There is a lot of good in the whole FIRE concept, a lot of nonsense, a lot of misdirection and lies, but a lot of good stuff. I think it is because it is hard to sell the concept same as get rich quick schemes. Even though you could still be sold a “trading system”, which makes you “guaranteed” return of 1% a day. However, if you made it to the FIRE acronym, there are not too many of them.
And what is the good stuff?
- You will learn how to wrap your head around the length of time you will be most likely employed.
- You will learn about living under your means and saving money.
- Hopefully, you will find out about passive and tax-efficient investing.
- Learn about debt management.
- It is a direction or a strategy.
Now for the bad stuff.
- Same as everywhere. You will find salesmen a charlatans.
- NO ONE will tell you the whole side of their story.
- There is a very slim chance that FIRE for you will end up how you imagine it now.
- You might start to actively spend time thinking about the point of FIRE in your life and forget that you might have 20 years ahead of you.
- If you make it a plan.
In my opinion, it is better to think about FIRE as a set of principles for your day to day life and useful education. You pretty much start to behave to leave your options open. You might stop doing reckless purchases, pay credit card debt always in full and start with some tax-efficient long term investing.
When it starts to get dangerous is, when you start to picture the moment when you can retire early and how to get there. For me, it would be another 15-20 years, which is twice as long as I’ve been working full time so far. That is hopefully something around 25% of your life when you might enjoy the best years of your life. And you might just start to think about “How do I get through this?” Because early retirement becomes your only goal. What a shit life it would be.
FIRE is a direction or a strategy, but it is not a plan. So don’t treat it like one. Once you learn about the math behind savings and investing and you build up a habit of not spending, there is not too much other you can do in this regard. Of course, you can follow advice of some folks to chase money and make as much as possible in the next year, but you never know what you are giving up. Mental health, physical health, family, friends?
Most of the people who successfully retired early are not making money by talking about it. If they would, they haven’t really retired, have they? Think about what information you get and who is giving it to you.
And don’t try to keep up with the Joneses. But that is a different topic.
Just above average 