31-Year-Old Woman On Her Way To Early Retirement Used 5 Strategies To Boost Her Net Worth By $141,000 In 2 Years

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• Anita Garcia, 31, started investing at 18, then joined the FIRE community in 2020.
• To retire early, Garcia lives on 52% of her earnings, then saves and invests the rest.
• She cut her food and housing costs and started maximizing her retirement savings.

Two years ago, frugal millennial Anita Garcia, 31, heard about the FIRE movement. FIRE stands for Financial Independence, Early Retirement. The goal is to save and invest as much of your net salary as possible so that you can retire before age 65.

Garcia told Insider, “I was entering numbers into a retirement calculator, and it allowed me to put in my age. I thought that was interesting. I thought there was only a default retirement number, like 65 or 62 or something like that.”

After trying the calculator, Garcia realized she could retire earlier by increasing her retirement contributions and learning to invest on her own.

According to records seen by Insider, Garcia has a net worth of $196,283, split between savings and investments.

Garcia started investing $25 a month when she was 18 working at a local pizzeria. She continued this habit through college, and later when she started working full time. Prior to joining FIRE in March 2020, Garcia already had a net worth of $55,000. Now Garcia works part-time at a university near her hometown and earns around $4,000 a month.

She managed to cut her expenses to $2,100 a month while investing the rest of her income, which includes the money from the hustles. She documents her journey as an investor on her Instagram page, The Retired Millennial.

Five strategies are helping her get closer to her goal of early retirement.

1. She cut her living expenses

Earlier in 2022, Garcia was living alone in a nice one-bedroom unit above her landlord’s garage and spending $1,100 a month on rent. Since quitting her job and taking a position at California State University at Monterey Bay, her housing costs have dropped dramatically.

“I have very affordable housing right now through college, so I get partially subsidized housing,” says Garcia. She lives with her boyfriend and the two have chosen a smaller floor plan to save costs. She pays $510 a month for her share of the rent.

She also changed her grocery shopping habits to reduce her food expenses.

“What really helped me was changing where I shopped,” says Garcia. “I used to order from Thrive Market and go to the nearest grocery store. But then I got a little better at bargains.” These days, Garcia strategically plans every grocery run and buys what she needs in bulk, ensuring she travels less and spends less overall.

2. She saved over $770 a month by finding roommates

In 2020 and 2021, Garcia lived in a two-bedroom apartment with her boyfriend that cost $1,290 a month. She found roommates to help her save $770 a month on rent, which she then invested in index funds and ETFs.

3. She invests her earnings on social media

According to records reviewed by Insider, Garcia earns an additional $6,600 through social media, through brand partnerships, affiliate links, and a link where people can buy her coffee. Apart from a part reserved for taxes, Garcia invests 100% of this income.

4. She invested $10,000 that she earned flipping furniture

Garcia has a knack for finding and refurbishing old furniture. On her blog, she documented her journey to turning free furniture into $1,000. She found the cheapest materials possible to refurbish and sell the free furniture, then invested the profits to refurbish and sell even more pieces.

According to records seen by Insider, she earned a total of $10,000 flipping furniture over the past two years and then invested that money in the stock market.

5. She maximizes her pension contributions

When Garcia started her investing journey, she thought she would work full-time as a software engineer until she hit $1 million — her FIRE number, or whatever amount she would need to completely stop working – in his investment portfolio. That is, until Garcia discovered two other types of FI:

To reach Coast FI, Garcia maximized her IRA contributions and used a separate brokerage account to invest in index funds on her own.

She says, “Once I hit $100,000, it was enough for me mentally to know, worst case scenario, I’d have $1 million at 65. And that’s fine with me.”

Maximizing your retirement contributions is a strategy recommended by experts for young retirees, but it should be considered alongside your other goals.

Jay Zigmont, financial planner and founder of Childfree Wealth, warns savers to make sure they leave enough money in the budget to pay their bills and to remember that they may have to pay taxes on savings before tax. Also, he says, if you’re applying for a mortgage or other loan, a lower AGI on your tax return could qualify you for a lower loan amount.

Viewers on Instagram criticized Garcia for living frugally. She says in response, “When people see that I live on $25,000 in expenses a year, they really don’t equate that with happiness. In fact, I live a very happy life.”