Steve Antonioni stumbled across a miniature version of FIRE – Financial Independence, Retire Early – the movement he was pursuing in his early 20s.
after Building a $90,000 “war chest”, He quit his corporate job and started making Youtube video About financial freedom. After spending a few years at that stage of her career, she took another break, stepping away from YouTube to focus on her family and start writing a book.
He liked the idea of aggressively saving for a few years for a career change or temporary break so much that he named it: Campfire.
Unlike traditional Camp Fire, which often requires years or even decades of savings and investments to retire sustainably, Antonioni sees Camp Fire as a short-term strategy. The goal is not to stop working forever. This is for you to save enough to buy flexibility quickly.
“What if you raised that much money in a short period of time, and then used it to bring your life more in line with what you’ve been waiting to do for those 15 years?” he told Business Insider. “Instead, you just did it. You’ve already done it.”
Shifting the Savings Mindset: Think of Your Personal Life as a Business
Whether you’re saving for a fire, a campfire, or just trying to increase your savings rate, Antonioni says a shift in mindset can help: Think about your personal finances like a business.
“I think it’s very important to have the right attitude towards saving,” he said. He adds, “Even the word ‘savings’ messes you up right from the start.”
Antonioni’s money advice is to treat your personal finances like a business. Courtesy of Steve Antonioni
People use different language to describe corporate finance and personal finance. For example, businesses have “revenue” and “profit”, while individuals have “income” and “savings”. He finds it helpful to make a direct comparison between the two.
“A business is trying to make a profit, right? It’s exactly the same thing for you – your savings are your profit,” he said, “You want to run your life in such a way that you’re making a profit, because that profit is yours. That goes straight to you.”
For Antonioni, increasing that “profit” means living well below one’s means and systematically increasing his spending. When he was attempting financial independence, he said he ate two or three meals the same way almost every day and made most of his life around a routine that kept costs down.
That level of routine suited his personality. Antonioni said he leads with structure and discipline, but he knows the same approach won’t work for everyone.
He said, “I hesitate to give advice to the average person, because I tend to be a bit extreme myself when I’m pursuing a goal.”
He also noted that his circumstances made aggressive savings easier. At that time, he was young, single and lived alone. Now that he has a family, he said, it will be difficult to maintain the same level of simplicity. Plus, saving aggressively in 2026 is more difficult than it was when they were building their first financial aid.
“The price of groceries has literally doubled in many cases,” he said. “For people who are looking to enter the housing market, it’s a very dramatic picture.”
The broader lesson, he said, is not that everyone should eat the same food every day or live as frugally as possible. This is that savings can be more powerful than money left over. Treated like a “benefit,” it can become a tool for making big life changes, whether that means trying a new career, taking on a creative project, or simply taking time off from work.