Amon and Christina Browning amassed over $2 million in just eight years. Theyre 40 and 42, have two kids and saved a chunk of their cash by hustling side income.

Those factors, plus a little creativity, were the kindling for their FIRE ingredients to crackle to life.

Amon and Christina are part of the FIRE movement, though they started saving aggressively before they really even knew what FIRE was.

People still dont really understand how you live off your portfolio in FIRE, says Amon.

The FIRE trend involves saving aggressively approximately 50% to 75% of yearly income and retiring once youve saved 25 to 40 times your annual expenses.

The Brownings credit a can-do mindset, an $800 car, side hustles and teaching themselves financial literacy so they could dub themselves what Amon calls the cubicle millionaires next door. They now live in Portugal and embrace a freer lifestyle. It involves plenty of walks, beach time, learning Portuguese and watching their two girls grow up.

Just the other day, our youngest daughter wanted to have all her friends over from school during lunchtime. For us, thats over three hours of prep time and getting all the kids lunch. That's something we would never be able to do during a regular workday, says Christina.

Amon says the couple is "able to really slow down and savor things."

FIRE, which stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early, became popular among millennials during the last decade.

The Brownings didnt set out to be mega-savers. In fact, 10 years ago, they saved about 10% of their income each year and went through life like most Americans.

We were just going to work and coming home. We were just basically in the rat race. We weren't being intentional, we didn't have a plan, we were just kind of going with the flow, says Amon.

Amon says the FIRE spark ignited the day he won a service award. Hed been working for the federal government for about 10 years and he and another individual accepted a thanks for your service award. The other man had been on the job for 30 or 40 years.

They just handed the award to me like it was nothing, and that night I went home to Christina and I said, I just can't see myself at work another 30 or 40 years. What would I really have to show for it but a piece of paper? says Amon. I liked my job and I liked the people. I just felt like I was missing out on life.

Christina says she experienced mixed emotions when Amon told her he wanted to tackle financial independence: she was surprised and also loved the idea.

So I think one of the reasons why we were so successful in getting started reaching financial independence is because we worked together on trying to figure out how we could do it. The reaction was like, OK, what do we need to do to get this done? How do we work together and make this happen? she says.

The first thing the Brownings did was become more intentional about how they tracked and spent their money, says Amon.

Next, they focused on making more money, using their creative side to come up with side hustles that could generate income to invest in real estate or their investment portfolio.

There's only so much we could make each year based off of our salary alone, says Christina.

The side hustles werent the usual waitering jobs.

In the Bay Area, they did cosmetic touch-ups on homes and flipped them into attractive AirBnBs by doing the following:

The Brownings say anyone at any age can do FIRE, and here are their tips:

"And so if people arent really agreeable to the process that were going through and dont really want to hear how were going through it but just want to be negative, then we dont surround ourselves with people like that."

She suggests surrounding yourself with positive people that encourage you throughout the process.

The Brownings say theyre asked this question all the time: so, how do you get to your magical FIRE number?

They say its easy to calculate, even if its not as simple to put it into action:

The Brownings message has spread likewildfire. They have their own website and YouTube channel and live life with an eye toward financial independence for their kidstoo. In short, their money works for them instead of the other way around.

The Brownings say its never too late to tackle your FIRE number. You can start FIRE at 40 and retire at 50, or you can start at 50 and retire at 60, says Christina.

When you look at the time horizon that people are living now, they're living into their 80s and 90s and I don't think it's ever too late, she says.

2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

Read the rest here:

How This California Couple Retired In Their 40s Using FIRE - Benzinga