For Miguel Marquez, the road to financial security didn’t start with a windfall or a lucky stock pick, but rather through a series of strategic moves across the globe. A 47 year old university professor originally from Spain, Marquez found himself struggling to make significant headway with his savings while teaching in Bloomington, Indiana. Everything shifted when he transitioned into an international career, relocating first to Brazil and eventually to China. By leveraging a strong salary against a low cost of living in Shenzhen, where he now teaches languages and personal finance, Marquez manages to save roughly 70 percent of his take home pay.
This aggressive saving rate allowed him to achieve what is known as Lean FI, a minimalist version of financial independence where investments cover basic necessities but leave little room for luxury. For Marquez, this means eschewing typical status symbols like cars or real estate in favor of mobility and peace of mind. Living in subsidized university housing and utilizing public transit allows him to keep his annual expenses around 22,000 dollars despite earning approximately 75,000 dollars after taxes. While many see such a lifestyle as restrictive, Marquez views it as the ultimate liberation from the anxiety of the corporate or academic grind.
To protect his wealth, Marquez employs a modified version of the permanent portfolio strategy. Traditionally, this method splits assets equally between stocks, bonds, gold, and cash to ensure that regardless of whether the economy is experiencing growth, inflation or deflation, at least one part of the portfolio is performing well. Rather than chasing maximum returns, Marquez focuses on minimizing volatility. He has tweaked the formula slightly by reducing his cash holdings from 25 percent down to about 10 percent since he is still employed and feels less need for a massive liquidity buffer.
While he maintains small positions in cryptocurrency for added variety, his primary goal remains stability over speculation. Interestingly, achieving Lean FI hasn’t prompted him to resign immediately; instead, it has transformed his relationship with work. He continues to teach because he genuinely enjoys it, but he now does so knowing that employment is a choice rather than a requirement for survival. For Marquez, true financial independence isn’t necessarily about hitting a specific number on a screen but about having a reliable plan that grants him the freedom to walk away whenever he chooses.
