Over the past few years, FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) has become increasingly popular.
But most discussions around FIRE assume it is a
single destination. In reality, FIRE is not a fixed outcome.
It is a function of:
- your life stage
- your asset structure
- and more importantly, your liquidity
This raises a more useful question:
Which version of FIRE is actually suitable for you given how Singaporeans build wealth?
The Starting Point: FIRE Is Just a Formula
Most FIRE strategies are built on the 4% rule:
You need roughly
25× your annual expenses to retire.
So if you spend:
- $60k/year → ~$1.5M
- $100k/year → ~$2.5M
Simple. But there are two hidden assumptions:
1) Your assets are
liquid and investable
2) Your portfolio behaves like a
stock/bond portfolio
For many Singaporeans, neither is fully true.
The Singapore Reality: Wealth ≠ Liquidity
If we look at a typical Singapore household balance sheet, it often looks like this:
- Property: ~50–60%
- CPF: ~20–25%
- Financial assets: ~20–25%
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