What is the Lowest Net Worth You Need to Hit Lean FIRE in the United States? (in 2026)

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]Hey everyone, Ferris over here. So, the last video I talked about how much you can save just living a modest but surprisingly comfortable lifestyle in a low medium tier cost of living area like my town of Kannapolis, North Carolina.

[00:00:14]And some are genuinely surprised at the number that I came up with.

[00:00:18]The funny part is, I think the number is kind of high. I mean, here's an example of mine and I actually made it even lower for hours, about 921,000.

[00:00:28]And yes, I did say 860,000 in the comment before I realized that I forgot a few things. So, apologies for that.

[00:00:34]But today, I thought I could do a little bit of a challenge. We're going to see how low we can get this FIRE number while achieving the new American dream, which is financial freedom with a house.

[00:00:47]It is a bonus video and totally not because I wasn't happy with the last video. So, if you want to see more videos like these, >> [bell] >> and you know what? Hype this one up for me if you want to, please. If you're on mobile, go to the comment section, swipe left, and there should be a button that says hype. You get three hypes a week, and if there's one of mine I'd want you to use it on, I think it's going to be this one this week. I guess for those of you kind of new to the channel though that have subscribed for the financial freedom stuff, welcome. I usually do videos on Atlas Earth and BeerMoney apps to help you achieve financial freedom, and this is part of my set of videos where I'm just kind of cutting the middleman and getting to the heart of personal finance. So, as I mentioned and we've already talked about in the last video, no, you do not need a million dollars to be financially free.

[00:01:39]You don't even need a million dollars net worth to be financially free. But I have seen other videos coming out going the other way, and now I've long talked about already the videos that have said, "Oh, you need 3 million, 4 million." And you know, other FIRE people talking about that.

[00:01:53]But there are some that are going the other way with personal finance channels with Family Guy animations and AI voiceovers mentioning how we only need $500,000 to retire. And that had me wondering how low could we possibly go before we reach the minimum amount possible to achieve traditional lean FIRE. Now, before we do this, I want to put a few restrictions out there first.

[00:02:15]First, it has to be a traditional house.

[00:02:17]None of this tiny house or manufactured house or van life or shed house conversion stuff.

[00:02:23]It's cute, but there are things are going to drop in value hard like the old mobile home craze of the 1980s, especially if you put it on leased land.

[00:02:30]Second, I'm going to assume dual income, no kids. That doesn't mean you never had kids, but we're going to assume that you don't have kids living with you at the time. Maybe they moved out or something.

[00:02:40]Now, we'll talk about if you have a kid and talk about how much extra you'd have to put into a 401, real numbers, not those inflated averages you get on the media that include overpaying for tennis lessons and child care, which you wouldn't need if neither of you are working.

[00:02:55]Third, I'm going to have to be reasonable. So, we're making sure we don't end up on an episode of extreme cheapskates. This will be sort of arbitrary and I'm sure plenty of y'all in the comment section are going to go that's too much or that's too little, but I'm just going by observations from my household and those of the friends that I know.

[00:03:12]And finally, you have to be living in the United States. No going abroad to another country where the cost of living is much lower than here. I know a lot of Gen Z'ers are doing that, but you're basically leaving your entire life behind to go 10,000 miles away, which sounds great at first, but if you run out of money and you miscalculate, you're going to be in an even rougher situation than if you were in poverty here.

[00:03:34]It'll be almost as bad as living in an HOA in Vegas. And to do that, I'm going to start with Claude. And I'm going to have Claude answer me a couple of questions so that way I know where to go to find the cheapest place to live. And I'm going to add an extra parameter to this. I want to make sure that the state that I go to has Medicaid an expanded Medicaid basically. So, I want to make sure that I have my health insurance coverage covered if I want to live financially independently and I'm going to take out a very low amount.

[00:04:08]Basically, that wage that will hit that Medicaid limit every single year. All right, so let's do this. I'm going to type up what states are the lowest co- What states have the lowest co- lowest cost of housing that also have expanded Medicaid coverage?

[00:04:31]All right, so here are our cheapest options.

[00:04:35]I see West Virginia and Arkansas seem to be in the top two.

[00:04:39]Now, the median home price for Arkansas seems to be a little bit higher. That could be newer houses, not quite sure.

[00:04:45]I also see West Virginia, which is about the 129 to 147K range, but it isn't a mountain in this area. Uh you know, your mileage may vary on this one. I think I'm going to go ahead and I will choose Arkansas to start. But if Arkansas has slightly lower medians, I'm probably check out some towns in the area that we can look at that might be a little bit cheaper on the median home price front.

