• Eman and Kristine Vergara embraced minimalism to achieve financial independence.
• They shifted from high spending to saving 75% of their income by reducing expenses.
• The couple aim to travel with their kids while maintaining a frugal lifestyle at home.

Seven years ago, Eman Vergara came across a book that had long collected dust on his shelf. He realized neither he nor his wife, Kristine, had read it, so he dived into "Early Retirement Extreme."

He couldn't put it down or ignore the racing thoughts that followed. The investment banker spent all night playing with online tools, calculating their net worth. He figured out that if they saved more in their jobs — his wife was an accountant — they could retire early, or at least achieve financial independence.

The book catalyzed a realization — and a lifestyle overhaul for the Australian couple.

"We were definitely living a maximalist life, earning big incomes but spending just as big — sometimes bigger," Eman told Business Insider about their 2016 life.

The couple said they were making up to 400,000 Australian dollars. "But at the same time, we were spending most of the money that we were getting," Eman said.

Shift to minimalism

A couple of more books and podcasts later, they turned to minimalism and cutting back on "frivolous" expenses, starting with a two-bedroom central Sydney apartment that cost AU$5,500 a month.

They sold their car and picked up rentals as needed, swapped brand-name supermarkets for Aldi, and cut back on travel and dining out. The lifestyle changes allowed them to pay off AU$24,000 in credit-card debt and about AU$26,000 in student loans.

The couple moved from saving 50% to 60% of their earnings in their first few years of minimalism to as much as 75% after moving from Sydney to Toowoomba, a city close to Brisbane, where the cost of living is lower than in big Australian cities. They bought a car after the move.

After about a year of focusing on debt repayment, they started fully investing their savings, Kristine said.

They have a combined net worth of about AU$3 million, or about $2 million. This is the couple's portfolio breakdown:

• Property in Australia and the Philippines: AU$1.5 million
• Stocks: AU$900,000
• Superannuation account, a mandatory retirement plan in Australia: AU$500,000

The rest of their portfolio is in cash. Business Insider has verified their net worth and breakdown.

FIRE with children

Since they started working toward financial independence, the Vergaras have had two children: a 3-year-old daughter and a 6-month-old son.

The early motivation behind moving to a more frugal lifestyle was having more autonomy — not being tied to a job or mortgage, and traveling as a family before their children are old enough for school.

"We want to raise our children as global citizens," so they can have friends all over the world, Eman said. "That, to me has been the driver of coming onto this journey."

Kristine retired from her full-time accounting role about three years ago, and Eman works in funds management with a flexible working arrangement. The couple refer to themselves as "coast FIRE," a type of Financial Independence, Retire Early scenario in which a person saves up enough money for retirement and needs to make only enough money for ongoing expenses, which for them is about AU$120,000 a year.

Eman, 38, plans to take a sabbatical when he turns 40 and eventually travel nine months of the year while homeschooling the children. They already take about 12 trips a year and are hoping to increase their travel expenses to 40% of their income, from 35%.

Their expenses have increased since having children, primarily for their toddler's extracurricular lessons and flight tickets. But they continue to save where they can, including using hand-me-down toys and clothes.

Their location helps, too.

"The health system is amazing, and I think this is a key nuance between Australia financial independence and American financial independence," Eman said. "Health insurance is just not even something that we think about."

Raising kids with a hunger for work

Since they plan to be partially or fully retired in the next few years, the couple have strategies meant to ensure their children understand the value of work.

"We certainly don't want them to see their parents just sitting at home doing nothing," Eman said about his plans to work part time and volunteer.

"You want to raise kids with that hunger for an ambition," Eman said. "I know what it was like being a first-generation migrant to work hard to succeed in my career and then be able to understand the power of compound interest and saving to be in a position where I am right now."

Kristine said it was important to her that the children be involved in volunteering and community work and pick a trade skill from a young age.

There are three main money lessons they want to teach the children: saving at least half of their income, putting savings into an investment that allows compounding, and staying away from credit cards.

