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Steve Antonioni used to think he was working toward early retirement.
In 2022, the Toronto-based YouTuber told Business Insider he had saved about $90,000 in four years, enough to quit his corporate job and make videos full-time. He set a goal to save $1 million by 35, enough to feel financially independent.
Four years later, Antonioni says his goals have changed. He’s no longer chasing a specific retirement number, and he doesn’t think of himself as someone who wants to stop working altogether.
“I’m not retired, and I don’t intend to be,” he told Business Insider in a 2026 follow-up interview. “I still want to create productive things.”
“Camp FIRE”: a shorter-term version of FIRE
The FIRE (financial independence, retire early) movement has multiple offshoots, including Lean FIRE, Fat FIRE, Barista FIRE, and Coast FIRE, each corresponding to a different lifestyle. Lean FIRE, for example, prioritizes a more minimalist lifestyle, while Fat FIRE allows for higher spending in retirement.
Antonioni calls his variation “Camp FIRE,” a nod to the idea that, like a campfire, it’s smaller than traditional FIRE. He describes it as a shorter-term version of the strategy.
Rather than spending 10, 15, or 20 years aggressively saving and investing to retire permanently, someone might follow FIRE principles for three to five years and build what he calls a “war chest” — enough money to make a major life change, such as trying a new career or taking time off, before reaching full financial independence.
“Imagine somebody in a corporate office. They really hate it, but they’re making good money, and in 15 years, they’re going to be free,” he said. “It’s not necessarily the worst deal in the world, but they still are perhaps doing themselves a bit of a disservice because they’re putting themselves through 15 years of living out of alignment with who they are.”
He says he has achieved Camp FIRE twice. The first time was when he saved enough in his 20s to quit the corporate world and pursue YouTube.
His second Camp FIRE cycle came after he had built up enough savings from YouTube to take an 18-month sabbatical. During that time, which he called a “creative reset,” he became a father and started working on a book.
“It can be this thing that you do multiple times,” said Antonioni of Camp FIRE, a name that was inspired in part by his backcountry camping trips in Canada. “It’s kind of like farming, in a way. It’s cyclical, in the sense that you plant the seed, you water it, and it grows into something big and beautiful. Then, you harvest it, and you can take a beat while you live off that harvest.”
How to save your way to Camp FIRE
Antonioni recognizes that saving aggressively is harder in 2026 than it was when he was building his first financial cushion about a decade ago.
“The cost of groceries has literally doubled in many cases. For people who are looking to get into the housing market, it’s a pretty dramatic picture,” he said. “So, I think people are up against more today.”
Still, he said one mindset shift has helped him: thinking about his personal finances like a business.
“Even the word ‘saving’ kind of messes you up from the first place,” he said, because people use different language to describe corporate finances and personal finances. Businesses have revenue and profit, he said. Individuals have income and savings. He finds it helpful to draw a direct comparison between the two.
“Your savings are your profit,” he said. “If you want to save more money, you’ve got to think about your financial situation in the same way. You want to run your life in such a way that you’re earning a profit, because that profit is yours. That goes directly to you.”
For Antonioni, increasing that “profit” meant living well below his means and approaching his spending systematically. When he was pursuing financial independence, he said he ate the same two or three meals nearly every day and designed much of his life around routines that kept costs low.
He acknowledged that the approach won’t work for everyone.
“Everybody has different temperaments,” he said. “I’m the type of person who actually kind of thrives in those environments. When I introduce more discipline into my life, I find myself being in a better place, physically and mentally.”
It was also easier, he said, because he was single and living alone at the time.
“Now, with a family, it’s a lot harder to live that exact same way,” he said.
That’s part of why Antonioni sees Camp FIRE as a more flexible framework than traditional early retirement. The goal isn’t necessarily to quit working forever. It’s to create enough financial breathing room to make a change sooner and, potentially, to do it more than once.
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