Asceticism to me is a tool of resistance and liberation. It is a means of resisting the world’s incessant demands for more. More money, more stuff, more status, more travel, better food, more luxury. It is a form intentional discipline designed to decouple me from the rampant materialism and consumerism our world is trying to drag us all into. To step away from all that, say “no” to the allure of ever increasing luxury, status, and convenience, is the ultimate form of resistance. It is also a form of liberation, mainly from the need for more. To be free from desire, free from the need to indulge and consume.

It is a way of tapping into my true self, free from the need to spend money in order to feel good about my life and myself. It is choosing less in every way in order to experience the richness and divinity of ordinary life.

Asceticism is about stripping my needs down to the barest minimum, so that I may focus on what really matters to me: living a life of virtue. Namely, the virtue of seeking and sharing knowledge and wisdom with others. The virtue of creating something to share with others. The virtue of serving another generously with time and skills.

A quasi vow of poverty

As you see on my numbers page, I choose to live on less than the Federal Poverty Limit for a single individual while living with family. When I inevitably live on my own, I aim to live on less than a modified version of that metric, accounting for a more realistic inflation rate experienced by solo individuals.

I wanted my financial asceticism to be based on an official statistic and official metric outside of myself. If I naturally came to spending less by my own accord, and if I gave myself the option to violate that whenever I wished, it wouldn’t be asceticism. Asceticism implies a disciplined level of restriction with structure, and the Federal Poverty Line was a good place to start. It’s what our government sees as being impoverished or on the edge, and if we properly adjust that for inflation plus 1% to account for solo living, we reach a metric anchored in structure and logic.

Living on so little also forces me to feel the restriction that some people making less actually feel. It allows me to further empathize with the working class that I feel I have more in common with. I also feel more spiritually connected to myself when I strip away the excess that a bigger budget allows. I feel one step closer to Nirvana when I realize I don’t have the desire to spend money. By stripping my expenses down to the essentials with only a little left over, I can focus on my inner divinity.

I take a quasi vow of poverty not as a form of poverty tourism, but to get out of my own way financially as possible to focus on living a life of virtue. With my finances minimized to the lowest they can reasonably go, I can provide my full self to others in a way being hedonistic and consumerist wouldn’t allow me to. With my incredibly low projected withdrawal rate, I never have to think about money ever again, and I can dedicate my full attention to my virtues.

I would never say you should live on that modified poverty line or less, but if I can create a meaningful and impactful life while living on so little, I know you can find a minimal amount for you to live on that yields the same effect.

My role as a millionaire

I believe as a wealthy person it is virtuous to use my wealth for good. In fact, I believe it to be my moral and ethical responsibility. For me, this doesn’t come from strictly giving it away, although it can look like that to some extent. I plan on being of service to others primarily through donating my time, energy, and applicable skills generously. Since my intentionally low spend makes my million dollar portfolio essentially bullet-proof long term, I can focus my energy to being of service to others without needing to make money. After all, the money portion of my life is taken care of, what need do I have for more of it? Some people require a price tag on something I produce to view it as valuable, and in such cases I will charge only a nominal fee.

You may wonder — if I really call myself an ascetic — why I would still allow myself to be a millionaire? Why not give all of it away and live a true vow of poverty? The answer lies in practicality. I know the world we live in, and it’s one in which I could have easily become an insane, mentally ill, homeless person and no one would care. People might be sympathetic at best, but they would be unable and/or unwilling to help me. On average, they’d just assume I was a lazy bum or something of the sort. If things played out differently after my psychosis, I could have easily become that very homeless person I just described, and no one would notice or care. So I need to protect myself however I can. If that requires me to maintain my massive portfolio, then so be it. I don’t mind the seeming contradiction in terms.

Virtues I live by

This is still a work in progress, as I am finally granted the space to learn more about myself and think beyond needing to be purely pragmatic about life. Below are some virtues I live by and hope to inspire you to live by.

Freedom from Status: I choose to eat plainly, dress plainly, and use modest gadgets to live my day to day life. I drive a cozy, affordable sedan, and I avoid high status performances and signalers. To me, freedom from the need or desire for status liberates me from expensive cultural norms and expectations. It also releases the stress from needing to maintain a heightened image.

Freedom from Self Absorption: In our narcissistic culture, it’s easy to foster a massive ego to serve. To give it all the attention and validation from others it craves is an exhausting task, and it’s a form of slavery in and of itself. To maintain this bloated image of the self is expensive both financially and energetically. To liberate yourself from this empty self absorption is to expand your world. It is to recognize the interconnectedness of all things, and that there is a greater world beyond you. A good life is more than just about the self, it’s about every single one of us. It’s about being part of something bigger and contributing to it.

