Financially independent and financially solid, what does that mean?

[JameyBan]

Long term user but serial NCer!

Yesterday I had an interesting chat with a friend of mine about being financially independent and financially stable. It turned out we had very different ideas of what those terms meant!

For me,

• Financially independent: you can afford to cover all your living costs alone with no help from anyone.
• Financially solid: you live within your means, no debt, you have at least a rainy day fund of 3x your monthly income and ideally more long-term saving options like a private pension or investments.

For her,

• Financially independent: you can afford to cover all your living costs through a combination of your salary + benefits and/or maintenance payments for children.
• Financially solid: you live within your means and have no or little debt (a few hundreds max).

This sparked my curiosity as I thought that these definitions were fairly universal, but clearly not!! What's your take on this? Do you agree with either me or my friend, or have yet another idea of what that means?

I’d say you for FI but I would think FS meant a bit richer than you describe. I would say FS means they have some passive income / rock
Solid good jobs and mortgage free at least.

I somewhat agree with you. If someone works full time and has a top up of tax credits etc I’d still call them financially independent. It’s not their fault they were born into the wrong era of over inflated house prices and wages too low. Other than that, your right