How This Couple Retired at 31 by Mastering Frugality and Smart Investing
Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung quit their jobs in 2015 and retired in their early 30s—but their path to financial independence began with "many setbacks."
After failed side hustles, they turned to the core principles of the FIRE movement: saving the majority of their income and investing in index funds.
For years, Kristy Shen and her husband, Bryce Leung, chased the dream of homeownership. "We desperately tried to buy a house," Shen told Business Insider.
Having grown up in poverty in China, she initially found it easier to put money into real estate than the stock market. "I thought, 'The stock market is terrifying,'" she said. "Everyone—especially our parents—told us real estate was safe."
Yet even if property seemed more secure, the barrier to entry was far higher. Though both worked in tech and earned good salaries, buying a home in Toronto still felt out of reach.
"It just seemed like every time we saved money, it was all for nothing," Shen said. "Housing prices kept climbing." Early entrepreneurial ventures didn't improve their finances either.
"We tried so many different business ideas," Shen recalled. "We attempted to launch a software company—which should have been our specialty, since we're programmers. We thought, 'Let's try building an app and see if we can make money from it.'"
They also experimented with other projects, including a bartering side gig called Swap It and an Amazon business. They even tried earning money through writing. Nothing took off.
"As an entrepreneur, you have to be your own marketer, debug your own code, network, and collaborate with others," Shen said. "We kept falling flat on our faces."
They Invested the Majority of Their Income
The couple's search for financial stability led them to a far simpler solution: saving most of their income and investing in index funds.
"Super-saving" and index fund investing are core tenets of the FIRE movement (Financial Independence, Retire Early), which they discovered online while looking for alternative ways to use the down-payment savings they couldn't spend on a house.
"FIRE was the only thing that actually worked," Leung said. "FIRE is really just the realization: This is how the math works, and if you hit this number, you've made it."
The pair applied the 4% rule, a common FIRE guideline stating that retirees can withdraw about 4% of their portfolio annually. This means they needed roughly 25 times their annual expenses invested. With yearly spending of about 40,000 Canadian dollars ($25,000 EUR), their FIRE target was 1 million Canadian dollars ($624,000 EUR).
They saved up to 70% of their income by avoiding lifestyle inflation and keeping the "big three" expenses—housing, transportation, and food—under control. Then, they invested most of those savings in low-cost index funds, including VTI and IEFA.
In 2015, after years of disciplined investing, they hit their FIRE number, quit their jobs, and began traveling the world. They were 31 and 32 at the time and have lived off their portfolio ever since.
The core principles of FIRE felt far more manageable than entrepreneurship or buying real estate.
"It's the only thing that consistently works because it doesn't require favorable market conditions, the right product, or the right team," Leung said. "Entrepreneurship depends on so many factors outside your control."
FIRE, on the other hand, is largely within your hands—with the key levers being how much you spend and how you invest.
"You can change how you spend money," he said, "and you can change how you invest."
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