I recently had the pleasure of seeing a documentary called Playing with FIRE. FIRE is an acronym for Financial Independence Retire Early. We as a society work hard every day and many times feel that we have nothing to show for it. We’d love to spend our time doing more meaningful and fulfilling things that make us happy, but we are not able to do this because we have to go to work to maintain the lifestyle we are accustomed to. In the meantime we’re not saving anywhere near as much money as we should be saving in preparation for retirement. Many reach retirement age and can’t afford to actually retire.
But if we instead gave up this consumer driven lifestyle and managed to save 50% of our income each year, while living frugally and investing in low-cost stock index funds, we could move up that retirement date from possibly never to as soon as 10 years from now!
Journey to FIRE
The documentary followed one couple on their journey to FIRE. They moved out of their house by the beach and went to live with different family members so that they could save up as much money as possible. They also gave up their nice cars and the lifestyle they had worked so hard to build and instead focused on being as frugal as possible. She was able to work remotely and he was trying to get a home run business up and running. All the while they consulted with different FIRE experts to get as much information as they could and make sure they were doing everything possible to achieve FIRE. By the end of the documentary they were about 10 years away from retiring.
What to consider
While I admire those who go to such extremes to take their life back there are some things to consider. First and foremost, what do you plan to do when you retire? If you could retire at age 40 or even sooner, how would you spend your days? There has to be a plan and a purpose otherwise you will lose motivation while trying to achieve FIRE.
Another question to ask yourself is how unhappy are you working right now and is the possibility of being able to stop worth all the sacrifice it will take to get to that point? This journey takes so much sacrifice and discipline, you might just find that you become unhappy and depressed. Is it worth being depressed for the next decade or so in order to achieve early retirement?
Personal decision
My husband and I had a long talk about FIRE after watching the documentary and came to the following conclusion. We both like our jobs and have no idea what we would do with ourselves if we never had to work another day in our lives. There isn’t some burning desire to travel the world 300 days a year or start a charity or foundation. We enjoy traveling once or twice a year and we love donating to charities near and dear to our hearts. But there isn’t anything that immediately stands out that we would want to devote the rest of our lives to. And without that burning desire to devote our lives to something, we simply would not be able to stay motivated to consistently make all the sacrifices needed to be financially independent and retire early.
FIRE is definitely not for everyone, and yet it is a movement that is growing in popularity. Click here for more information about the FIRE movement. They even have a retirement calculator so that you can see how long it would take you to achieve FIRE.
How far would you go reach early retirement? Would you be willing to make the kind of sacrifices necessary to achieve FIRE? Leave me a comment and let me know!