Why I fizzled on FIRE
Work gives you clarity. Retirement doesn’t.
Early retirement sure sounded good.
I had a soul-crushing job, I had a four-hour round-trip commute, and I was getting devoured by workplace politics.
So when lunchtime came around, I would sometimes close my office door and daydream about leaving it all behind. And not just for a weeklong vacation on a tropical beach, either. I was dreaming about forever.
As I nibbled on my sandwich, I would fire up the FIRE blogs and indulge in the sweetest envy.
You’ve heard of FIRE, right?
It stands for “Financial Independence Retire Early” — and even though it’s nothing new, it’s been having quite a moment in the wake of the Great Recession.
It’s a loosely-organized movement of people who want to retire before the traditional retirement ages of 62 or 65 — sometimes at ridiculously young ages instead, like 35 or even 30! Some FIRE enthusiasts run blogs with millions of followers in which they brag about things like van camping across the country, baking homemade pizzas for lunch with their homeschooled kids, or traveling blissfully dirt-cheap across Patagonia or Southeast Asia — any and all of which sounded better than my overstuffed inbox or my umpteenth meeting on the same subject.
FIRE got its start in the early 1990s, when the Post-Cold War recession made a lot of people reconsider their goals from the “Greed is Good” Gordon Gekko 1980s. Concerned about the environment or their own mental and emotional health, more and more people sought an alternative to consumerism and materialism. In 1992, Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin made a splash with their book Your Money or Your Life, which outlined a practical method for getting out of debt, building savings, and making values-based decisions about spending.
FIRE got new wind in its sails and a new generation of fans thanks to the Great Recession. Out of choice or necessity, many people came to terms with diminished prospects by cutting spending and creating new income streams outside of conventional jobs — such as freelancing or other new opportunities in the gig economy. But this time around, FIRE was amplified by the megaphone of social media and blogs.
At first, I thought reading these blogs was a harmless addiction, but then I noticed a dark side.
One blogger who called himself The Financial Samurai confessed that early retirement had all been a big mistake. Formerly a finance wizard who retired at 34, he missed the engagement he had in his career, and now he was worried about supporting his family in a world with perpetually low interest rates.
Another blogger who called himself Mr. Money Moustache boasted about retiring from his tech job at 30, enjoying his endless DIY projects and raising his son in a leafy town in Colorado’s Front Range. But then he got divorced. And when COVID-19 came around, he infuriated fans by saying that eating salads, lifting weights and doing cardio were far more important than taking precautions like social distancing and face coverings, even after over 130,000 had already died in the U.S.
There was a common denominator here: retirement didn’t make you a happier or better person.
In fact, the privilege of early retirement started to resemble the conspicuous consumption that Your Money or Your Life warned so strongly against, except that instead of fancy jewelry or a luxury car, these FIRE promoters were showing off their time and freedom. FIRE was a new status symbol, and it didn’t come cheap.
That’s why when I finally quietly achieved my own FIRE, starting a brag blog was the furthest thing from my mind. I did quit my awful job, of course. And I took a two-week road trip to get the office out of my mind and replace it with some timeless views of the American West.
But then I got back to work. I was ready to turn my attention to what’s next. I had a book to write and a business to start.
That’s when I realized what a distraction FIRE had been all along. When I finally sat down and stared at my first ideas for new projects and businesses, I had to admit they were pretty awful. They had made a lot of sense back when my horrible job made everything else look like a great alternative, so I had filed them away, telling myself, someday, I’ll give them my all.
Now I had to admit to myself they were just placeholders for inspiration. Nothing more.
It happened again with my former co-worker Greg. He had moved on to a competitor a couple years before I left, and he wanted to groom me as his successor. Again, it seemed like a great opportunity back when anything else would have.
But now I realized I didn’t want to do that. I had never liked or respected him very much anyway. I was tired of that whole industry and its hidebound thinking. So I had to make a clean break and cut them loose.
You can’t force inspiration to come. You can only sweep away distractions to give inspiration a clearer path to your door.
That’s why work gives you more perspective and meaning than retirement. You make more progress by working through things than you do just thinking about them, or hoping about them, or planning for them.
More than anyone else, I saw that with my grandfather. Having survived the Great Depression, he always expected the next one was just around the corner. So working hard, saving and being thrifty were second nature to him. He retired at 65 after 25 years on a city paving crew, and even though his pension covered his needs, he still wanted and needed to keep busy.
So at 65 he started his own paving company, doing for fun what he had done for a paycheck, driving around the neighborhood, checking in with old friends and customers. Only when he stopped working did he slow down, not vice versa. He sold the business after ten years, then got one illness after another and died three years later.
A millionaire with an eighth grade education, he knew nothing about FIRE blogs and didn’t need to. He didn’t retire early because he knew that meaningful work made him who he was.
A vacation can clear your mind, and retirement can clear your calendar.
But meaningful work makes you a better person.
