Hi friends,
Thursday, April 30th, 2026 was a special day for me. My last day as an employee. At 41, I quit my job, without looking for a new one. Investing systematically for many years had made this possible.
My intention was not to retire completely, but to work on things that gave me happiness and satisfaction, rather than the things that provided the highest pay.
We only have this one life, and lately this has become very obvious to me.
Next week marks the first six months into what I can only describe as freedom. My independence from paychecks, bosses, and 9-to-5 schedules.
This post is a personal update for anyone who finds this kind of life interesting. There will be no market analysis in this post. Instead, I’ll give you an honest look into how much of a difference these first six months have made to me.
I hope you’ll find it inspiring.
Is this a real FIRE story?
I love reading stories about people who made it to the other side of the corporate rat race and started a new life long before retirement age.
Having the chance to write one myself feels surreal and amazing at the same time.
For many years I had this dream of becoming financially independent and being the undisputed boss of my own life.
Not the full-blown FIRE version (Financial Independence, Retire Early) where you completely stop working and no longer have to make money at all. The extreme version where you save your way to wealth didn’t appeal to me either.
I wanted the version where you get to spend your days on passion projects, the things that really drive you, and just earn a small side-income in addition to investment returns. All without sacrificing quality of life.
The FIRE movement has names like Coast FIRE or Barista FIRE to explain states where you work part-time or take a low-paying job with no stress and high engagement, as an addition to investments.
I’m not yet sure where my version fits into this.
How it all started
I still remember the first time a teacher at school mentioned an acquaintance who lived off investing, and the idea stuck in the back of my head. I must have been around 13 at the time.
At 18, I bought my first stocks with a small amount of money. I had no idea what I was doing, but opening the door to this whole financial world was extremely fascinating to me.
Despite my growing passion for investing, I decided on a “safe” career path, eventually becoming a software engineer. This felt like a solid choice, but over the years I gradually lost the interest I originally had in this field.
Software engineers typically earn a well above-average salary. This meant most of the time I was able to set aside 30-40% of my monthly income for investing, without sacrificing much on other things I wanted.
For many years, my investment returns were not impressive. I lagged the big market indexes like the S&P 500 in most years between 2004 and 2019.
In 2008, I hit the bottom with a total net worth below $2,000. Since then, continuous saving, investing and compounding kept my account growing. No gifts or inheritance have been involved.
This post is not about investment strategies (I’ve written plenty of other posts about this!). But after I changed to the systematic and rules-based approach I usually write about in this publication (in 2021), my portfolio really started to take off.
Why I left
People often talk about push and pull effects when leaving a job. A push effect is a negative factor that pushes you out of a job or simply makes you want to quit. Pull effects are the opposite: A positive external factor that pulls you away from your job.
My situation was a mix.
Having spent 18 years in various developer roles in the tech industry, I had grown tired of endless meetings, changing priorities, change of ownership, lack of management understanding, unnecessary bureaucracy and a lot of wasted time.
For years I had a plan to escape it all when I was around 50. That’s when I calculated I would have enough money invested to never have to work again.
But something happened at the company I was employed at. It was sold off to new owners sitting eight time zones away on the other side of the planet. Everything immediately changed, and what was left of my job motivation died.
As I started looking for a new job, I realized I had no desire to do this anymore.
A couple of months earlier I had started writing on Substack. I shared my investment strategy, and the early traction and engagement from readers in the community was extremely motivating.
By sharing what had worked so well for me, I knew there was a chance I could actually make a meaningful side income. The missing piece.
The move
Over the course of a week in early spring, I had a few serious talks with my wife. Things suddenly seemed to align:
My passion for my existing career had burned out.
My investment account was large enough to slowly start withdrawing.
I had found a passion project with potential for income.
I had enough capital invested to live for many years before I would have to make money again.
One Friday night, I remember my wife saying:
Go for it, if this is what you want.
We only have this one life, and you’ll regret it if you don’t at least try it out.
I’m usually a cautious, safety-first kind of guy. This move felt alien to me, but at the same time strangely refreshing and liberating.
We decided to give it a year and do a status afterwards. If there was no prospect of making money outside of investment returns, I would simply go back and find a new job in the corporate world.
Worst case, a few years would go by without any income, and it would mean the size of our investment portfolio would most likely decrease.
Only half a year has gone by. Now I’m going to share how this has affected me…
Things that changed
Obviously, my work life has completely changed. I’ve started a business for my Substack and investment activities. I work when I want to. I don’t ask anyone for permission, and I do everything my way.
I have no meetings with management. No assignments that don’t fit my skills or interests. No people with collaboration difficulties I need to deal with. No limitations, no reporting, no stress.
Of course, there’s a new dimension of insecurity and doubt that creeps in from time to time, as my monthly income is now highly unpredictable. But so far, things have only gone my way.
I take time out to slow down, spending time in the sun (when possible), taking long walks in the forest, running and exercising, seeing friends and family.
