I quit my six-figure career and STOPPED paying into retirement… now I’m on track for a $3million nest egg because of a strategy that changed my life

When she turned 31, Jessica Fick realized that she’d reached a financial milestone that could allow her to stop saving for retirement.

Instead of continuing to pour money into her investment accounts, she could let the savings she’d already built compound for decades.

This retirement investing strategy is known as coast FI, short for coast financial independence, and it’s gaining attention among younger Americans who don’t want to spend their entire working lives chasing ever-higher salaries in order to fund their retirement dreams.

Unlike the better-known FIRE movement – financial independence, retire early – coast FI isn’t necessarily about retiring early.

The idea is that once you’ve accumulated enough money in your retirement accounts, it can grow to your final retirement target without making further contributions. 

When it works, coast FI can give people the freedom to work fewer hours, take a lower-paying job, change careers, start a business or simply enjoying the life they are living today.

Fick is 39 now and living in New Hampshire, but eight years ago she realized that the $300,000 she had saved could potentially grow to almost $3 million by age 65 if it returned an average of 7 percent annually – and she wouldn’t even have to save one more dollar. 

The idea came at a particularly important moment. About a year before discovering coast FI, she had left a six-figure corporate job after suffering severe burnout.

Fick had been working in human resources, and much of her identity had been bound up in professional success.

Eventually she realized she didn’t want to spend her life working all week only to spend evenings, weekends and vacations recovering from her job.

‘I had already built a solid foundation by saving and investing consistently throughout my twenties,’ Fick told the Daily Mail.

‘That’s what made coast FI so powerful for me,’ she said. ‘It helped me realize that the savings I’d accumulated weren’t just preparing me for retirement someday. They could actually give me options much sooner.’

Rather than returning immediately to another demanding corporate role, Jessica took a part-time HR position at a nonprofit.

The job paid considerably less, but it gave her something she had been missing: time and balance. Then, in 2019, she discovered Coast FI while researching financial independence.

‘It showed me that once you’ve saved enough for your retirement investments to grow on their own, you don’t necessarily have to keep optimizing for the highest salary,’ she said.

‘Instead, you have the freedom to make career decisions based on what matters most to you.’

The discovery gave Fick the confidence not to increase her working hours simply to earn more. Instead, she began experimenting with a different future.

In 2020, Fick launched The Fioneers, a business focused on financial independence and lifestyle design, while continuing to work part-time.

By 2021, the business had grown enough for her to leave her nonprofit job and work on it full-time. Fick’s husband eventually joined her, leaving his own job in 2023.

Later that year, the couple decided to take the full coast FI approach and stopped contributing to their retirement accounts. They had $300,000 saved, but Fick stresses that everyone has to set their own coast FI goal based on their own needs and preferences.

The amount depends on factors including your age, anticipated retirement lifestyle, spending needs and assumptions about investment returns.

These factors can change. Inflation, healthcare costs, market downturns and major life events such as having children or buying a home could all alter someone’s financial needs decades down the line.

Fick views coast FI as a planning tool rather than a guarantee. The real benefit, she believes, is what happens psychologically when people realize they have built a robust financial cushion.

‘Many people assume they need far more money than they actually do before they have options,’ Fick told us.

‘Calculating your coast FI number can help you see where you stand and what opportunities might already be within reach.’

Her own experience illustrates exactly what those options can look like. Today, Fick and her husband continue to run The Fioneers because they genuinely enjoy the work – not to maximize their income.

Their earnings vary from year to year because they are business owners, but they have deliberately designed their spending around what matters most to them.

They own their home and car outright, while their biggest expenses tend to be home improvements and travel.

The couple also work part-time and spend several months each year travelling in their campervan. For Fick, that’s the real point of coast FI.

‘It isn’t just about reaching a financial milestone,’ she told us. ‘It’s about creating a life you don’t want to retire from.’

Fick believes younger workers should focus not only on calculating how much they need for retirement, but also consider what they want their lives to look like before they stop working.

‘What kind of life do I want? What does success actually look like to me? If money weren’t the deciding factor, how would I want to spend my time?’ she said.

There’s no need to wait until hitting your coast FI number to start making changes. 

Fick suggests experimenting with smaller lifestyle changes, such as reducing working hours, trying freelancing, taking up a new hobby, volunteering or simply making more time for family and friends.

She also does not believe everyone needs to stop investing once they reach coast FI. For some people, the milestone may simply mean reducing their contributions rather than stopping them altogether.

The concept has gained wider attention as younger Americans grapple with high living costs, an uncertain job market and growing doubts about what traditional retirement will look like.

Coast FI is frequently discussed alongside FIRE, which has traditionally focused on saving aggressively enough to leave the workforce decades before the usual retirement age. But Fick feels that coast FI is less all-or-nothing.

‘You don’t have to wait until you’ve reached coast FI to start moving in that direction,’ she said.

‘No matter where you are on your financial journey, you can begin taking small steps and running little experiments to learn what brings you energy and fulfillment.’

For Fick, the journey began with burnout and an unexpected career detour. What initially felt like a professional crisis ultimately gave her the opportunity to reconsider what she wanted from work and money.

Her hope now is that other people will realize they may have more choices than they think.

‘My goal isn’t just to help people reach Coast FI,’ she said. ‘It’s to help them use money as a tool to intentionally create lives that reflect their values.’

And that, she argues, may be the biggest attraction of all.