the author, first got introduced to finance by working as a bank teller and her passion for learning about money grew from there. She has learned lots of lessons on her path to financial freedom and is eager to share them.

Author: Nermeen Ghneim

Country: N/A

The Fioneers

Meet Jess and Corey, AKA The Fioneers (FIRE + Pioneers). They started their goal of being financially independent in 2018 and are currently both in their 30s working for a non-profit. They love traveling to new countries and want to see 100 new places before it’s all said and done. Due to this, they care much more about being “location independent” and building up enough assets to cover their expenses while traveling. If you are a big fan of travel then their journey is one worth following.

Author: Jess and Corey

Country: N/A

Learn Hustle Grow

These authors both grew up in single-parent homes and were first-generation college students. By this point, they are an empty-nester couple and are aggressively paying down their consumer debt and mortgage in hopes of living a more balanced life and becoming financially independent. Learn Hustle and Grow is a good blog to check out if you don’t necessarily want to take off and explore the world, but would be completely satisfied just having more free time in your daily life. 

Author: Rob and Re

Country: Dallas, United States

Journey To Launch

Journey To Launch follows the story of Jamila Souffrant and includes both a blog and a podcast. Her story has garnered attention from Business Insider, Money Magazine, Forbes, and Buzzfeed. Jamila created Journey To Launch to share her own FIRE story, help people eliminate debt, save more money, and increase their net worth. 

Author: Jamila Souffrant

Country: N/A

Rich and Regular

This couple started their journey after a blowout fight about their $200,000 outstanding debt. They resolved this fight but knew that they had to change their ways. This was the start of their FIRE journey. Their mission is to help POC communities better understand ways that they can use money to control their life, instead of letting it control them. Our favorite piece of advice from their blog Rich and Regular is “you can decide that you’re done waiting at any time”.  

Author: Kirsten and Julien

Country: Houston, United States

Savvy Dollar

SavvyDollar offers plenty of very practical advice when it comes to things like side hustle ideas, ways to make/save money, banking tips, investing, or managing money. Nermeen, the author, first got introduced to finance by working as a bank teller and her passion for learning about money grew from there. She has learned lots of lessons on her path to financial freedom and is eager to share them.

Author: Nermeen Ghneim

Country: N/A

The Budget Mom

Kumiko is an Accredited Financial Counselor who details her FIRE journey on The Budget Mom. More than anything, this blog is about her mental journey. She admits that she was a “broke” rich girl who always had enough money but opted to spend it lavishly on things that she didn’t really need. Eventually, she corrected course and spent hours teaching herself about budgeting and financial health. Her battle was just as much a battle with her self-confidence as it was with her checking account. 

The Budget Mom is obviously a great read for moms but we’re sure Dads would get some value out of it too!).

Author: Kumiko Love

Country: N/A

Financial Samurai

Financial Samurai is one of the top blogs to read recommended by Forbes. Their site is loaded with intriguing titles like “How I’d Invest $100,000 Today”, “Ranking The Best Passive Income Sources”, “The First Million Might Be The Easiest”.  Sam, the author, spent 13 years working in corporate America before finally calling it quits and retiring on the $80,000 passive income streams that he had built up. The bulk of this income comes from real estate properties that he owns in San Francisco but he also balances a few other projects that produce income for him. He’s definitely someone that you can learn from and we’d recommend checking out his site!

Author: Sam

Country: United States

Eat Sleep Breathe FI

Eat Sleep Breathe FI takes pride on being Canadian and offering FIRE advice to fellow Canadians. The writer currently has a family of four and lead a middle-class life. However, they’re on track to reach financial independence by the time they’re in their 40s. Chrissy’s passions are I helping others, learning new things, and getting a little happier every day. In addition to this, she’s super passionate about Financial Independence and does a great job outlining helpful tips on her blog.

Author: Chrissy

Country: Vancouver, Canada

One Frugal Girl

Jewels, the author of One Frugal Girl, has achieved financial independence and wants to share her story. Our favorite part about her site is that she’s not trying to sell you anything and doesn’t go above and beyond in terms of self-promotion. In fact, she keeps herself fairly discreet on the site and doesn’t even have an About Us page. Instead, the site is full of lots of good content.