"I know people do credit-card hacking, but it's just the temptation of having that card," Eman said, referring to credit-card points and miles. "We simplified by just cutting all our credit cards when we found financial independence."

• Financial independence writer Andre Nader built a seven-figure net worth before age 40.
• The former Meta employee shares his top money-related books, including 'The Simple Path to Wealth.'
• Another one of his favorites, 'Die With Zero,' helped him become more comfortable spending his money.

At 37, Andre Nader has enough in savings that he doesn't expect to ever have to work a 9-to-5 again.

After 15 years working in tech — nine of which were at Meta — he was laid off in 2023. Rather than job search, he leaned into the Substack publication he started in 2021, FAANG FIRE, and started doing one-on-one coaching. FIRE stands for financial independence retire early.

He and his wife, who works as a designer for Uber, had been preparing to retire early and had already built a sizable, seven-figure nest egg. Between her tech income and their savings, they had enough to sustain their family of three in San Francisco. While Nader is technically retired in his 30s, he says he'll consider himself "semi-FIRE'd" until his wife walks away from her job.

The financial independence blogger and coach shared three books that changed his money mindset and helped him build wealth.

"The Simple Path to Wealth" by JL Collins

JL Collins' 2016 book is a popular choice within the FIRE community.

The author delivers on his promise of providing a simple path to wealth — his main advice is to buy stocks via Vanguard's Total Stock Market Index Fund — which Nader said he appreciated as a former tech employee: "Particularly in tech, a lot of our work involves being hyper-creative or being extremely analytical and doing very complicated things in our day-to-day. We think we need to take the same approach to our finances."

Collins rejects that belief and suggests the opposite, Nader said: "It doesn't have to be complicated. You can rely on the math that other people have done and then keep it boring."

Nader didn't always keep things simple: He said he lost a good chunk of money trading options in his early 20s. However, once he learned about low-cost index fund investing, he was sold on the effective and hands-off strategy. He's built wealth by investing primarily in Fidelity and Vanguard index funds, including VTI and VXUS.

"Die With Zero" by Bill Perkins

Nader says his spending philosophy shifted after reading Bill Perkins' unconventional financial guide.

While saving money always came naturally to Nader, which was a good quality for someone pursuing FIRE, his frugality sometimes prevented him from spending on things that would enrich his life.

Perkins' book was "a good counter for me," he said. "I'm naturally frugal and naturally live within spreadsheets. 'Die With Zero' forced me to think about experiences more in the same way that I think about my finances: Just like my finances can compound, life experiences can also compound."

Nader says that one of the frameworks detailed in the book particularly resonated with him: Think about your life in five-year buckets. Then, maximize the experiences that make the most sense during those timeframes.

For example, in the first five years of his daughter's life, "maybe those aren't the best years for going to Disney World," he said. "Maybe that's going to be when my daughter is five to 10."

At 37, he's also thinking about prioritizing more adventuresome activities while he can: "In my 55 to 60 bracket, I probably don't want to be downhill skiing because maybe my knees aren't going to be in a place they are while I'm in my 30s and early 40s. So having those experiences matched up with my life stages is helpful."

"Enough" by Jack Bogle

When Nader decided to pursue FIRE, one of the first steps he took was establishing his "enough number," a concept he read about in Vanguard founder Jack Bogle's book.

It's essentially the amount of money that would allow him to never have to earn another dollar.

"'Need' is the big thing," Nader said. "You can continue earning more, but you don't necessarily need it to hit your goals and to live the life that you want. For me, that was always a big motivating factor."

As of late 2024, his "enough" number is around $5.6 million, which he calculated by considering his family's annual spend in San Francisco and future costs like healthcare and his daughter's education.

Having experienced a layoff in 2023, he's hyper-aware that life happens, and his expenses and circumstances will continue to change. For that reason, "I'm constantly running my numbers and trying to calculate how much enough is."

• Andre Nader sold his Austin rental due to stress outweighing financial benefits.
• He and his wife, who moved to SF in 2014, have found renting to be more cost-effective than owning.
• Nader says he doesn't need to own real estate to hit his FIRE goals and focuses on index fund investing.