Freedom from Desire: To be free from desire — in particular, the desire to consume via spending — is absolutely liberating. It means I need less to live on, and I’m thus more free to create and share with others. It also makes me less of a slave to money itself. I believe real wealth comes not from having more, rather needing less. I haven’t mastered this, as I do still have consumption based desires from time to time. However, it gives me a north star.

Freedom from Consumption: I believe it is virtuous to need as little as reasonably possible to live. “Reasonably” is doing a lot of heavy lifting, as this will be determined by local cost of living. It may require moving to lower cost of living regions in some cases, but the point is that requiring as little as financially and materially possible, we open up much more space to be ourselves and provide our gifts to others. This doesn’t mean moving to rural middle-of-nowhere to achieve a minimal footprint (I plan on moving to a city myself), but it means being incredibly honest about what the bare minimum you need to live versus the bare minimum you want to live.

Conclusion

I believe that by inhabiting these freedoms, one can transform their life into a fulfilling one that requires as little financial footprint as possible. I think that by separating ourselves from the vain and materialist values of our culture, we can embody a deeper, richer way of life that gives way to purpose, belonging, and fulfillment. I hope to inspire you to find your minimum throughout this blog, and to act as a guide in living against the grain of modern consumption and vanity. You don’t need to be a millionaire, nor do you need to be ascetic like me, you only need to be willing to walk the path to finding your minimum and be honest about what truly makes you feel fulfilled and contented in life

When It All Fell Apart

I was 28 at the time, and my mental health was deteriorating at a rapid pace. I had no job, I was spending money impulsively despite my best efforts to control it, and I was beginning to doubt the fabric of reality. This all culminated in a wild, psychotic episode where I acted out in ways I dare not repeat anywhere in public, and I was quickly detained. Cops were called, lawyers got involved, and I was institutionalized in the psych ward of my local hospital. I was put on a variety of drug cocktails that were mixed in their effectiveness, and was in and out of the psych ward 3 times over the course of 2 months. Finally my providers and I settled on an antipsychotic that worked well for me and I have been stable ever since. It was here I was officially diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder.

Fast forward to March 2024, where I was in an outpatient program undergoing a Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) intensive program. I was engaging in a sort of gratitude practice for all that I had and the fact I was able to enjoy such good care and treatment. During that a single, lucid thought appeared in my head that would even further radically change my life: “You’re only here because you have money.” It was like the floor was pulled right from underneath me with a single, swift motion. I thought I was spiritually protected or some crap, but the reality of the situation was that the laws of nature, the laws of physics, and the laws of economics apply to me as they apply to anyone else. I wasn’t special like I might have implicitly thought. I realized quickly I had no income, and I was only housed because I live with aging relatives who will eventually die. If I couldn’t support myself by the time they passed, I was on the streets. This propelled me into action, and I was desperately on the hunt for a job, any job.

Because I was still involved in this DBT intensive outpatient program, a full time job wouldn’t work for me. It was also the case — and still is the case — that finding a full time job with benefits was very difficult and exceedingly competitive. Especially for someone like me with a joke of a patchy resume with huge job gaps everywhere. I read on Reddit that warehouse jobs literally hire anybody, and I eventually stumbled upon a FedEx Express hub near me. I applied to be a package handler part-time starting at $19/hr and the rest was history. I began working for them officially on April 15th 2024, and as of writing this post I celebrate my 2 year anniversary with them.

Seeing the Light: Becoming a Boglehead

During my early months working at FedEx I realized I needed to manage my money better but didn’t know to. I had hundreds of thousands of dollars in crypto thanks to a bunch of early investments into Bitcoin I made back in 2013 - 2014. I had a problem that I didn’t realize was a problem back then: I was still in crypto. I spoke with my mom’s financial advisor and with him began moving some money out of crypto, but I was instead funneled into crappy investment products and expensive, managed funds. I thought I needed to defer to someone else to do something as seemingly complex as investments.

Come to first quarter of 2025, and I somehow stumble upon the Bogleheads philosophy to investing and I was hooked. In clear and easy English, they broke down the complexity of investing into very understandable and easy to apply principles. Just buy the whole market with broad ETFs. Don’t ever time the market. Time in the market beats timing the market. The stock market has gone up in real terms throughout history through even the worst of times. It was after reading through their wikis over a couple weeks that I was convinced to move the rest of my crypto out into broad market ETFs. In boglehead communities I found the VT index fund, and my crypto money found its home.