Author: Jewels

Country: N/A

Mad Fientist

This author wants to help people reach financial independence by using tax avoidance tricks (legally). As the saying goes, it’s not how much you make it’s how much you keep. Many people approach their taxes with a “they are what they are” mentality. The Mad Fientist outlines several strategies that you can implement to help boost your after-tax income to better improve your savings rate and help you retire early! 

Author: N/A

Country: N/A

Get Rich Slowly

JD Roth, the author of Get Rich Slowly, is one of the most popular personal finance blogs on the internet. He started sharing his journey in 2006 after digging himself out of massive debt and now shares his knowledge across a huge range of financial topics. If you need help getting out of debt, buying a house, investing in the stock market, or budgeting then Get Rich Slowly is a great blog to check out. He’s been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time, and Entrepreneur.

Author: JD Roth

Country: Oregon, United States

Frugal Woods

Liz, the mom of the “Frugalwoods Family”, is the main author for this blog. Her philosophy on personal finance and money management is that doing this wisely will allow you to pursue unusual aspirations and opens up a world of options for how to live your life. She’s the author of Meet the Frugalwoods: Achieving Financial Independence Through Simple Living and says that her favorite topic to write about is saving money.

Author: Frugalwoods Family

Country: Vermont, United States

Budgets Are $exy

Budgets Are Sexy starts off with a Benjamin Franklin quote stating that they are “A personal finance blog that won’t put you to sleep”. This blog is spearheaded by a friend of the original author, who has achieved his goal of reaching a $1 million net worth. It’s also overflowing with valuable content and has more than ten different categories that you can read from. Since this blog has been around for so long, it’s super interesting to read through the journey of the author to see how he has progressed or regressed over time.

Author: A Friend Of J. Money

Country: California, United States

Part-Time Money

If you are looking for a blog that will tell you how to actually earn more money instead of just saving what you make then Part-Time Money is the blog for you. They have tons of resources for finding jobs, starting a side hustle, and creating passive income. Since there is only so much money you can save out of your income, learning how to increase your income is arguably more important than saving.

Author: Philip Taylor

Country: Texas, United States

JL Collins

JL Collins’ tagline is “the simple path to wealth” and they focus on money, travel, life, and business. They are most known for their Stock Series which includes a huge amount of content on, you guessed it, stock market investing. Other cool parts of this website are the sections for “Ask JL Collins” where you can ask the author direct questions as well as “Calculators” which has tons of tools for determining how much money you need to retire.

Author: JL Collins

Country: N/A

ESI Money

This blog promises you that there are just three simple steps to achieving wealth and comes from an author who has 25 years of experience managing money. These three simple steps can be summed up as earn, save, and invest. However, you’ll need to check out ESI Money to learn all of the specifics. A nice feature of the site is that the content is broken down by skill level (experts and non-experts).

Author: N/A

Country: N/A

The White Coat Investor

The White Coat Investor was started when a medical professional got sick of financial advisors “ripping him off” so he decided to take control over his investments. The author points out that, since 401(k) plans are beginning to be phased out in the United States, almost everyone is starting to have a second job. That job is managing their money and deciding the best ways to invest it. Since medical professionals have spent their whole lives dedicated to learning things that are much more important than investing, Jim wants to help them make up for lost time.

Author: Jim Dahle

Country: N/A

Fly To FI

Cody Berman is one of the younger people on this list but that won’t stop him from helping you get your finances in order. Fly To Fi was started when Cody decided to quit his corporate banking job to pursue entrepreneurship full time. Despite his younger age, Cody covers a huge range of topics including investing, mentality, real estate, his personal journey, and more. There is definitely a ton that you can learn from him and we’d recommend checking out Fly To Fi. He’s also incredibly transparent about himself on his blog and goes out of his way to share things about his life so that you have an insight into who the author is.