Andre Nader has been both a homeowner and a landlord — and neither are for him, at least at this moment in time.

Shortly after getting married in 2012, he and his wife bought a home in Austin. When they moved to San Francisco in 2014 for a job Nader landed with Facebook, they kept it as a rental rather than selling. Their original plan was to move back to Texas.

Nader decided to self-manage the rental from nearly 2,000 miles away, which he did for a year and a half. When his tenant gave notice to move out and Nader flew back to Austin to deal with the turnover, he was surprised with what he found.

"The place was just kind of trashed," he told Business Insider. "It needed all-new carpet. It needed a lot of work."

While the extra income had been nice — he said the property generated a cash flow of a couple of hundred dollars a month — ultimately, it wasn't worth it.

"The stress and the mental overhead were drastically outweighing any of the short-term financial benefits," said Nader, who decided to sell rather than find a new tenant. Plus, he and his wife, who had started working as a designer at Uber, were enjoying the Bay Area and found themselves pushing out their timeline. "I was never convinced we would stay in San Francisco for the long term, but I became more and more confident that we wouldn't be immediately back to Austin."

Choosing to rent to save on housing in SF and leaning into index fund investing

Nader, 37, has been pursuing FIRE (financial independence, retirement early) since his 20s. He and his wife have always lived below their means, and for years, they kept their expenses low enough so that just one of their tech incomes could cover all of their household expenses, allowing them to invest about half of their combined income.

When they moved to the Bay Area, renting made sense from a budget perspective: It was cheaper for them to rent in the pricey city — and it still is, said Nader: "Right now, San Francisco really favors renting. It's really hard from a pure numbers standpoint to make owning make sense."

There are exceptions, he noted: "Particularly in a place like San Francisco, a lot of the math can change with the appreciation of property values. If housing prices continue to increase, then maybe buying can come out, but if you take conservative approaches to any future increases in housing, renting just ends up making a lot more sense mathematically."

Plus, Nader was never convinced he and his family would stay in San Francisco long enough to make buying worth it.

"The Goldilocks timeline has historically been, five to seven years is when buying starts being more advantageous than renting," he said. "Now when I do the numbers, it's even longer — closer to the 10-year timeframe — and I'd never been confident that I would be in San Francisco that long."

While prudent real estate investing is a viable path to wealth, Nader doesn't believe he needs to own property to hit his financial goals.

His investment strategy revolves around low-cost index funds. He owns various Fidelity and Vanguard index funds, including Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund ETF Shares (VTI) and Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund ETF Shares (VXUS).

Nader describes the strategy as "super boring," but it's effective: It's helped him build a seven-figure net worth, which BI verified by looking at a copy of his investment report.

It's not lost on him that bringing in two tech incomes was a major advantage.

"I won the income game by being in tech, by being a dual-income household. I didn't need to be taking these outsized risks by investing in extremely speculative ways. I could be boring in my portfolio," said Nader, who worked at Meta for nine years before he was affected by the company's 2023 layoffs.

He and his wife had enough between their savings and one tech income that he didn't have to find another job, but he says he'll consider himself "semi-FIRE'd" until his wife also walks away from her job.

Nader, who spends his days writing on Substack and doing one-on-one financial independence coaching, says his investment strategy has remained the same since the layoff. He likes the hands-off approach to index fund investing, especially after experiencing what it's like to own real estate.

When he was managing the Austin rental, "I kind of quickly realized that the promise of real estate being a clearly passive investment, even if you have property managers, wasn't something that, for me, proved to be true, so it further reinforced my view around focusing on super boring, low-fee index funds," he said. "I could have a few hundred thousand dollars in real estate and maybe a million dollars in index funds, but I would be thinking about the real estate three times as much, so it would be a disproportionate amount of mental exercise, at least for me."

• FIRE blogger Andre Nader and his wife have been working toward early retirement for years.
• When they were both working full-time in tech, they lived off of one income and saved the other.
• Nader broke down their household budget from March 2023 to February 2024.

