BiggerPockets Money Podcast Can You Retire…Now? This FIRE Calculator Will Tell You!
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Jan 10, 2025 Lauren Boland, a software engineer and creator of the cFIREsim calculator, joins the discussion to tackle a pressing question: "Do I have enough to retire?" She unpacks her groundbreaking tool designed to evaluate retirement readiness by simulating various financial scenarios. The conversation dives into the four-percent rule’s relevance in 2025, how to reverse-engineer a financial independence number, and the importance of investment strategies, including the impact of real estate on retirement planning.
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Lauren's Money Story
- Lauren Boland grew up in a lower-middle-class family where money was often tight.
- Learning her in-laws retired at 51 sparked her interest in FIRE.
cFIREsim Origin
- Lauren Boland's background is in IT and systems engineering; she learned programming independently.
- cFIREsim began as a project to improve upon an existing FIRE calculator.
Filling the FIRECalc Gap
- The original FIRECalc developer had retired and sailed off, leaving a need for updated features.
- Lauren Boland's cFIREsim aimed to address the community's demand for an improved calculator.