My two boys get to spend a lot more time with their dad. I can take them to the doctor in the middle of the day, pick them up early, watch them play sports, take a day off with them as needed, and generally be there for any event in their lives.
Having a flexible parent in the family has also made day-to-day life and scheduling a lot easier for us. It has made life easier for my wife, who’s still working a regular 9-to-5 job.
But the decisive factor for all of this to work out in the long run was whether or not I could generate a side-income (with investment returns being the primary income).
And I’ve been blessed. I’ve found the most amazing community on Substack, and I’m eternally grateful for the engagement and the interest in my work.
The demand for my ETF strategy is beyond my wildest expectations. This took me to official Substack Bestseller status in less than five months, and the income I get from paid subscriptions is already more than enough to cover my needs. I could do this for the rest of my life, as it simply doesn’t feel like work to me.
The one thing I miss
Few things in life are entirely black or white. One of the most common reactions I’ve received from people is this:
Wow, I don’t think I could live without colleagues! Don’t you get lonely?
Life as a self-employed person or a solopreneur can be lonely. I don’t talk to nearly as many people during a regular day as I used to. But there’s one thing people often forget:
We’re different creatures with different needs. Being on the introverted side of the social spectrum, I actually enjoy my own company. I thrive in not being dependent on other people all the time.
This lifestyle is not for everyone of course, and I fully understand that more extroverted people would find this environment difficult.
And yes. I do miss my colleagues. The one thing I actually miss from corporate life is the daily chats and the laughs I used to have with my co-workers.
But living with my wife and kids, I don’t consider my days lonely at all. You just need to make sure you get the social interaction you need, one way or another. It doesn’t have to be through colleagues in the classical way.
One thing that has surprised me is how fellow writers on Substack can treat each other like colleagues. I’ve made friends online with the greatest people here, who I’ve never met in real life.
Other people can still find it difficult to understand exactly what it is I’m doing now.
Like the relative who asked how long I had been unemployed… Or my youngest son who told his friends at kindergarten I work at Starbucks. Turns out Substack and Starbucks are identical words to a 4-year-old.
The bigger change…
What freedom means to you might not be the same as what freedom means to me. As I’m still dependent on a small side-income, this is not total freedom as in the strictest FIRE definition.
But what I experience right now might actually be even better: Freedom to pursue passion projects and work out of desire.
That need for an income, however small, ignites the motivation to build things and execute on ideas, rather than just sleeping on the couch.
Rules for happiness:
something to do,
someone to love,
something to hope for.— Often attributed to Immanuel Kant
I agree that we need something to get up for in the morning, and to be productive in some way or another.
These first 6 months of freedom have revealed something to me, and I know it may sound cliché, but stay with me here:
Life. Is. Short.
Having tasted this freedom, this new way of living life on my own terms and by my own definitions, I can simply no longer imagine going back to the 9-to-5 rat race of working for other people.
I see things more clearly now that I actually have time to think about all this. I realize how much of our lives we spend serving other companies and how much time we waste on our corporate identity.
Standing on the outside, looking in, gives a different perspective. I’ve seen so much pseudo work in big corporations. For some people, this can work out, but for me it was never a big satisfaction.
Everything I do now makes sense to me. Nothing feels like a waste of time. Why? Because I get to decide everything myself.
I’m not a career-ladder-climber. I’m a family man and a freedom lover, who recently realized the independent life is where I thrive.
I’ve learned how much independence, authority, and intrinsic motivation mean for how we feel about working. I’ve never felt as motivated for work before in my life, as I do now. Probably because it doesn’t feel like work, and maybe that’s the whole point.
For me, there’s no going back now. I simply can’t imagine this. I love what I’m doing now, analyzing and writing about stock market strategies, and I love the freedom and flexibility which has taken my whole life to another level.
We gave it a year to see if this could work out. I was already hooked on the very first day, and now after 6 months, I can’t imagine going back.
I’m forever grateful to the stock market and for how investing has changed my life. Recently I’ve become equally grateful to the growing community of like-minded people who have joined me and actively follow the ETF strategy I built.
Go for it
If you’ve read this far, and this resonates with you, all I can do is repeat the words my wife said to me:
Go for it, if this is what you want.
We only have this one life, and you’ll regret it if you don’t at least try it out.
I hope you found this article inspiring. If you’re curious to follow my work on data-driven market research and strategic insights, you can subscribe for free.
If you’re interested in the exact ETF strategy that allowed me to quit my job, you can read about it here. This is a simple system that hundreds of paid subscribers have full access to, and the one my family and I are still following.
Thank you for reading!
Disclaimer: The MarketFighter Strategy is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not financial advice, and the author is not a licensed investment advisor. Investing in ETFs involves significant risk, and past performance is never a guarantee of future results. You are solely responsible for your own trades and financial outcomes. Read the full Disclaimer here.