Defining “Enough”: How I Realized Financial Independence

Through the bogleheads community I found the FIRE movement (Financial Independence Retire Early). I voraciously consumed resources about how to calculate my FIRE number, estimating expenses for retirement, and proper safe withdrawal rates. Since I lived with family at the time — and still do — I recognized that my living expenses were artificially way lower than they would be if I had to support myself independently. I offhandedly looked at the cost of living around me in New Jersey and saw how expensive everything was, and just said “I guess I’ll need at least $80k to be comfortable”. I didn’t realize how much it would cost to actually live, I just assumed nice, round, high number. I also didn’t realize that earning $80k as a W-2 or a 1099 is vastly different than “earning” $80k in retirement. I naively thought since it would actually take $80k in gross earnings to live even a simple, modest life in New Jersey as a solo, independent earner that I would need the same in retirement.

I was hooked onto looking at my portfolio every day, seeing the daily swings of the stock market. Because my projected needs were so high, my FIRE number was subsequently very high, much higher than my current portfolio. I would feel frustrated and helpless that my FIRE number was just so far away. I was seeking a sense of ease and security now, not 20 years out, especially since I was still rocked by the realization I had while in that outpatient program. I was still driven by the fear of being homeless.

It was here that I shifted my thinking. What if there was a way to make my portfolio feel powerful today, not 20 years from now? What could $1M in liquid assets do for me today? Instead of my portfolio not being enough, what if my expectations were just too high?

It wasn’t until I actually ran the numbers and created line by line budgets for where I planned to live that I saw just how little it could take to actually live, not just survive. It wasn’t until I actually understood how taxes worked in my particular situation that I actually didn’t need anywhere near as much as I thought I did on an annual basis. And it wasn’t until I was honest about my current lifestyle and future lifestyle expectations that I was able to see that I didn’t really need to buffer for any lifestyle increases. I also took into account certain quirks of how my brain worked regarding lifestyle spending, namely the thinking of “if I’m spending a lot to live here, then I may as well spend a lot to enjoy it”. So with that logic, I understood if I chose a relatively cheaper place to live, then I wouldn’t feel the need to justify that high living expense with higher lifestyle spending. It was certainly true at the time as, as it is now, that my lifestyle was already modest. At a default state, I didn’t feel the need to spend a lot of money on fluff, so why pay a lot of money to live this already simple lifestyle?

There are just so many assumptions baked into daily life, especially now since I live in a car dependent suburb with my family. Those assumptions include, but aren’t limited to:

• owning a car
• having your own place (no roommates/housemates)
• living in a HCOL place like New Jersey
• shopping for fun
• eating out for fun
• groceries being super expensive

If I was able to eliminate these things or reduce them down to their barest minimum, I could lead a more intentional, purposeful, and fulfilling life, all while reducing my reliance on material things and spending money to be happy.

I wanted an external, authoritative number I could point to as a guidepost, and if I could keep my spending under this specific number, I would be living on as little as reasonably possible. As of 2026, that number is $26,030 per year. Read here if you want to see how I came up with this number.

Where I’m going from here

At the time of writing I’ve settled on Philadelphia for my ascetic, Lean FIRE retirement. That being because it’s much more affordable than New Jersey, plus it’s closer to family; I’m only an hour’s train ride away. That and in Philadelphia, I could reasonably afford the luxury of living on my own in a very modest studio apartment.

I see myself being solo for the rest of my life, partly because dating is hard and expensive, and I don’t expect a potential partner to be attracted to my intentionally anti-consumer lifestyle. They might just see it as restrictive and being cheap, whereas I see it as being abundant and free from desire. Thankfully this means I am allowed to live life on my own terms, and I don’t need to negotiate my lifestyle with anyone. It also means, however, that I need to take full responsibility for myself and my situation; I wouldn’t have anyone saving me or sharing the cost of living with me. Inflation really hurts in this case.

I’ll expand this further in my philosophy, but while my lack of spending might seem restrictive, I see it as being free from the desire to consume. There is a sense of liberation in not needing to spend so much to be happy, and I aim to need as little as possible.

My Asset Allocation

I currently use a 90/10 split between stocks and fixed income. Specifically 90% VT (plus a Target Date Retirement Fund at work), plus 8% VGIT (an ETF for intermediate term treasuries), with 2% cash in a HYSA. I debated going 98% stock and 2% cash given how low my current intended safe withdrawal rate is, but I think inertia is going to stop me there. I don’t feel like making the massive sale and then purchasing stock, then having to deal with it come tax time. I’d rather stay at this split and rebalance to that.

