Everybody in the FI community has the same question, what is my FI number? But the biggest risk is not

failing to meet your FI number. It's spending 10, 15, 20 years pursuing a FI number that's incorrect.

Today, we are breaking down the six biggest mistakes people make when calculating how much money

they will need in early retirement.

Why the standard internet formulas can be dangerously incomplete and how to build a fire number

that works in real life, not just on a spreadsheet.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen, and with me as always is my

knows his fine number co-host, Scott Trench. Thanks, Mindy. Great to be here and excited to spend

some time with you talking about this important subject. And yeah, your fine number is one of the

most important things you need to have dialed in to work toward financial independence. And today we're going to be talking about the biggest mistakes that you need to avoid in computing

that number. Mindy, do you want to kick us off with the first one?

Okay, the first mistake is using your current expenses and your current income rather than

your retirement expenses. Scott, if you took your current expenses

and said, well, this is how much I'm going to need in retirement, you are going to have incorrect

numbers because you are paying for child care right now. Are you going to be paying for child care

in five years? Nope. Nope. So that's a number that's

going to go off. If you look at your actual expenses, there's lots of expenses that are going to fall off.

But on the other hand, Scott, might you travel a little bit more when you retire? I hope so.

So then those expenses are going to go up. There are expenses that are going to be very different once you're retired.

So think about what you want your desired retirement to be like if you're going to be traveling a lot.

Or, hey, Scott, do you have any hobbies that you haven't had a chance to do and want to do and might cost money?

These are a lot of questions from me, but yes. I'm throwing them all at you, Scott, but I'm also throwing them at our listeners. First of all, do you even know what your expenses are? Every single expense, because when you think, oh, I spend about $40,000 a year or $60,000 year, let's be more realistic. Are you going to be spending $60,000 in retirement?

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