Every winter, Alan and Katie Donegan would avoid turning on the heating at their home in the south of England. “Instead, we wore extra layers and used hot water bottles – we turned it into a game,” says Alan. “It wasn’t suffering, it was strategy.” That strategy – extreme frugality, saving every possible pound – allowed the couple to retire early: Alan at 40, Katie at 35, seven years ago.
The couple 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,” says Alan. 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.” While others thought they were “extreme” or “mad”, Alan says they were “laser-focused on buying freedom”.
“The Donegans retired at 40 and 35 after a decade of packed lunches and no heating.”
Alan had worked as a landscape gardener before launching a training and life-coaching business; Katie was an actuary for a financial firm. Their high incomes, combined with extreme saving habits, meant they could pour money into investments. “Every pound we invested was a step closer to the life we wanted,” says Katie. They quit work after their savings hit £1m.
The Donegans are part of the Fire movement – Financially Independent, Retire Early – which has grown from a little-known concept 15 years ago into almost a million members on its main Reddit discussion board. Mainstream financial institutions now publish numerous guides on the topic. The central tenet: live extremely frugally during working life to retire as soon as possible.
Yet for most people, 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 risen steadily since the 1990s, to 64.8 for men and 63.3 for women in 2025, according to one long-term study.
Despite these trends, Fire devotees persist. American middle-school teacher Amy Minkley, now 49, was able to retire at 44. To achieve that, she worked abroad at internationa…