The best pension plan in the world is a free life.
I quit my job in 2011, cycled 47,000 km around the world, and retired at 34. This site is how I did it: financial independence, rebuilt for Europe.
None of it is advice. All of it is lived.
Start from zero.
From “what’s a share?” to your own plan. About 15 minutes, no jargon, nothing to sign up for.
Where are you now?
Already know the basics? Find your station:
FIRE in Europe, country by country.
The rules that change your number: capital gains, wealth taxes, exit taxes, tax wrappers. One page per country. Every figure is checked against official sources on a schedule. 31 countries so far.
Run your own numbers.
Nineteen tools I built to think about freedom the way I actually do: price the life, find the exit, test the money and rehearse one ordinary week. Use them to think, not to decide. None of it is advice.
The Exit Calculator
How many years until you can stop working, plus the earlier point where your savings will finish the job on their own, even if you stop adding.
OpenThe Three Endings
Alive and funded, alive and broke, or dead: the honest odds of each, at every age from here to 105.
OpenThe Broker Bill
Free apps, €1 trades, custody percentages: every broker charges somewhere. Give it your monthly buy and your pot, and see the real yearly bill at each of the main European brokers.
OpenFirst person, lived.
Short essays on the exit, the money, and the life after it. A few minutes each.
The latest essay · 19 July 2026 · 4 min read
I retired into a falling market
My first year out was the year stocks fell and prices spiked. I did nothing about the market, worried more about the supermarket, and learnt what a plan is really for.
ReadThe reference shelf.
The guides, kept up to date, free.
The European FIRE guide
The system, rebuilt for this side of the Atlantic: UCITS funds, wealth taxes, exit taxes, and a state pension decades away. Free, no paywall.
OpenThe broker guide
The main brokers available to Europeans, compared on what actually decides it: the cost of your pattern, what happens if one dies, who does your tax paperwork. No affiliate links anywhere on it.
OpenFor sport, I tackle other people's hardest problems.
I've already lived the life you're imagining: no programme, no course, no community to join. A working session, and, if the challenge deserves it, the Full Push.
The working session
€600per session
Bring the challenge you're stuck with. Ninety minutes of my full attention on it.
- —You answer the Exit Audit first, so we start at full speed.
- —You get a straight verdict, and the alternatives with their pros and cons.
- —You leave with your next moves, not a warm feeling.
The Full Push
€2,400for all four
For a challenge that needs working through, not just talking through. Four sessions: we adjust the plan as real results come in.
- —Everything in the working session, four times over.
- —Follow-ups by email between sessions: you don't wait weeks with a blocker.
- —You end with a plan you've already started, not one you're about to.
Why €600? Because the price keeps it serious for both of us. And I don't need the income, so there's nothing I need to sell you.
Proof, not promises.
No certificates, no framework, no funnel. A life used as the evidence: every claim on this site has one of these under it.
The press came for the road, not the spreadsheet. Proof I did the thing before I wrote about it.
Four things I'd bet on again.
It was never about being broke. It was about being free.
I travelled on about €10 a day: hitchhiking, strangers' sofas, one month on nothing at all. The money came later. The freedom didn't wait for it.
Fear does not prevent death — it prevents life.
The line I left with in January 2011, no plan B. Everything since (the bike, the websites, the camera, the markets) started as something I didn't know how to do yet.
Trying is never a failure.
I'd never touched a camera; a year later magazines were paying for my photos and National Geographic ran a feature on the trip. Think it through properly, put your energy behind it, then actually start.
The best pension plan is a free life.
I retired from trading young. My days now: competitive sport, cooking properly, building a home, learning whatever's next.
Bring me a challenge.
The Exit Audit, then ninety minutes: a straight verdict, real alternatives with their pros and cons, and your first move. If you want someone to nod along, I’m the wrong person to pay.
Sessions online, worldwide · pablo@thefireexit.com