Good thing my civic is only 9 years old right now, or I might start to feel self conscious.
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Yeah, the notion of retiring at an early age (or any age) and never again doing anything meaningful or productive is ridiculously misguided.
But for those who feel trapped in an undesirable lifestyle, doing the same things that the FIRE people espouse (saving aggressively, creating alternative sources of income, reducing expensis, etc.) and creating the financial room to transition to a more desirable lifestyle is hardly a bad thing.
Maybe that’s different than orthodox FIRE though?
I drove my Civic for 15 years (paid it off in 2). A terrifically reliable car. Didn’t eat any ramen though. Shame on me?
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I could do all kinds of meaningful things that have nothing to do with making money. I would retire tomorrow if I could maintain my lifestyle and put my daughter through college.
I’m on my 3rd. I usually burn them out in about 6 years at 40k miles per year, but this one has lasted to old age because I was unemployed for 2.5 years right after I bought it and barely put any miles on it, and now I work from home full time. It’s still a youngster at heart with only 160k on it.
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Obviously living below ones means and aggressively saving and investing is good (and hard!) but I really question how happy people who retire at 32 with $800k are going to be for the next 40+ years, even generously assuming they don’t run out of money.
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The bottom line is that in this day and age, thanks mostly to the Internet, there is massively more freedom to live life by design according to one’s wants and needs, whether that means working on a career track at a company, being self-employed, working from home, pursuing the 4-hour work week, or even retiring ahead of schedule.
No reason to frown on anyone’s life choices just because they differ from our own.
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I don’t know that I’d ever retire super-early, but there are some great takeaways from FIRE. Namely, buying “freedom” (whatever that means to you) and staying off the hedonic treadmill by living modestly. I don’t know that I’ll ever retire early, but my family is a lot more resilient to job-related pressures since we keep our cost of living low and our investment contributions high. Building a cushion and knowing how to live cheaply means I’ve been able to fearlessly negotiate some pretty absurd job perks.
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My FIRE strategy, never having kids. Boom $1m saved.
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My car isn’t yet 10 years old, but I’m hoping it makes it to 20. I also eat lots of ramen (about half of which I make myself). Still workin for the man, tho.
I dunno. I’d never begrudge someone who does 10 years of techbro and then 50 of better-than-starving artist, even if it’s not a luxurious living and especially if they find it fulfilling. People generally need something to do, though, so trying to do something like that without either having enough money to travel like crazy or having a plan for a less lucrative but more fulfilling, independent career I would judge.
I don’t need to retire as early as possible, I just want the ability to retire early.
Going to work every day because you want to, not because you have to, just has to be such a lift of the daily mental burden.
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It could still change but I’m well on my way to this too. As for retiring early my wife makes so much more than me that I could quit working tomorrow and our lifestyle wouldn’t change at all but I’d feel weird about doing that and not having some way to contribute to us. If we had kids maybe I’d be a stay at home dad but I’d probably prefer working to doing that.
The struggling artist/writer/musician route would be a good way to go but I don’t have a passion for any of those things. I keep telling myself to learn some programming skills so I could attempt to do small contract or freelance type work but I haven’t got anywhere with that yet.
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Yep, “buying freedom” is the shift I began making about 10 years ago. The biggest shift in mindset/behavior that changed my financial wellbeing was implementing the concept of “paying yourself first” and saving religiously.
Not retired in the traditional sense nor do I plan to but no longer have to do the work I disliked doing as I was able to “buy my way out.”
Live way more modestly than before but still enjoy all the creature comforts anyone needs. But with near total freedom to wake up each day and do what I want to do, not what I have to do. Financial stress now near nonexistent where as it used to consume me.
If the cost of this lifestyle is driving my car into the ground and living a bit more modestly than before, that’s a tradeoff I’ll make any day of the week.
Maybe we need a separate personal finance hacks type of thread?
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The only shame is not eating ramen. It’s an elite dish as you should well know.
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Another important realization about money is that yes it can buy things, but it can also buy time.
And there is nothing more valuable than time (except health perhaps), as it is ever-diminishing.
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The reason for not eating ramen is that I don’t eat meat, and veggie ramen is hard to come buy in these parts.
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Not even seafood? There are some seafood versions that are pretty good.
In Tokyo you can find a few veggie/seafood ramen spots, but I’ve yet to find one in my prefecture.
Even most of those that advertise as being seafood or even veggie ramen usually have a pork or chicken-based broth upon closer inspection.
It’s slowly getting better but Japan is not the most vegan or vegetarian friendly place in the world.
I very much agree with this, mostly because I think that modern workplaces are just about as toxic as an environment can be. Work is making a lot of people very, very sick.
My problem with the broad FIRE movement has nothing to do with opposing aggressive saving or frugal lifestyles. My problem is that a lot of it is just a form of bloggy “influencer” style bullshit. There is absolutely no transparency on any of this stuff. They’re not posting their tax returns, investment statements, there’s no asset disclosure, nothing. There’s no accounting for all the people that tried it and failed. It’s all “my personal journey” stuff with no receipts. How many of them are married to someone with a normal job to mitigate their risks? How many of them got a lot of unacknowledged help from parents? How many of them are doing a fair bit of unacknowledged freelance work on the side? Etc. etc. etc.
Everything good about their approach is already captured with solid financial wellness fundamentals.
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