When Andre Nader sat down to calculate his "enough number" — the amount of money that would allow him to never have to earn another dollar and give him the option to retire early — the first thing he did was analyze his spending.

From there, he could work backward and estimate how much he'd need to sustain his family of three's lifestyle in retirement.

Members of the FIRE (financial independence, retire early) community typically use the "4% rule," which suggests that you can safely withdraw 4% annually from your nest egg. For example, if you retire with $1 million, you should be able to withdraw $40,000 from your retirement funds each year without running out of money. To figure out your number using this rule, you simply multiply your annual spending by 25. Nader prefers to use a more conservative 3% safe withdrawal rate, which you can calculate by multiplying your annual number by 33.33.

He and his wife, who works as a designer for Uber, had been preparing to retire early together. They were on track to do so until Nader was affected by Meta's 2023 layoffs. The couple had enough between their savings and one tech income that Nader didn't have to find another job, but he says he'll consider himself "semi-FIRE'd" until his wife also walks away from her job.

They built a seven-figure net worth thanks to a variety of factors, including high incomes — "I won the income game by being in tech, by being a dual-income household," said Nader — but they've also been disciplined savers and investors.

Nader, who describes himself as "naturally frugal," said that he and his wife always kept their expenses low enough so that just one of their tech incomes could cover all of their household expenses. This allowed them to invest about half of their combined income in low-cost index funds.

Between March 20203 and February 2024, the family of three residing in San Francisco kept their annual expenses around $140,000.

Nader, who writes about financial independence on his Substack, FAANG FIRE, broke down his family's annual budget:

Housing: $60,000 a year ($5,000 a month). The biggest chunk of their budget (42%) goes toward rent. "Running the numbers for my personal situation, I have never been able to make home ownership pencil in within San Francisco," he wrote on his blog.

Shopping and personal: $21,473 a year ($1,789 a month).

Children: $18,136 a year ($1,511 a month). This spending category, which includes education, childcare, activities, and necessities like clothing, decreased significantly after Nader's daughter graduated from preschool and started at public school as a kindergartner.

He broke down the costs within this spending category between March 2023 and February 2024 in a separate chart.

Food: $16,284 a year ($1,357 a month).

Travel and vacations: $10,443 a year ($870 a month). Now that his daughter is getting older and travel is more manageable, Nader says he's intentionally trying to increase spending in this category.

Bills and utilities: $6,241 a year ($520 a month).

Health and wellness: $5,363 a year ($447 a month).

Transportation: $2,741 a year ($228 a month). Nader and his wife share one fully paid-off car. They also are on a pre-paid maintenance plan for the next four years.

Miscellaneous: $1,201 a year ($100 a month.)

Increasing his budget heading into 2025

After being laid off in 2023, Nader is hyper-aware that life happens, and his expenses and circumstances will continue to change.

His spending has already increased since he ran his numbers in early 2024. Most notably, his family moved so that they could be within walking distance of their daughter's school. The move bumped his rent from $5,000 a month to $8,000.

He's thinking about 2025 as an experimental year and is doing some "boundary testing" on their spending, particularly while his wife is still working.

"It's much easier to increase spend while someone in your house is working, so right now, we're like, 'Hey, what would it be like if we did live in a single-family home in San Francisco? Is that the life that we want?'" he said.

His spending philosophy has shifted after reading Bill Perkins' "Die With Zero," he added.

The book was "a good counter for me," he said. "I'm naturally frugal and naturally live within spreadsheets. 'Die With Zero' forced me to think about experiences more in the same way that I think about my finances: Just like my finances can compound, life experiences can also compound. That led me to prioritize travel to a higher degree."

Nader doesn't want to sacrifice a certain quality of life or experiences in his pursuit of FIRE. He recognizes that what he and his family value will shift over time, which is why he periodically revisits his spending and "enough number."

"What 'enough' is in 2022 ended up being different than what I thought 'enough' would be in 2024," he said. "I realized that I did want to spend more in certain places, so I explicitly forced myself to spend more on things like travel. I realized I was unnecessarily saving more than I needed to, and I wasn't spending in a way that was bringing me happiness."