Author: Cody Berman

Country: N/A

Gen Y Money

The author of this blog is a proud millennial and is a little miffed about their reputation for being entitled, spoiled, and not good with money. They want to change that reputation, which is why they started Gen Y Money. This author is no newbie to writing about personal finance and started her first blog “Young and Thrifty” in 2009. She later sold this blog and was out of the game for 5 years before starting Gen Y Money. She is currently in her 30s but has a dream of reaching $1 million by 40.

Author: N/A

Country: Vancouver, Canada

Modest Money

Ricard was working in mechanical engineering for Land Rover Jaguar and was set down the path that had been preached to him from a young age (get a job, rise up the ranks, retire). Despite having a good degree and job, Ricard felt unmotivated and unhappy with his work. He realized that his unhappiness stemmed from the fact that he was condemning himself to work until his 60s or 70s. This was his “wake up moment” and he started his FIRE journey shortly thereafter. Modest Money is mainly about investing and is a great resource for finding good tools to use as well as other blogs to learn from.

Author: Ricard Torres

Country: Canada

Financial Orchid

Financial Orchid advocates for building generational wealth. The author goes about her daily life that every decision she makes (financial or otherwise) is inadvertently impacting the generations that will come after her. For example, every dollar that she spends is one that she isn’t saving to pass down to her kids. She highlights her own personal finance journey and shares ways to optimize saving, spending, health, balance, minimalism, and wellness.

Author: N/A

Country: West Coast, Canada

A Purple Life

The author of A Purple Life is on pace to retire at 35 by 2025. She started this journey in 2015 when she realized that a traditional career wasn’t for her. Right now, her current net worth sits at around $680,000. One of our favorite parts about this blog is that you can see exactly how much money she spends and earns each year. For example, she has built up this incredible net worth yet still only earned about $78,000 in 2020.

Author: N/A

Country: N/A

Camp FIRE Finance

Camp FIRE Finance is a fun site whose whole theme is that of friends sitting around a campfire sharing stories. Since campfires are usually a communal event, the blog owner has gone out of their way to allow other people to link their own blogs. This is a great resource to use both for discovering new blogs to read through or to link your own story. They also do a great job of describing what each blog is about and what you can stand to gain from reading it.

Author: N/A

Country: Canada

Mastering The Side Jam

Robin has come a long way in her blogging journey and just recently started using her own name. Over the years her confidence and knowledge base has grown substantially. She started Mastering The Side Jam to help people learn about different ways that they can grow their income by starting a side hustle. If you have a side hustle that you’d like to share, she even has a section where you can apply to be interviewed.

Author: Robin

Country: N/A

Reverse The Crush

The main focus of Reverse The Crush is sharing different ways to build passive income streams. Graham believes that passive income streams are a key part of life because they free up your time so that you can focus your time on other things. During his professional career, Graham has spent time working as a financial advisor and in the mutual fund industry. This experience helped expose him to the strategies needed to build a dividend portfolio that can produce passive income for him. Dividend investing is his favorite method for building wealth.

Author: Graham

Country: Toronto, Canada

Mystery Money Man

Mystery Money Man is a great blog that was started by Mr. MMM after facing his own struggles with his finances. Mainly, he felt that life was passing him by as he kept his nose to the grindstone to earn money just so that he could keep the lights on. After overcoming his own personal challenges, he set out on a journey to help other people beat their own financial challenges. Since almost everyone wants to escape a 9-5 job, free up more time for their loved ones, or feel confident about their financial future there is sure to be content here that can help you in your journey.

Author: N/A (obviously)

Country: N/A

Do Not Save Money

It’s Teddy’s firm belief that all money should be either invested or spent, never saved. This is mainly due to the fact that most savings accounts generate almost 0% in interest, which makes them next to worthless. Even high-yield savings accounts barely keep pace with inflation. Instead, you should convert your savings account to an investment account and start growing your net worth. Where and how you invest is totally up to you and Teddy offers a few different strategies to get started. If you think there is something to be said for investing your money, not saving it, then you should check out Do Not Save Money.

Author: Teddy Stavetski

Country: San Diego, United States