My 2026 April Fool's Day post, My Wife Took The Kids And Left Me, hit a nerve. Thousands of you read it before the reveal, and the comments poured in. Some horrified, some offering condolences, some pissed, some clearly nodding along to parts of it that hit a little too close to home.
A few of you wrote that you'd been thinking about divorce yourselves. That's the point. Sometimes fiction does a better job at surfacing reality than a straight essay ever could.
I’ve been married to my college sweetheart since 2008. We hardly ever fought before having kids. But once our son was born in 2017, the arguments began piling up as we became too tired to give each other the same love and attention we once did. As a result, divorce has crossed my mind. Marriage is a work in progress. Without consistent care and effort, it will deteriorate.
But here's a thought I couldn't shake after writing it.
Why do so many FIRE and personal finance influencers actually get divorced? I didn't realize this until some commenters mentioned it.
This isn't a hypothetical. The list is real, and when you line them up together, it starts to look less like coincidence and more like a pattern worth examining. Gi
Divorce Among FIRE And Personal Finance Bloggers
For background, I started Financial Samurai in 2009 and helped kickstart the modern FIRE movement that year by writing about achieving financial independence and retiring early.
After 2 years and 8 months of planning, I left my investment banking career of 13 years behind for good in early 2012 and haven't been back. That year I published my bestselling e-book, now in its 6th edition, How To Engineer Your Layoff: Make A Small Fortune By Saying Goodbye. It’s an early retirement guide that teaches you how to negotiate a severance package so you can retire early or do whatever you want.
Let me walk through the personal finance names I know who have gotten divorced. I didn't realize there were so many divorces until after I published my post and did some research because I've been out of the scene for a while. The last time I went to meetup or conference was over 10 years ago.
J.D. Roth (Get Rich Slowly)
JD was one of the first personal finance blogs I found in 2008. He divorced his wife Kris in 2012, not long after selling his blog for seven figures. He's been admirably honest about it. In one interview, he said he was “unhappy and making my wife unhappy” and that he hadn't truly been himself in that relationship.
He eventually found Kim, his current partner. Kris, by his own account, seemed to blossom post-divorce – dating someone new, going camping (something she'd resisted for years). J.D. and Kris now live five miles apart and occasionally have dinner together. Civilized. Even warm. But the marriage that helped build Get Rich Slowly didn't survive the success of Get Rich Slowly.
Mr. Money Mustache (Pete Adeney)
On New Year's Eve 2018, Pete announced he and his wife had parted ways after years of being held up as the frugal living standard FIRE lifestyle. They'd retired together around 30, raised their son in Longmont, Colorado, and shared a glimpse at early retirement could look like spending $30,000 a year. After all, minimalism and early retirement go well together.
Pete framed the divorce with characteristic pragmatism, noting they'd handled it for $265 in filing fees, the cheapest divorce imaginable, naturally. A 600-comment forum thread followed. The reason? Still vague. “Drifting apart” was the cleanest summary. But you have to wonder: what happens when two people who optimized everything together suddenly find that the optimized life isn't what one of them actually wanted?
Pete wrote a guest post on Financial Samurai in April 2012 entitled: Early Retirement: It's Not As Risky As You Might Think.
Brad Barrett (ChooseFI)
Brad co-founded the ChooseFI podcast with Jonathan Mendosa, who left at the end of 2022. He reached Coast FI at 35 and preached the gospel of the “aggregation of marginal gains,” and seemed to have it figured out. Then, in Episode 533 of ChooseFI, he opened up about his divorce, describing the financial and emotional complexity of “splitting one life into two.”
He's since embraced minimalism post-divorce – renting rather than owning, shedding possessions – framing it as a kind of liberation. That reframing is admirable. But the fact remains: FI didn't save the marriage.
Jillian Johnsrud (Montana Money Adventures / Retire Often)
Jillian and her husband Adam were a well-received FIRE story – married young, started with $55,000 in debt, adopted four children, had two biological kids, lived abroad, took a dozen mini-retirements, and reached FI at 32. They were one of the community's most inspiring examples of doing it right with their suggestions of mini-retirements, or some might call them sabbaticals.
Then in December 2024, Jillian published a raw, quiet post on her website titled “A Small (and Not So Sweet) Update.” She wrote that five different catastrophic things had occurred in the span of six months. One of them: her husband had “passed her a note,” approximately eight months prior.
You can read between the lines. Whether it is formal divorce, separation, or something else entirely, the trajectory of that partnership appears to have fundamentally changed. Whatever the details, my heart goes out to her. Raising six children on the path to FIRE together, and then this.
Jillian actually wrote a guest post on Financial Samurai in 2017 about her journey adoption from foster care. I had volunteered at a foster home and was also considering adoption as well before having our son in 2017. Anybody who adopts a child and treats them with love is a HERO in my book.