• Andre Nader switched from an EPO health insurance plan to an HDHP to get access to an HSA.
• Nader found the mental burden of managing healthcare costs outweighed HSA tax benefits.
• He plans to switch back to an EPO plan in 2025 for simplicity.

Andre Nader spent years on Meta's growth team, where his work involved experimentation and testing to determine how to improve specific products.

"I like to use that same testing methodology in my own life," the 37-year-old founder of financial independence blog FAANG FIRE told Business Insider. After getting laid off in 2023, Nader didn't have to job search thanks to the seven-figure net worth he built after years of investing in index funds and transitioned to writing on Substack full-time.

In 2024, he decided to put the popular, triple tax-advantaged health savings account (HSA) to the test. One requirement of using an HSA is that you must have a High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP), so he switched his family from an EPO health insurance plan, which he'd used for most of the past decade.

Nader said the EPO plan would be the simpler choice for him and his family — he wouldn't have to think about deductibles, the co-pays would be low, and all major hospitals were in-network — but he couldn't help but wonder if the savings from having an HSA would outweigh the extra hassle of having an HDHP, which offers a lower premium but comes with a higher deductible.

The benefits of using an HSA, which he describes as a "magical account," were obvious to him. It is a unicorn in that it offers a triple tax benefit:

1. You can contribute pretax dollars, which reduces your taxable income.
2. You can invest your HSA funds (the investment options vary by provider), and your contributions and earnings grow tax-free.
3. You can withdraw your money tax-free to cover qualified medical expenses (including things like copays, lab fees, and vaccines). After 65, you can use your HSA money to cover any expense without incurring a penalty, but the funds are subject to income tax.

Consider other tax-advantaged accounts. With a Roth IRA, you contribute after-tax money (and eventually withdraw it tax-free); with a traditional 401(k), you contribute pre-tax money (and eventually pay taxes when you withdraw).

"It's very rare to have an account where you're putting money in pre-tax and then also taking it out without paying taxes on it — and the entire time it's there, it can grow tax- and penalty-free," said Nader.

To maximize HSA gains, investors will invest their funds (rather than letting their HSA money sit in a cash account) and avoid touching it so it can grow and compound over time. Not touching your HSA funds means covering your medical expenses out of pocket, which is what Nader did throughout 2024. He saved all of his receipts from health-related expenses, so he'd have the option to reimburse himself later if he needed to (there's no time limit on when you can reimburse yourself from your HSA).

"In a spreadsheet, this is very lucrative," he said of taking full advantage of an HSA. Some companies will even contribute a certain amount to their employees' HSAs, which is essentially free money. "However, life isn't always about what happens in a spreadsheet."

Changing his coverage in 2025: 'I don't want to be living a life where I'm thinking about the cost of my healthcare'

As Nader's year of experimentation comes to a close, he's confident that an HDHP is not the right fit for his family and is switching healthcare plans in 2025. He says he'll likely go back to using an EPO.

"Even though the HSA is an amazing account that I can grow tax- and penalty-free forever, for me, the incremental benefit wasn't there," he said.

His main issue with using an HDHP and HSA was the mental bandwidth it required.

"The reason you're saving so much is you need to actually be thinking about your medical expenses more," said Nader. "Every single time that you go to urgent care, you're paying out of pocket until you hit a deductible or your out-of-pocket maximum. Every single time you go to a specialist, you're paying out-of-pocket until you hit your out-of-pocket maximum. So there was a lot more mental overhead in thinking about my healthcare decisions."

He felt like he couldn't be on autopilot like he was with an EPO plan, where an urgent care visit may cost him $10. With an HDHP, that same visit may cost hundreds of dollars, enough to stop and think about whether to get care.

"What's been happening over this year is, every single time I've needed to go to urgent care, I've thought about it a little bit, and I really didn't like that my health decisions were intersecting with my financial decisions," he said. "I didn't want to think about whether I should go to the emergency room if I had a cut; I should just go to the emergency room and not factor in the expenses."

At the end of the day, "I don't want to be living a life where I'm thinking about the cost of my healthcare."