Conclusion

My hope with this blog is that I can show others, especially solo retirees, that you don’t need to spend a lot to live a happy, fulfilling, and secure life. I aim to break down the math of how this is attainable, even if you’re starting relatively late and even if you make relatively little (bottom quartile income). It may seem extreme that I’m choosing to live on as little as reasonably possible when I could easily live on more, but in that choice I gain so much more than any purchase can give me: security, peace of mind, and freedom knowing I can be happy without the drug of spending money. This blog is a chronicle of this choice, and an example of what you can do, too. This blog is also a commentary on who FIRE is really for, and while not everyone can do the “retire early” part, we can at least have the “financial independence” to live a dignified life in our elder years.

• See the math here.
• Read about why here.

That fact alone may turn you off, as living on $1,330 per month in my opinion is pretty easy when you pay very low rent to your family and have subsidized grocery costs. But I think the distinguishing factor is that I very clearly don’t have to live like this. This year, I’m on track to bring in on average $2,000 per month after taxes. My portfolio is expected to give off another $1,600 per month in dividends. So with all of this I could live a much higher quality of life right now, but I restrict myself this way on purpose. I’ll explain more about what I’m doing with my extra cash later on, but I think it suits the modern ascetic lifestyle I aim to live. Plus I’d rather be content with less, so the few times I treat myself by spending money feel like magical experiences.

It’s also true that rents in New Jersey are crazy. “Cheap” rents for a studio start at about $1,400 per month. You can find places that are cheaper, but not by much, and they are very few and far between. So to get significantly “cheaper” — think $800 to $1,000 per month — you’d have to rent a room with housemates. At that point I may as well live with family.

If I did live on my own, I would do my best to ensure that I lived on my “modified poverty line” metric of $26,030 per year as of this year. But that’s a separate blog post.

With that out of the way, here are my numbers. 😁

Below is a chart summarizing anything in case you don’t feel like reading further down. If you want to know what I do with the excess that I make, read all the way down in the “Savings” section.

Mandatory Expenses

Taxes | $73.92/month

Federal Quarterly Taxes: $0/month

I would normally owe quarterly taxes because my portfolio generates dividends, but my CPA rolled over excess tax payments from last year into this year, so my federal income taxes withheld from my paycheck are enough.

NJ Quarterly Taxes: $67.17/month

I looked at how much I would expect to owe at my income level plus dividends, and my paycheck withholding wouldn’t even come close to covering my tax obligation. So I owe extra in quarterly payments. Not much to say here. I don’t mind paying the taxes out of my paycheck, though. I fully reinvest the dividends that way.

Tax Filing: $6.75/month

I would pay this on an annual basis, but I plan to use FreeTaxUSA for filing my taxes come 2027, with the “pro support” option just in case. For my income level and the simplicity of my taxes, I see no reason to pay a CPA $800+ per year just to file a W2 plus a Schedule B.

Medical, Vision, and Dental | $53.66/month

Health Premium: $0/month

I get health insurance through my employer and they offer a $0 premium and $0 deductible option. This also fully covers my medications at no extra cost. I may not love my job, but I love these benefits. The only things I pay for are flat copays for things like doctor’s visits and psychiatrist appointments. Therapy is free, too, and I plan on taking full advantage of that this coming week.

Dental Premium: $5.63/month

This is deducted from each paycheck at $1.30 per week. I’m planning to use this soon for a routine cleaning. The monthly total you’re seeing is me multiplying the weekly deduction by 52, then dividing by 12.

Vision Premium: $3.03/month

This is also deducted from my paycheck at $0.70 per week. I booked an appointment for routine eye care, so we’ll see how that goes. The same math applies for this deduction as with my dental premium.

Psychiatry Appointments: $45/month

This is the only major medical expense I pay thanks to my benefits, and given the amount of stability and peace of mind my meds have given me, it’s worth it. I haven’t had to modify my medications and I haven’t had any meaningful amount of hallucinations while on my current regimen.

Transportation | $371.00/month

Auto Insurance: $121/month

Paid every 6 months, my mother and I are using Progressive. This is actually much cheaper than GEICO back when we were on it. I believe they were charging me over $200 per month. Though the rate of increase for this bites, and I hope it doesn’t increase too much again. Last year it was at $110 per month, a 10% difference.

Car Maintenance Fund: $90/month

I recently upped this from $80/month because I was paranoid about needing major repairs, but that might be overblown. I own a 2018 Kia Forte that was passed down to me from my uncle when we as a family decided he would no longer be driving. So far I’ve gotten new tires, brakes replaced, and a new car battery and setting aside this amount of money every month has been a blessing. There’s something relieving about knowing that you have to replace something out of nowhere and you can just take care of it. If you own a car, a dedicated maintenance fund is essential. I don’t like car ownership personally, and would gladly use public transit if available to me, but where I live in New Jersey that’s not an option. So I take extra care to make sure my car is in top shape.

