Andy Hill, millionaire, on time freedom: “There’s so many other things that you can do with your life besides working”

The 9-to-5 can be a grind which is why many of us dream of retiring long before we are eligible to collect Social Security payments. However, unless you receive some unexpected financial windfall, retiring before you turn 62 can require extreme sacrifice if you are an adherent to the FIRE movement.

The acronym stands for “financial independence, retire early,” and the movement got rolling over three decades ago with the 1992 best-selling book ‘Your Money or Your Life’ by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez. The FIRE movement preaches extreme budgeting in order to save upwards of 50% of your income which you invest in retirement savings.

The idea is that you build up a nest egg in excess of 25 times your annual expenses so that you can retire comfortably, withdrawing around 3 to 4 percent each year. However, as Andy Hill discovered, you have to work as a team with your spouse, or you could end up torching your marriage.

“There’s so many other things that you can do with your life besides working,” he told CNBC Make It.

Tips on how to follow FIRE without torching your marriage

Hill shared the knowledge he gained from his own experience following the FIRE method in a new book he wrote, ‘Own Your Time: 10 Financial Steps to Put Your Family First and Escape the Corporate Grind’. Speaking to CNBC Make It, Hill shared in 2016 he began his efforts to achieve the financial freedom to retire early with the FIRE creed.

However, that led to tension with his wife and their relationship deteriorated to the point that they needed couple’s therapy. He learned that it’s not about racing to get to retirement and focusing solely on the numbers

Instead, it’s more important to work together on a shared dream of how you want to enjoy your life. Then going about securing your financial future in such a way that you can have the freedom to be able to spend on what you value now. This is known as “Coast FIRE.”

He says this starts with asking yourself how you want to spend your time with the questions: “What do I want out of my life? What do I desire for my dream life?”

Once you’ve figured that out, it’s a matter of talking with your spouse about your dreams and asking them to think of their own. This way “you can come together for some cool family goals that work for both of you,” he explained.

Then once you’ve reached your retirement nest egg goals, building up enough savings and investments where the interest over the years will do the rest of the work, you will have “time freedom.” You can dedicate more money to enjoying life or take your foot off the gas pedal and coast to the day when you no longer have to work at all.

At 44, the financial coach and his wife have now been able to downshift, leaving their full-time jobs, and just work part-time. For example, he works just 20 to 25 hours a week nowadays, about half of what he used to, but still earns $100,000 a year, over half of his former salary of $180,000.

This has left them with more time to dedicate to their marriage, spend with their two children, and take care of their health. “When life costs less, you don’t need to work as much,” says Hill.

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