[00:05:09]And yeah, we'll do that then. So, let's see uh what cities in Arkansas or what towns in Arkansas have the cheapest housing. Okay, so what we have here is uh Claude ahead and split it to two tiers, the truly ultra-cheap. These are in distressed and rural markets. I'm going to go ahead and avoid these just because I mean, I guess if you don't need a job anymore, you don't have to worry about it, but like if you want an area that's probably a little bit more thriving, these are probably not the places to be.

[00:05:38]So, we'll probably just go down to the affordable but more livable towns and I see here El Dorado and Texarkana. El Dorado, Arkansas.

[00:05:48]All right, and I'm going to look for a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house in the area. Close this one, please. Uh looks like it's mostly land. Okay, I got a couple decent ones here. I think this is much higher priced than they said it would be.

[00:06:04]These are all in the 200s. All right, let's try Texarkana. Texarkana, Arkansas. Yeah, that's a little better.

[00:06:11]That's 2,800 square feet though. That's a lot of house. I'm looking for something in the 2,000 area. Okay, 1933, 309.

[00:06:20]Geez. 550? [snorts] Woo. Man. 379, 299.

[00:06:27]Where are the I think Claude's information is a little bit outdated. Uh you know what? Sort it price low to high. I also want to filter out two, three. See the home. All right.

[00:06:39]Yeah, 275 is the cheapest. I mean, there's this one, but that's probably a But, you're probably not going to see that very often, $75,000.

[00:06:47]So, 275 is the cheapest. So, yeah, I think Claude is a little bit outdated on this. Let's try a Midwestern area instead. I think I did see Ohio on that list. So, I'm going to try Toledo, Ohio. Okay, this is a little more like it. I mean, some of these are a little old, to be fair, but we should be able to find a decent priced with a decent amount of square feet. Here we go. 159,000.

[00:07:13]I four bedrooms, no bath. Oh, two bedrooms and one bath in each unit. So, four bedrooms and two baths. All right, I'm going to go with Toledo's at 159,000 dollars, and I'm going to put it to our uh list over there. We're We're just going to go with Ohio. Um I'm surprised at how high Arkansas is though. Wow.

[00:07:32]Okay, so I'm just going to do this a little bit faster than I did in the last video. Just going to go down each category here, subcategory. Rent or mortgage, already said paid in in Now, we'll at property taxes. To look at property taxes, we have to calculate the property tax rate and then multiply it by the house price to get our total.

[00:07:49]Actually, what's interesting is that homes.com has already given me the actual annual taxes for this house that I chose and it was $1,461.

[00:07:59]So, I don't even have to do any rate calculations. I can just take that and divide it by 12. And that comes up to about $125.

[00:08:08]I think it's a little bit less. I think closer to 122. But, I'm going to put 125 in just in case for a conservative estimate. So, let's go ahead and do that. $125.

[00:08:19]Now, moving on to homeowners and renters insurance. So, for something like this, you're probably going to be seeing about the average. I would say $110 a month for homeowners and renters insurance.

[00:08:30]Home maintenance repairs, you might want to set aside a little bit more for repairs. It is going to be an older home. It's pretty much anywhere that you're going to get a used house that, you know, you haven't built yourself, you're going to have to worry about repairs anyway.

[00:08:41]So, we'll set aside 1% of the price of the house. It should be 1,600 a year for it. So, about $135 per month for home maintenance and repairs.

[00:08:52]HOA fees, again, no HOA fees and I just want to make sure that there are no HOA fees here.

[00:08:58]It does not look like it. The year it's built in 1917 though. That's crazy.

[00:09:03]Yeah, but it doesn't look like it. I don't see anything that says like HOA stuff. So, all right. I'm going to go ahead and and if it is, I apologize, but you know, we'll just go with it.

[00:09:13]Electricity for a house like that, I'm going to say the average is going to be around $150.

[00:09:19]Water and sewer, I'm I'm going to be imposing some of my some of the stuff that we have to pay for it as well. I'll say $70 a month for water and sewer.

[00:09:29]Natural gas, I'm assuming that electricity's going to put into the cost of it. Um now, it's a much older home, so we'll probably be gas in heating on it.

[00:09:37]But, you can assume that you convert everything to full electricity, and then you wouldn't have to worry about that.

[00:09:43]So, we'll add that on. Trash and recycling.