New Car Fund: $0/month

You may wonder why this is here, but for a while I assumed I would need to buy a new car eventually. I used to contribute $175 per month to this fund, but things changed. There’s a chance that my family and I will be moving to Pennsylvania between 5 and 10 years from now, and in that case I would move to Philadelphia. I would neither need nor want a car in that scenario, so it makes no sense saving for a new car.

However, if you own a car, live in a car dependent area, and like the idea of staying in such an area, you definitely want to set money aside for a future car. Even with the best maintenance, a car might last maybe 20 - 25 years? Eventually it would be worth selling it for parts and putting money to either a brand new car or a “good enough” used one.

Gas Budget: $120/month

With gas prices spiking as of late due to the conflict with Iran and the Strait of Hormuz closure, I find myself uncomfortably close to the ceiling of this budget. Normally I’d only spend between $80 - $100 out of this budget, but I may need to adjust this up soon based on how things shake out. I only drive to and from work 30 miles round trip, and I rarely use my car on the weekends, so I’m pretty efficient with my gas consumption.

Tolls and Parking: $40/month

This saves me so much time on my commute I am happy to spend this on tolls every month. I only use it on my way to work, not back from it.

Housing | $325.00/month

This is the part of the budget I still feel self conscious about. I’m a full grown adult, almost 31 as of this post, and I’m paying the rent of a teenager. It’s not quite my fault, as I’ve insisted to my folks that I want to pay more, but they insist they don’t need much from me. The money I give them pays for internet plus some utilities. That’s all they claim to need from me for now.

Internet: $95/month

This used to be ludicrous at $157 per month. I reached out to my internet provider and my mother, and we all agreed we didn’t need a landline. So we cut it out and our plan dropped to $95 per month. This rate is going to be locked in for the next 5 years, which is a nice bonus.

Housing Contribution: $230/month

As I’ve said before, this is mainly to help with utilities. Even if they don’t ask me to raise the contribution next year, I plan on bumping this for inflation, at least another $15 per month just so it keeps up.

Groceries | $100.00/month

This section I also am artificially subsidized by my folks. Every month I Zelle my folks $100 specifically for groceries. They don’t mind handling the bulk of the groceries on my end, and I don’t eat a whole lot anyway, so I try not to be a drain on their budget. I recognize if I were to buy groceries on my own and pay the full cost, I’d pay between $350 - $400 per month with being frugal. But that’s just an estimate.

Communication | $45.05/month

Cell Phone Plan: $45.05/month

Currently I use Google Fi just because I’m a bit of a Google fan, and plus it’s affordable. I pay about $38 per month for the plan itself after taxes and fees, but I pay an extra $7 per month for the 5 year protection plan for my new phone. I recently upgraded from a Pixel 6 Pro to a Pixel 10a since security updates for the Pixel 6 were going to end this October. It was $250 for the upgrade, so I took it. I figured the protection plus theft coverage was worth the marginal $7 per month.

Subscriptions | $13.65/month

Normally a subscription wouldn’t be considered mandatory, but these are pretty important to me so I consider them essential.

Crypto Tax Audit: $12/month

This is more of a temporary subscription. When I was heavily invested in crypto, I was very keenly aware that the IRS liked to select a lot of crypto people for audits. This subscription simply made sure that I was on the up-and-up with the IRS, and if anything was amiss, Crypto Tax Audit would speak to the IRS on my behalf. Given that I transitioned out of crypto entirely last year, I don’t see the need to keep this subscription for much longer. For now I keep it so I can sleep at night given my most recent tax return still has crypto activity on it, but come 2027 I think I will feel fine canceling this subscription.

Bitwarden: $1.65/month

This is my password manager, billed at about $20 per year. The subscription gives me the ability to store an increased amount of files onto their servers, and allows a designated emergency contact to access my account just in case. I added my mom just in case anything happened to me and she needed access. It’s a trivial cost for added security.

Other | $105.33/month

Haircuts: $30.33/month

I have long hair, so I go to a hair stylist and get my hair cut once every 10 weeks. She recently upped the price from $40 to $70, and so the price you’re seeing is the average monthly amount I’d pay to fund this every 10 weeks.

