Last month I asked a question in a community of location-independent founders I'm part of: what does financial independence mean to you?
I've been going back and forth on it for a while, because the standard answer doesn’t quite fit my life.
WITH KEVIN, UNDERWATER, MALDIVES, 2026.
The standard math assumes you live in one place
The textbook version is clean. Add up what you spend in a year and multiply by 25. Once your investments hit that number, you're there.
(It's the 4% rule turned upside down: 1 divided by 0.04 is 25.)
I've been a full-time nomad since 2014, and I've found that math surprisingly hard to apply to my own life:
My costs move with where I am. A month in Bansko and a month in a big Western city are basically different budgets.
There's no home base to anchor the number. Most FI math assumes a fixed cost of living in one place.
I could cut my costs almost any time by moving somewhere cheaper. So does FI mean funding the life I have now, or the cheapest version I'd still be happy with?
I have expensive hobbies I could scale way up. Diving, flying, Michelin-star restaurants, and travel in general (I'd like to go back to Antarctica). I don't need to do them all the time to be happy, though.
Kevin (my partner) and I hope to have kids someday. A lot of what that costs isn't knowable yet.
My income comes from several places, including a full-time editing job. I'm not sure what "not needing to work" would actually look like day to day.
SOMEWHERE NEAR ANTARCTICA, 2021.
My favorite answer was also the simplest
The replies were short. One member gave me a method:
Add up what your life cost over the last 36 months.
Divide by 3, then add 15% for inflation.
Multiply by 25. That's today's number.
Then do it again with an aspirational budget. Private school, four plane tickets instead of two, whatever you'd actually want. Multiply that by 25 too.
Three years of real spending already has the cheap months and the expensive ones baked in, so the location problem mostly averages out.
The same person said they never end up spending as much as they expect, and that the simplest calculations are the ones that held up.
Another member said they've never related to the idea of one magic number.
For them, it's reaching the point where work is a choice and you control your time. The number itself will keep moving as life, kids and priorities change.
I still don't trust the number
In my opinion, the 36-month method handles most of the spending side. The rest is where I get stuck.
I think I just don't trust any number I come up with, because there are so many variables in it. There's the kids question, and whether "enough" means Bansko prices or big-city ones.
There's also a trap I can see from here.
It would be easy to keep justifying one more month, one more year, one more bonus, because I know how much flexibility each one buys, and it would be easy to think like that forever.
A book I love on this says it more bluntly:
Once you're in the habit of working for money to live, the thrill of making money exceeds the thrill of actually living.
So for now, the second answer is closer to how I'd define it than any multiple of my spending: work being a choice.
From the Archive
If you'd rather watch progress than wait for a finish line, here's how I picture financial independence in days instead of dollars.
TELL ME YOURS
When you picture financial independence, is it a number, a feeling, or having the choice?
Hit reply with one word. I read every one!
— Caroline
P.S. People ask how I've afforded twelve years of full-time travel. The salary is part of it, but not the whole answer. Here's the rest.
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ON THE GROUND
📍 47.0017° N, 70.9002° W — tasted what's billed as the oldest cheese recipe in North America.
🍂 Current vibe: Enjoying the fall colors
🌍 Countries visited: 130 / 193
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