[00:09:47]I mean, I'm pretty sure that they'll take care of it with those high property tax rates. I would be very surprised if they didn't take care of it, honestly.

[00:09:55]Internet Wi-Fi. If you get like a standard starter internet of some sort, that's probably going to be like $50 a month. So, I'll add 50 bucks a month.

[00:10:04]Mobile phone plan. Again, boost times two, $50. Uh $52.

[00:10:09]There you go. Streaming services, Netflix, Hulu, etc. You might want to keep one streaming service. I I had said probably not, but you know what? Let's be reasonable here and say that you keep at least one streaming service. And we'll say about 20 bucks a month on that one. Groceries. The food costs are a little bit high these days. But, for two people, we're probably looking about $400.

[00:10:30]Uh dining out, takeout. You might want to dine out here and there as well. No, got to be reasonable about this. Let's say once a week you decide to go out, spend about 20 bucks together.

[00:10:41]About $80 for dining out and takeout.

[00:10:44]Coffee shops and snacks, I'll save that about, you know, every once in a while.

[00:10:48]Okay, I'll be 50 bucks. All right, car payment and lease. Again, no car payment. And I know that some of y'all mentioned that, oh, what about saving up for a car? Yes, you can save up for a car if you want.

[00:11:00]I'm pretty sure that would be a a possibility, but like you could probably find used cars as well for pretty cheap these days. Um we're talking like very high mileage, of course. But, you could probably do that. Okay, post-production.

[00:11:13]Uh yeah, we're going to have to add about $300 a month for the car payment to save up towards a better car. Some There are some cars out there that are used You can get a CarMax that are pretty good for about $20,000, and they'll last a good 7-8 years. So, I would say $300 a month is probably reasonable here. So, towards the end of this challenge, I'll go ahead and just add that 300 a month. And if you multiply that by 300, that would be an extra $90,000 on top of our challenge total.

[00:11:44]And yeah, I'll probably put that somewhere in the bottom. So, all right, back to the video. Auto insurance, let me see the average auto insurance for the Toledo area.

[00:11:55]$75 to $150 a month. Very specific.

[00:11:59]I'll just split the difference and make it a 100 and 110. How's that? Let's do 110. Split the difference. Fuel, gasoline, I'm going to say that one's going to be I think their gas prices are a little bit cheaper where they are, but I'm still going to keep it about 80 bucks.

[00:12:15]Car maintenance, oil changes, same thing, 100 150 bucks.

[00:12:19]Public transit, you won't need public transit. Parking and tolls, again, very very small amounts here.

[00:12:27]And again, if you're going to be spending this little, you're probably going to be on Medicaid. So, you won't need health insurance, won't need dental insurance, and finding out we don't need vision insurance, either.

[00:12:38]Pharmacy medications is probably going to be tiny. I'll put like 10 bucks a month. Doctor specialist copays, probably the same. Haircuts and salon, assume you know, the same habits that me and my wife are. That's probably going to be something like 15 or $20 a month.

[00:12:54]I'll put $20 a month. Gym membership and fitness. Now, the reason why I didn't put it in in the previous video is because you can exercise at home.

[00:13:03]You know, simple walking will do wonders for you. So, yeah, just don't worry about that. Clothing and shoes, I'm put 25 a month here.

[00:13:12]Toiletries, skin care, beauty, 50 a month. Movies, concerts, and events.

[00:13:16]Okay, so the entertainment amount, I already had like a bulk entertainment budget of $200. I'm going to keep it at $200.

[00:13:23]And a travel vacation fund of 125.

[00:13:26]Uh you know, you could probably like if you really wanted to just kind of stay in the in your area, you could make it a hundred actually.

[00:13:34]So, a hundred a month might not be too bad. No no debt whatsoever, so we can avoid that. No life insurance, no disability insurance, nothing for education. I've already talked about giving in the previous video. Pets and miscellaneous, you don't have to worry about any of that including a general emergency fund.

[00:13:50]Which means that we have gotten it down to a total of $759,600 is all that you would need in net worth. And that [snorts] is with a $600,000 worth of earnings plus a house price of $159,000.

[00:14:07]And this is being I think reasonable and comfortable in my opinion. Now, they said I need to I can retire with $500,000. I'm not quite sure if I can see that. But 760k is still not a million and I'm still being rather reasonable here. So, let's cut some of this out. A little bit and see how much lower we can get. So, let's say that you just don't travel at all because you a lot of people don't want a vacation. I mean for a couple that might be a little difficult, but a lot of people might not want to might not want or really worry about vacationing or they want to stack it to the entertainment budget. So, I'm going to remove that. Now, let's go to dining out takeout. Maybe you only go like once every other week instead of once a week for $20. So, we can bring that down to 40 and coffee shops and snacks.