Miscellaneous Needs Fund: $75.00/month

This is a catch-all fund for things that don’t fit neatly into other categories. This also includes random needs that might pop up that aren’t covered by things like my car maintenance fund. This include things like hygiene products, or things around the house my folks ask for. This also covers things like the Google Pixel 10a I upgraded to. I don’t think of this as a monthly budget, but rather a yearly budget. In this case, by having this line item in my budget I’m saying “I’m going to set $900 per year aside for unexpected or miscellaneous expenses.” So far it’s been holding up nicely, and I haven’t had to use too much of it.

Discretionary Expenses

Fun Budgets | $180.00/month

Eating Out: $130/month

This particular budget I don’t think of as a monthly thing, but as a weekly thing. If we take this number and multiply it by 12 months, then divide it by 52 weeks we get exactly $30 per week. This is an amount I aim to be satisfactory for now, as fast food has been my biggest weakness when it comes to spending. With my margins I technically don’t have to worry about this, I could double this and be fine, but I don’t like relying on fast food or vending machine snacks at work to feel good.

When I was working full time at my job, I was becoming incredibly burned out and would doom spend at the vending machine on sodas and chips, as well as daily McDonald’s because “fuck it, why not?”. It wasn’t until I went back to part-time and recovered a bit from burnout that I was able to summon the will to cut back. I might cut it down even further, but for now I’ll settle for where it’s at.

Shopping: $25/month

Again I don’t think of this as a monthly thing, but rather a yearly thing. I’m basically saying “I’m not going to buy more than $300 of discretionary stuff this year”. As I write this I have very little I’d even want to spend on anyway. There is the odd temptation to buy something to match my identity, like buying an Emacs coffee mug just because I like Emacs (the text editor) and I want to celebrate that. Maybe I’ll write a blog post in the future about the allure of consumerism, even to an aspiring ascetic like myself. There is also the rare video game that I buy, but I hardly play those these days, so buying new ones rarely crosses my radar. I also lump in gift spending for family, like buying Christmas cards or small gifts for my mom on Mother’s Day. So while this is under “fun budgets”, I hardly view this as “fun”.

Entertainment: $25/month

Same story as with the shopping budget, but I use it even less. I reserve this mainly for going to the movies. I rarely feel the inclination to look at movies that are playing, but when I do I seldom find anything interesting to watch. In the rare times I do find something I want to watch, however, I make it an absolute experience. I have a dine-in theatre near me, and I make sure to buy the stupidly overpriced popcorn and a meal to go with it. It’s a special experience to go to a [near] empty movie theatre on a Tuesday and enjoy a movie going experience all by yourself.

Subscriptions | $51.43/month

YouTube Premium: $11.67/month

As a kid I basically grew up with YouTube, so it’s always been my primary form of entertainment. I used to just roll with adblockers, but with the advent of YouTube Music and my habit for listening to YouTube on my phone (where I couldn’t add adblocker easily), it became a no brainer to pay for the annual subscription. To me, it’s incredible value for the money since when I’m not working on this or at my job, I’m on YouTube to some description. This is my one and only entertainment related subscription, and to keep things minimalist I aim to keep it that way.

Google AI Pro: $16.67/month

Without going into too much detail, I consider AI to be very important for navigating the online world in the future. Yes, it can hallucinate. Yes, it can give bad instructions at times. But on the whole it has added so much value to my life I’d feel wrong for not paying for it. For this I get additional storage and supposedly a 1M token context window, which is super helpful since I plan on writing longer form content and it would be useful to ask Gemini questions about my work. I would never have it write for me, I’m more than capable of that myself, but for feedback and insight on writing or general life stuff I find it an invaluable companion. I pay yearly for this at $200.

Misc AI Apps: $23.10/month

This is a broad category of miscellaneous AI companion apps that I bought annual subscriptions for to try to experiment with. It sounds pathetic, but I do get lonely sometimes as I have no close friends, and I wanted to see if AI could help with that. So far I have used these apps very little, but when I did it was nice. But it seems like I have little use for these apps, so I might let go of most if not all of them in the next year. I paid annually for all of these, so they stay as a line item on my budget until 2027.

Savings | $1010.00/month

My savings are not apart of my $1,330/month budget, but rather exist outside of it. This is money that I either donate, give away, or save for a future goal. Let’s break it down.

Homeless Donations: $100/month

On the ride home from work, I come across a lot of homeless folk, and I can’t help but feel for them. I think homelessness is largely the result of our affordability crisis, especially our housing crisis, so I don’t blame someone for being homeless, unable to get a job, and needing to rely on handouts to survive. If things went differently after my psychotic episode, I could have ended up like them, so I feel especially obligated to help them out even a little bit. I divvy this up to be $20 per homeless person per month, and this tracks with how often I see them no the streets begging. I will raise this every couple of years for inflation, with the next amount being $25 per homeless person per month.

