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Toronto-based YouTuber Steve Antonioni.Courtesy of Steve Antonioni
Steve Antonioni takes a more flexible approach to the FIRE movement, calling it “Camp Fire”.
This involves saving enough money to make a major life change before reaching complete financial independence.
This allowed him to leave his corporate job and later take an 18-month sabbatical to go to YouTube at the age of 20.
Steve Antonioni thought he was working toward early retirement.
In 2022, based in Toronto youtuber Told Business Insider he’s saved about $90,000 in four yearsEnough to quit your corporate job and make videos full-time. He aimed 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,” he told Business Insider in a 2026 follow-up interview. “I still want to make productive things.”
“Campfire”: a short-lived version of the fire
There are several branches of the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement, including Lean FIRE, Fat FIRE, Barista FIRE, and Coast FIRE, each tailored to a different lifestyle. For example, Lean Fire prefers a more minimalist lifestyle, while Fat Fire allows for more spending in retirement.
Antonioni calls his variation “campfire”, alluding to the idea that, like a campfire, it is smaller than a traditional fire. He calls it a short-term version of the strategy.
Instead of aggressively saving and investing for 10, 15, or 20 years to retire permanently, a person can follow FIRE principles for three to five years and build up 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.
He said, “Imagine someone in a corporate office. They really hate it, but they’re making good money, and in 15 years, they’re going to be free.” “It’s not necessarily the worst deal in the world, but they’re still probably hurting themselves a little bit because they’re letting themselves go through 15 years of their lives regardless.”
Antonioni and his family live in Toronto, Canada.Courtesy of Steve Antonioni
He says he has achieved Camp Fire twice. The first time he saved enough to leave the corporate world and pursue YouTube was at the age of 20.
His second Campfire cycle came after he had saved enough to take an 18-month sabbatical from YouTube. During what he called a “creative reset”, he became a father and began working on a book.
“It might be something you do a few times,” said Antonioni of Camp Fire, a name that was inspired by his backcountry camping trips in Canada. “It’s kind of like farming. 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 rest as long as you survive from that harvest.”
How to save your way to a campfire
Antonioni admits that saving aggressively in 2026 is more difficult than it was when he was building his first financial aid nearly a decade ago.
“The price of groceries has literally doubled in many cases. It’s a very dramatic picture for people who want to get into the housing market,” he said. “So, I think people are more opposed today.”
Still, he said a change in mindset has helped him: thinking about his personal finances like a business.
He said, “Even the word ‘savings’ confuses you from the beginning, because people use different language to describe corporate finance and personal finance. That said, businesses have revenues and profits. Individuals have income and savings. They find it helpful to make a direct comparison between the two.
“Your savings are your profits,” he said. “If you want to save more money, you have to think about your financial situation the same way. 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 those “profits” meant 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.
He acknowledged that this approach won’t work for everyone.
“Everyone’s temperament is different,” he said. “I’m the type of person who really thrives in those environments. When I bring more discipline into my life, I find myself in a better place physically and mentally.”
He said, it was also easy, because at that time he was alone and living alone.
“Now, with a family, it’s very hard to live the same way,” he said.
That’s why Antonioni sees Campfire as a more flexible framework than traditional early retirement. The goal isn’t to give up working forever. This is to create enough financial cushion to make the transition as quickly as possible and, potentially, to do it more than once.
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