Paula Pant (Afford Anything podcast)
Paula divorced her husband Will around 2019. She announced it publicly on Twitter at the time, which was surprisingly as many of us didn't know she was married in the first place. I remember her tweets coming across my timeline in visceral emotional detail.
What's striking is how Paula has since spoken about divorce across her podcast and public appearances, not as an abstract listener problem, but with the intensity of someone who lived it.
On the Boldin podcast, she described divorce not as a mutual decision but as “abandonment,” saying: “If your spouse leaves you, there's nothing you can do about it. You have no personal agency there.” That's not a financial advisor giving boilerplate risk warnings. That's someone who had the rug pulled out.
She has returned to the theme again and again on Afford Anything, dedicating a Valentine's Day episode to prenuptial agreements and financial self-protection, a live episode to navigating divorce financially, and hosting a candid conversation with Pete Adeney (Episode 349) about his post-divorce dating life at a time when Paula was navigating her own split.
She urges listeners relentlessly to get postnups, maintain independent financial access, and never assume a marriage is permanent. To her credit, Paula converted a painful chapter into honest and practical financial advice in this community.
Personally, I'm for each partner having their own financial accounts and wealth, as relying on someone for all financial matters is risky business. See: Financial Dependence Is The Worst. As a father to a daughter, I will not let her rely on a man for her every needs. She needs to be financially independent herself.
Who Hasn't Divorced (That We Know Of)
To be fair, not every prominent figure in this community has seen their marriage collapse.
The Mad Fientist (Brandon) and his wife Jill are still together. Brandon has encouraged his wife to keep working (WIFI), especially after having their first child.
Jeremy and Winnie of Go Curry Cracker continue to travel the world as a couple. They were featured with me on a Business Insider video about early retirement.
The Frugalwoods (Elizabeth and Nate) remain together on their Vermont homestead, though the blog has grown quieter. Justin from Root of Good and his wife are still together, as are Joe from Retire by 40 and his wife, who finally retired more than 15 years after Joe did. Fritz from The Retirement Manifesto and his wife are also still together, and so is Krysty and Bryce from Millennial Revolution.
So divorce among FIRE and personal finance enthusiasts is not universal. But the number of high-profile FIRE divorces is still striking enough to ask why.
My Theories on Why FIRE and Divorce Can Go Together
I want to be careful here. I'm not a therapist, and I obviously don't know what happened behind any of these closed doors. But I have been writing about financial independence for 17 years, am married, and know that marriage takes a ton of work, especially after kids.
I've written about divorce topics throughout the years because marriage can be really hard, and I've looked for suggestions to solve my marital issues as well. Here are the patterns I keep seeing.
1. FIRE can amplify existing incompatibility instead of solving it.
Early retirement sounds like the ultimate relationship upgrade. No more financial stress, no more money fights, no more resentment over who works longer hours. But what early retirement actually does is remove every external structure that kept two people busy and slightly apart.
When you're both home all day, every day, you find out fast whether you actually like each other's company. Most couples never face that test until their children leave the nest. FIRE couples face it in their thirties, forties, and fifties. Not everyone passes. And it can be even harder as FIRE parents.
2. One partner is sometimes dragged into FIRE by the other.
This community talks sometimes about the “unwilling spouse” problem. In many FIRE households, one partner drives the frugality and the other goes along with it – sometimes enthusiastically, sometimes out of love, sometimes without fully understanding what they're giving up.
Years later, that partner might wake up feeling like they sacrificed their career, their identity, their ambitions, or their social life for a plan they never entirely chose. There are plenty of negatives of early retirement nobody likes talking about. That's a slow-burning resentment that no spreadsheet can account for.
When my wife said to me – even in a fictional April Fool's context – “I never asked to retire early in 2015. It was always your dream,” that line came from somewhere real. I've heard variations of it from many couples over the years. The FIRE dream is often asymmetric.
3. Financial independence creates an identity crisis that marriages don't always survive.
Who are you when you don't have a job title? When you don't have a boss, a commute, a team, a reason to leave the house? For many people, work is identity. Retire early and you lose that scaffolding overnight.
Some people flourish. Others spiral quietly. And sometimes the person they used to be – the one their partner fell in love with – has disappeared into early retirement along with the 9-to-5. That's a disorienting thing to watch as a spouse.
4. Public personas create private pressure.
Every person on this list had built an audience around the idea that their life was working. The FIRE journey was proof. The marriage was exhibit A. When cracks appeared, there was enormous pressure, internal and external, to paper over them.
Blog audiences don't reward vulnerability about a failing marriage, at least not until it's over and you can frame it as a “lessons learned” post. By the time the truth comes out, the gap between the public story and the private reality is enormous. That gap takes a toll on everyone inside it.
For those in the FIRE community who aggressively try to build a business and constant get media attention, the facade can break down privately. There may very well be a correlation with FIRE, divorce, and heavy social media usage that portrays a wonderful, curated life.