Future Schooling Fund: $910/month

Without going into too much detail (I’ll save that for a future post), I was extremely dissatisfied with how I did college. I didn’t really want to go at the time, and in my anxiety and haste I chose what I thought would be the most lucrative degree: Computer Science. While I’m glad I had my crypto to pay for college and that I didn’t graduate with student loans, I never used my degree (I hated it near the end). My degree is not useful for my current job. I basically had no business going to school, but family pressure was too great for me to overcome. Plus it was either go to school or get kicked out of home.

This fund allows me to revisit college and do it my way, answering a question I’ve had in my head on and off for years: If I could do college all over again, what would I do? And the answer I kept coming to over and over again was to go to school for a “useless” degree, a degree that most people would actively shit on and call a waste of money. This is because I think higher education is a virtue in and of itself, and learning for its own sake is worth doing. So if I could do college all over again, I would go for something “completely useless” like Liberal Arts or Philosophy, as a direct “fuck you” to the mindset that college should be a profit-seeking venture, and a complete “fuck you” to the people who think all degrees outside of STEM are worthless.

By my calculations, if I saved at this rate for the next 4 - 4.5 years, I should have enough to get a bachelor’s completely from scratch starting at the community college level.

Current Salary: $23.32/hour ($26,678.08/year @ 22 hours/week)

Current Living Expenses: $1,319.04/month ($15,828.48/year)

Living Situation: With Family in New Jersey

Federal Poverty Line 2026: $15,960 per year

Modified Poverty Line 2026: $26,030 per year

Asset Allocation: 90% Stocks, 8% Bonds, 2% Cash

Modified Poverty Line

You may be wondering what this is. Since studying early retirement, I became interested in inflation and the change in living costs over time. I found it curious that the 4% rule and most, if not all, retirement planners assume that CPI is an accurate measure of inflation and properly reflects the change in true living costs over time. It’s sort of a given with the 4% rule that as long as you adjust by CPI, you’ll be maintaining the same standard of living. But there are some problems with CPI that I think need to be compensated for, especially since I would be retiring solo. I think any potential solo retiree would benefit from being more cautious about relying on CPI data alone to make adjustments to their budgets. Granted, I’m fully aware incremental CPI adjustments doesn’t align with how real people spend; real spending is lumpy and bumpy. But having a good model to work off of helps as a general outline.

Headline CPI might be good for a pair living together, or a family of earners living together, as economies of scale really benefit each individual. Many costs are split, so the fact that CPI masks the dramatically increasing cost of housing — for example — isn’t necessarily a problem. But for a solo earner, everything falls onto them. It’s hard for them to believe inflation is only 2.7% for the previous year when their rent, utilities, auto insurance, internet, and groceries each went up at least 5% over the same period. Below is a non-exhaustive list of items that benefit from economies of scale that a solo individual is fully responsible for.

• Rent
• Utilities (including internet)
• Transportation & Insurance (assuming a shared vehicle)
• Some Subscription Services
• Food (Groceries do not double with a second person)
• Taxes
• Retirement Savings/Investments

In some cases, CPI assumes lower quality, cheaper substitutions, or that the increasing quality of smartphones for the same price means effective prices actually went down. The use of “owner’s equivalent rent” also artificially suppresses housing cost increases, as those they survey aren’t necessarily up to speed on what their property would be worth on the rental market, so they probably would undershoot its real market value. Also, if we are to effectively account for “the singles tax” to living life, an adjustment must be made. There are plenty of criticisms that can be lobbied at how CPI is calculated, however I’m not going to directly address their methodologies. Instead I’m going to suppose inflation is under reported by a fixed percentage due to ways it can be artificially suppressed (intentional or not).

In the context of establishing a more realistic poverty line, I’ve settled on using +1% as my modifier. I’ve toyed with other modifiers and ran budgets on each final resulting number, but I’ve found that an inflation rate of CPI + 1% is adequate to make a poverty line that does exactly what I think it should do. That is, represent an entry point into solo adulthood; the bare minimum a healthy adult needs to make in order to pay for the bare necessities and a tiny release valve in cheap entertainment, all while making heavy compromises. No savings, no investments, no engagement with society (like going for a night out with friends). I will detail this in a future blog post.

