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วางใจ (Wang-Jai) — Freedom Already Funded

Coast FIRE Path

Stop saving in your 30s–40sSave 40–60%, then stopGrowth portfolio, then left alone

What is it?

Coast FIRE is a milestone, not a retirement. You front-load saving while you are young, and once your invested balance is large enough to grow into your full number on its own, you stop contributing. You keep working — but only to cover this month, not to fund the next forty years.

The maths is one line: your coast number = your independence number ÷ (1 + r)ⁿ, where r is your assumed real return and n is the years until you want to be independent. Because n is an exponent rather than a multiplier, time does most of the work. Aiming for ฿15M at 60 at a 5% real return, a 30-year-old needs about ฿3.5M invested today; a 45-year-old needs about ฿7.2M for exactly the same target.

Who is this for?

You do not necessarily want to stop working — you want to stop working under pressure. Coast FIRE is for people who would take a more interesting job at 70% of the pay if only the retirement maths still worked.

  • You can save hard now, in a high-earning stretch, but do not want to do it for twenty years
  • You like your field and expect to keep earning something into your fifties
  • What you actually want is leverage — the ability to refuse bad work, relocate, or start something
  • You are comfortable leaving a portfolio untouched and unfed for decades

How it works

Front-loads at 40–60% · Coast number = independence number ÷ (1 + r)ⁿ · Contributions stop; the portfolio stays invested · Work continues, covering only current spending

Nan, 29, Bangkok. Income ฿110,000/month, saving ฿50,000. Her target is ฿15M by 60. Her coast number at 35 — 25 years of compounding at an assumed 5% real return — is about ฿4.4M, and saving ฿50,000/month gets her there in roughly six and a half years. She stops contributing and moves to a ฿55,000/month job at a foundation. Left alone, ฿4.4M compounds to about ฿15M by 60. Drop the assumed return to 4% and it lands nearer ฿11.8M — which is why the assumption matters more on this path than on any other.

The trade-offs

What you gain

  • The largest drop in financial pressure available for the least total saving
  • Career freedom decades early — you can take the interesting job, or the lower-paid one
  • Every baht saved before the milestone is doing maximum work, because it compounds longest
  • If you keep saving anyway, you arrive early instead of on time — the downside is upside

What you give up

  • No early retirement. You are still working; only the reason changed
  • The whole plan rests on one assumption — the return you divided by. This is the most assumption-sensitive path here
  • Decades with no new contributions means no way to buy the dips or make up a bad decade
  • Lifestyle creep after the milestone can quietly consume the raise you just gave yourself

Thai-specific considerations

Stopping contributions can break your RMF. RMF tax benefits require a purchase at least every other year — skip two consecutive years and you breach the conditions, which can mean repaying deductions you already claimed and losing the exemption on gains. Coast FIRE is the one path where “stop saving” carries a specific Thai tax trap. Keep a token RMF purchase running even after you stop contributing in earnest, and remember units must be held to age 55 with at least five years from your first purchase.

Coasting inside a job protects your SSO pension. The old-age pension is calculated from your average wage over your final 60 months, so a lower-paid coast job taken in your fifties reduces it, while the same move at 35 does not. If you plan to downshift, downshifting early is cheaper than downshifting late.

Coast maths in baht is unusually forgiving, because a Thai independence number is smaller. A ฿35,000/month retirement is roughly a ฿10.5M target — about ฿2.4M invested at 30 at a 5% real return over thirty years. That is a reachable figure for a Bangkok professional, and it is why coasting is arguably the most practical variant here.

Getting started

  1. Write down the two assumptions your coast number depends on — your real return and your independence age — then recalculate at 4% as well as 5%
  2. Reach the number before you downshift, not while you are downshifting
  3. Keep a minimal RMF purchase alive so a dormant account does not cost you past deductions
  4. Re-run the number every few years; a coast number that was right at 32 is wrong after a decade of different returns
  5. Decide what the freed-up income is for — a lower-paid job, fewer hours, a business — before it disappears into spending