[00:14:58]I mean, you probably could already throw that into the cost of groceries as it is. So, we'll remove that as well. If you cut off one gas one gas trip out of three per month. If you if you don't travel that much, you probably aren't going to the pump three times. So, I could see you cutting another like 20 bucks off of the fuel gasoline amount.

[00:15:18]Now, we're under 700k.

[00:15:20]Electricity, if you had bought solar panels on the front end as sort of like a bucket list thing, you could knock this down to as lit with a battery and course to as little as like 30 bucks a month even.

[00:15:34]And that would significantly lower your fire number, but then you it would require some kind of like about 40,000 up front in order to get that to work.

[00:15:43]So, I'm not 100% sure if that would be a good idea. Let's say if you brought electricity down like even 10 bucks, I don't know. That That would be That would be difficult. Like a lot of this stuff too is like you're going to have to assume that home maintenance you cut that to like $100 a month, which I think I did in the original one. You have to cut off streaming services entirely or at least like Yeah, I guess Yeah, if we cut off streaming services entirely. Um there's nothing you can do with auto insurance, car maintenance, oil changes. Probably going to have to be I guess you can bring this down a little bit to like 100 about 100 honestly. Okay, I'm still well below 500k. Matter of fact, I just got to 500k as far as like earnings is concerned.

[00:16:26]That still puts me at 662,100.

[00:16:30]Hair cuts and salon, I mean at that point you're talking you're cutting your own hair at home, which again, I'm trying to be reasonable here. I don't want to wind up being on like extreme cheapskates or something, you know? Like don't buy clothes at all. No, you get toiletries, skin care. This seems like that's about as low as you can get it right now. I guess if you brought grocery The only thing I can think of is bringing groceries down to 360 somehow.

[00:16:52]I genuinely do not see how much more I can take out. So, I think I'm going to have to lock it in here that you can reach at $650,000.

[00:17:04]And at this point, if you had a kid, the cost of that kid still probably would not put you over a million. Pretty sure. You have to add food, you have to add some entertainment costs of some sort, some extra entertainment costs, but it's not going to be that much more, especially if you two decide to stay home. So, probably be like another 100,000, 150,000 on top of this. So, yeah, you can in fact do it. It's difficult. You have to end up going to a very low cost living area like Toledo, Ohio, which again, Toledo honestly doesn't sound too bad to me. I mean, they got an awesome baseball team there, the Toledo Mud Hens, who are kind of famous actually in the minor leagues.

[00:17:45]So, it's not like it's the worst place to be, but, you know, it's definitely not everyone's cup of tea, and I'm very well aware of that. But, I wanted to show you that Okay, I cut most of the rest of this that I can talk a little bit more candidly about this because I do feel like we've proven two things today. For one, yes, while it is true, you do not need a million dollars to be financially independent, on the other hand, the hoops that you have to go through should show that, and it doesn't invalidate, if anything, it only shows further that yes, we do have a cost of living crisis here.

[00:18:24]Now, while it is true that, you know, we can get to Okay, it says 650,000, but I'm going to add 90,000 because of the car and stuff. So, 740,000. So, around 3/4 of a million dollars is the bare minimum if you live in a super low cost of living area, and you just do nothing else, and you don't never go out, and you never leave your hometown, and you might go and do something, you know, once a once a every other week or a month or something.

[00:18:51]The cost of living crisis is absolutely real.

[00:18:55]And I want people to realize like this is exactly why people are complaining right now about the situation, why people think that they need two, three million dollars. Because if you had a budget like what we just did today, the second one, not the first one, I don't know how many people would just completely break off of that. I know even I, who is very much an introvert, almost a misanthrope, honestly, would absolutely hate that. Like, I need to go out every once in a while, too, you know? So, yeah.

[00:19:27]Wow. The It's kind of shown two things here today, but I hope you enjoyed this challenge, and I'm going to go back and enjoy the rest of the video, everybody.

[00:19:35]For those of you that like this video, please give it a like, and don't forget to comment on what you think about this. If how much further do you think I could go with this, honestly, with the with the rules and constraints that I put down? Let me know.

[00:19:51]All right, everyone.

[00:19:52]Uh next video will be Saturday. It'll be Atlas Earth related. I'll see you then.

[00:19:56]Pharaoh Silver, signing out. Bye, everybody.