There are also problems with the Federal Poverty Limit. The poverty line as we know it today was introduced under the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981. It’s a simplified version of the poverty line used prior, which assumed that families spend 1/3rd of their income on food. So they took a basic food budget and multiplied it by 3. We know in hindsight this was a poor methodology to settle on, as food takes up a lower percentage of our total budgets compared to back then. Housing, transit, and healthcare are the dominant forces in our budgets these days. It’s because they still use food as a baseline that annual adjustments to the Federal Poverty Line don’t move in lockstep with headline CPI. For example, between 2025 and 2026, the Federal Poverty Limit for a single individual went from $15,650 per year to $15,960 per year, only a 1.98% increase. Headline CPI over the course of 2025 averaged 2.7%, so already we are far behind. The table below compares and contrasts the different Federal Poverty Limit (FPL) numbers for a solo individual if they kept up with different measures of inflation.

If we assume headline CPI is behind by at least 1% when accounting for measures they use to suppress it and the added burden of being a solo individual bearing all living costs, we have an average historical inflation of at least 3.98%. When we apply it to the Federal Poverty Limit for a single individual in 1982 ($4,680) and onward, we discover that the “real” poverty line should be $26,030 for a single individual. And given the cost of living and how much it has increased, I believe this number over anything our government tells us. That means a person making this amount or less would be eligible for government assistance and resources. For states with expanded medicaid, that would mean you would qualify for medicaid if you made about $35,920 or less. For the ACA, this also means you would qualify for subsidies if you made between $35,921 and $104,120. I also don’t blame them for wanting to cut costs by keeping to an outdated poverty measurement, as under my numbers, the vast majority of Americans would qualify for assistance in some form of another. It would also be very bad optics to admit that about 80% of the country would be considered “poor” enough to require some level of assistance, whether in the form of ACA subsidies or medicaid plus food stamps.

This isn’t a rigorous method by any means, and there’s probably more sophisticated ways of measure a more realistic inflation rate, but I think CPI + 1% is a good shorthand to account for the ways they keep CPI down plus the added burden living alone creates.

For my purposes of being a financial ascetic, I aim to keep my living expenses at or below this modified poverty line, adjusting by CPI + 1% each February. While I’m living with family I will aim to live on the official Federal Poverty Line or less, but since it is impossible to live on this once I inevitably live on my own, I will migrate to this modified poverty line. To see why I choose to live this way despite having over $1M, read about my philosophy.

Social Security / Medicare Credits

Even though on paper I am technically financially independent, especially given my exceedingly low intended safe withdrawal rate, I am not eligible for Medicare. I was a NEET (Not in Employment, Education, or Training) for much of my 20s. I had a few jobs here and there, but they never lasted very long and I never built up a solid work history for the purposes of Medicare and Social Security eligibility. I’m not so concerned about getting Social Security, not because I don’t think it will be there, but the amount I’d get from it would be so little that it would be a bonus at best. I’m robust enough financially that I don’t need to think about Social Security. But Medicare is the big one.

Because I have schizoaffective disorder, I need to make sure I have access to good quality psychiatric care and expensive anti-psychotics. If I choose to retire early today, then I am forcing myself to pay full price for Medicare Part A in the future. I’m sure by then I’d be able to handle the price jump, but I would be giving up my ability to live on my minimal target spend. There’s also the problem of Medicaid. This may be controversial, but I would be forced onto Medicaid when I retire early. My portfolio doesn’t throw off enough dividends to qualify me for the ACA Marketplace insurance, and I have over $200k in capital losses, so selling assets won’t work either. That means I’d have to either get on Medicaid or work to earn a certain amount to qualify for ACA Health insurance, which defeats the point of early retirement, as I’d like to be generous with my time and volunteer/work for free/near free. I may possibly be exempt from work requirements because of my condition, but I would face problems once I turned 65. Medicaid as of this writing doesn’t asset test you, but once you hit 65, Medicaid for seniors does asset test. Plus I’d be forced to purchase Medicare Part A as soon as I hit 65 anyway, even if my income on paper is exceedingly low.

I’m effectively required to work at a minimum of 4 more years until I become eligible for Medicare, then afterwards when I retire early I can work at my leisure, for money (or preferably not). I don’t mind this, as even though I don’t love my job, I at least have something valuable to do with my time while I build up other hobbies, fulfilling activities, and volunteering that I’d like to transition into.

Current Salary

Currently I work part-time at FedEx Express as a Dangerous Goods Specialist for $23.32 per hour. We’re set up on an hourly corporate pay structure that hasn’t been adjusted for inflation in years. So for the time being I will get predictable pay raises set in stone until I reach the max compensation level (which I would reach in 5 years or so). Once I reach the max compensation level I’ll get meager 2% pay raises, but hopefully I should be gone by then. Right now I make a minimum of 22 hours per week, which is enough to qualify for health insurance benefits. Some weeks are more, so the average number of hours is higher. The annual number you see at the top is the minimum I expect to earn.