5. Not really financially independent and shifting to a stressful business
One of the biggest criticisms of the FIRE movement is that some influencers didn’t actually retire, but instead traded their day jobs for entrepreneurship. If you’re truly financially independent, why are you grinding to sell courses, land sponsors, write books, and promote affiliate products?
During COVID, I remember receiving a donation request from a FIRE podcast, even though the hosts regularly said they were financially independent and living their best lives. It made me pause. If you’re FI, why not self-fund your podcast? I’ve been self-funding the Financial Samurai podcast for over a decade, and it’s not that expensive.
If your passive investment income doesn’t fully cover your desired living expenses, there’s likely more financial pressure than you let on. That disconnect can create real strain, especially during downturns. Besides, all creators deserve to be compensated for their work so I don't fault Choose FI for asking for donations. It was just a jolt given their messaging and FIRE genre.
The more your business depends on attention, the more pressure you feel to maintain an image. Constant self-promotion, interviews, and media outreach take time and energy. Over time, that can wear on a relationship, as a partner starts to feel uncomfortable with the inconsistency.
You can present a polished image to readers and listeners for a long time. But it’s much harder to do so with a spouse who sees everything behind the scenes.
A Private Grumble
I still remember the wife of a FIRE influencer privately reach out to me and complain, “I can no longer take my husband's BS. Here I am, working 50 hours a week and providing the healthcare and retirement benefits, and he's here telling the world he is retired. He just can't admit he's a stay-at-home dad because of his tiny ego!” They divorced 18 months later.
6. FIRE doesn't fix what was already broken.
I've written before that money doesn't solve relationship problems. It just changes the texture of them. A couple with communication problems at $80,000 a year will have the same communication problems at $5 million in net worth, except now they have more time to confront them and no office to escape to.
Some couples think FIRE is the reward they've been working toward together. But sometimes one person is secretly working toward something else – independence, reinvention, an exit.
7. FIRE gives you the courage to break free from a suboptimal life
If you no longer have to depend on your wife or husband for money, then you had better love them for who they are. Settling is no way to go once you have financial freedom. As a result, once you achieve a target net worth or have at least a baseline level of financial security, your patience for dealing with your partner's undesirable habits declines.
People owe it to themselves to find their soul-mates in the hopes of achieving everlasting happiness.
Is This Actually an Epidemic, or Just Confirmation Bias?
Let's be honest: roughly half of all marriages end in divorce. That number has actually been declining for decades, but it's still substantial. So if you line up twenty FIRE influencers, statistically you'd expect several of them to divorce. That's just math.
And FIRE attracts a specific type of person: analytical, optimization-driven, willing to reject conventional paths. Those same traits that make someone good at building wealth can make them restless in a life that stops growing. They are often high-agency people who, once unhappy, are unlikely to simply endure.
So maybe the answer is: it's not an epidemic among FIRE people specifically, but the divorces that happen in this community are more visible because these people built their brands around money and their relationships. When a regular couple splits, the world doesn't notice. If I split with my wife, 500,000 monthly readers do.
What I Take From All of This
Every marriage has the potential to drift if you stop tending to it. At the end of the day, we're all trying to do our best to make things work, provide for our family, and live purposeful lives. Sure, there could be more diversity, acceptance, and love in the FIRE space, however, I'm confident the community will grow positively over the time.
There is no shame in divorce. People simply grow apart sometimes. Filing for divorce is the rational thing to do instead of stay stuck in a loveless marriage, or worse. Money does have a significant impact on relationships, whether we like it or not.
Here's what nobody puts in the FIRE spreadsheet: the 4% rule won't protect your marriage. A paid-off house won't make you feel seen. A fat brokerage account won't replace the conversation you haven't had with your partner in three months.
The FIRE community is extraordinarily good at optimizing money. It is noticeably less good at talking about the relational costs of that optimization. We celebrate the retirement announcement. But we rarely ask what the spouse gave up to get there. We celebrate the couple who travels the world on $40,000 a year. But we rarely ask whether both of them actually wanted that.
Keep On Fighting For Those You Love
To every couple in the FIRE community right now: go on a date that has nothing to do with your investment portfolio. Talk about something other than your net worth, your safe withdrawal rate, or your next mini-retirement. Ask your partner what they want, not what's in the plan. Then actually listen.
Because the hardest math in personal finance isn't calculating your FI number. It's staying genuinely, honestly known to the person you're building the number with.
Personally, my baseline goal is to stay married and provide for a happy household until our youngest is 18 in 2036. After both the kids go off to college, I hope to be healthy enough to go on a great number of adventures again with my wife, like we did before children. Here's hoping for the best for everyone!
Related posts on money and divorce:
How To Prevent Divorce From Ruining Your Retirement
Why Parents Divorce After Kids
For Greater Stability For The Kids After A Divorce, Try Bird Nesting
The Precarious Life Of Dual Unemployed Parents
Achieving The Two Spouse Early Retirement Household
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