Disclaimer: I don’t really know how to address this part of the journey without potentially alienating some readers. I recognize there are some large numbers in here, but I can only share the truth. My hope is that no one is discouraged because my path looks different than theirs. A high income does allow you to maintain a larger savings percentage and accelerate FIRE. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth pursuing freedom just because it takes more time.
Picture this: It's Spring Break at one of America's top business schools. While some students are nursing hangovers from expensive ski trips, one of my classmates is posting Instagram stories from the deck of a chartered yacht, island-hopping through the Greek Aegean with a full crew.
Meanwhile, my wife and I are eating oatmeal in student housing, wondering how often we can afford to see each other during my summer internship across the country.
This wasn't a story about wealth inequality. This was a story about choices and how the most expensive education of my life taught me that the conventional wisdom about money was completely backwards.
Why I Left My First Job
By Part Two of this series, I was four years into consulting with a respectable $50,000 net worth and a 10% savings rate. Not terrible for someone in their mid-twenties, but I had a problem: I was getting pigeonholed.
As a junior person at a massive consulting firm, I was becoming the “supply chain optimization software guy”. Every project suddenly wanted to use a certain software I had experience with, so every project manager requested me specifically to do this work. The money was decent, but I could see my career path narrowing into a very specific and limiting skill set.
The solution seemed obvious: get an MBA. In strategy consulting, an MBA wasn't just helpful for advancement. It was practically mandatory. More importantly, the top-tier firms that wouldn't even interview someone with my background would recruit heavily from elite business schools.
The ROI Calculation
Before you assume I violated every FIRE principle by spending six figures on grad school, let me walk you through the math that convinced me.
The Investment:
Lost income: ~$150,000 over two years (assuming slight raises over my $70k)
Opportunity cost of that income invested: ~$15k (assuming 10%)
Living expenses during school: Thankfully covered by my wife's salary (but definitely six figures over two years)
Tuition: $0 (full merit scholarship based on GMAT scores and undergraduate GPA)
The Return:
Immediate salary increase: $70,000 to $180,000 (+$110,000 annually)
Break-even timeline: Less than two years
Effective ROI: 73% annually, assuming the salary increase remained flat
In reality, the MBA opened doors that would have been impossible otherwise, leading to even higher earnings in subsequent years. From a pure financial perspective, it was one of the best investments I ever made.
Math detail: I’m simplifying slightly, but imagine you can buy a bond for $150,000 that pays $110,000 of interest every year forever. That’s sort of what the MBA gave me.
Financing Strategy (Don't Try This at Home)
Here's where I made a decision I wouldn't recommend in 2025: I took out maximum federal student loans despite having a full scholarship. (I’m not even sure why this is legal, but the government will let you loan living expenses during school too.)
Why? The interest rate was 2%.
I immediately invested every dollar of those loans in index funds. With the market performing well (32%+ in 2013) and loan rates at historic lows, I made money on borrowed money. This was risky, and with today's graduate loan rates at 7-10%, it would be really dumb.
The lesson: Interest rates matter enormously in financial decisions. A 2% loan is fundamentally different from a 10% loan. If someone offers you a 0% loan, math would say to take it, but this assumes you have an iron discipline to invest the money versus spend it.
Culture Shock: Welcome to Wealth
Business school introduced me to wealth at a level I'd never experienced. While there were some trust fund kids, most were driven, high-achieving people who had already been earning significant money and were about to earn much more.
The spending was casual and massive:
Weekend trips to Napa Valley that cost more than my monthly rent
$500 bar tabs that nobody questioned
Spring Break yacht charters in Greece (I still don't know what that costs, but I'm guessing it's a five-figure week)
$50,000 signing bonuses treated as party funds rather than investment capital
During school, I was insulated from this pressure because I genuinely didn't have money to spend. My wife's salary covered our basic living expenses, but we weren't saving anything. It was easy to decline expensive activities because I literally couldn't afford them.
But I was watching. And learning.
The FIRE Discovery
Near graduation, I mentioned to a classmate that I was concerned about the lifestyle I was seeing among consulting partners: high divorce rates, constant stress, and general unhappiness despite seven-figure incomes. This was while watching many of our peers chase investment banking roles with $200,000+ starting salaries and 100-hour work weeks.
She had a radically different perspective on how to live life. She introduced me to a blog called Mr. Money Mustache.
The core idea that hit me immediately after a few posts: Living below your means won't reduce your happiness. It will probably make you happier in the long run.
This ran completely counter to everything I was seeing around me. My classmates were convinced that each salary increase required a proportional lifestyle increase to create more happiness. Bigger apartment, nicer car, expensive dinners, luxury vacations. The money was there, so why not spend it?
MMM argued the opposite: that conscious spending on things you actually value, while avoiding mindless lifestyle inflation, creates more satisfaction and, crucially, more freedom.
The Math Made Sense Immediately
My business school finance training made the FIRE math crystal clear. The compound interest and return calculations I was using for corporate valuations worked identically for personal wealth building.
I spent an evening building an Excel model of my future net worth based on different savings rates and investment returns. The results were staggering:
Save 10% of $180,000 salary: Comfortable retirement at 68
Save 60% of $180,000 salary: Financial independence by age 37
The difference wasn't lifestyle. It was freedom. Decades of freedom.
The Mindset Shift
When my salary jumped from $70,000 to $180,000 (about $150,000 take-home after maximizing tax-deferred accounts), I faced a choice every high earner faces: How do I spend all this extra money piling up in my checking account?
Most people start looking for ways to spend it. Nicer apartment, nicer car, nicer restaurants. This lifestyle inflation trap that captures nearly everyone who gets a significant raise.
Instead, I asked a different question: How do I invest all this extra money?
The strategy was simple: Live the same life I lived on $70,000, and invest the difference.
Housing: Live in a $600/month 1970s apartment instead of "upgrading" to a $1,200 new luxury place
Transportation: Drive 10-15 year old cars instead of something new
Food: Cook at home instead of joining the takeout culture of busy professionals
Within a year, I went from saving 10% to saving 60% of my income. Not through extreme deprivation, but through lifestyle arbitrage: living well below my means while my means had dramatically increased.
Social Challenges (Or Lack Thereof)
Surprisingly, I didn't face much social pressure to increase my spending at the new job. The role came with a generous expense account, so client dinners, travel, and entertainment were all covered. My colleagues had no idea what I was driving or where I lived.
The real challenge was internal: resisting the voice that said I "deserved" to spend more because I was earning more.
Looking Back: Worth It?
Would I make the same decision again? Absolutely.
The MBA wasn't just about the immediate salary increase. It provided:
Access to opportunities that wouldn't have existed otherwise
A network of high-achieving peers (even if they made questionable financial choices)
Analytical frameworks that accelerated my understanding of FIRE principles
The confidence to make bigger career moves later
Most importantly, it led me to discover financial independence at age 27 instead of stumbling onto it in my 40s or 50s, if at all.
The Foundation for Everything
By graduation, I had three crucial elements in place:
High income from strategic career moves
Low expenses from conscious lifestyle choices
Investment knowledge from business school and FIRE education
This combination would prove explosive for wealth building over the following years.
Next Time
Part Three ends with me discovering FIRE and implementing the basics. Part Four will cover what happened next: the aggressive wealth accumulation phase, specific investment strategies, and the path from $50,000 net worth to financial independence in less than a decade.
The foundation was set. Now it was time to build.