Every winter, Alan and Katie Donegan would avoid turning on the heating at their home in the south of England. Instead, they wore extra layers and used hot water bottles – turning it into a game. “It wasn’t suffering, it was strategy,” Alan says. Others thought they were “extreme” or “mad” to put so much emphasis on not spending money, but the couple were “laser-focused on buying freedom”.
That freedom meant early retirement. Seven years ago, when Alan was 40 and Katie just 35, they quit work. Their secret? Extreme frugality, combined with good incomes. Alan, a former landscape gardener who later launched a training and life-coaching business, and Katie, an actuary, rarely had takeaways and always took packed lunches to work. “We were £40,000 better off over 10 years from just that one lunch habit,” Alan says. They even charged their phones while out and hunted for discarded Nectar vouchers. “You can decide if that’s crazy or genius, but it worked.”
“UK couple retired at 40 and 35 after 10 years of packed lunches and no heating, saving £1m.”
Every pound they could afford went into investments. “Every pound we invested was a step closer to the life we wanted,” Katie says. They quit after their savings hit £1m.
The Donegans are part of a small but growing global movement called Fire – Financially Independent, Retire Early. From a little-known concept 15 years ago, the main Fire discussion board on Reddit now has almost a million members, and mainstream financial institutions publish numerous guides on the topic. The central tenet is to live extremely frugally during your working life so you can retire as soon as possible.
For most, early retirement remains a dream. Last year, average retirement ages in the UK hit record highs of 65.8 years for men and 64.7 for women, official data showed. In the US, the average retirement age has increased steadily since the 1990s, to 64.8 for men and 63.3 for women in 2025, according to one long-term study. Yet Fire devotees such as 49-year-old Amy Minkley are committed to their goal. The American middle-school teacher retired at 44, helped by working abroad at international schools.
Alan Donegan is pragmatic about their choices. “We decided that if other people thought we were mad, that was fine – we were buying our freedom.”