FIRE stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early. It has gained a lot of traction in the last few years, and the plain version goes like this: earn as much as you can, spend as little as you can, invest as much as you can, and retire as early as you can.
Some people take it a long way, with a full-time job plus a part-time one on the side, and every spare dollar invested. The goal is to buy back your time as early as possible.
Fifteen years ago, I would have agreed
When I first joined this industry, I would have agreed with all of it. It is logical. Money invested today has more years to compound than money invested later. Delayed gratification is one of the most reliable habits in personal finance. On paper, FIRE is those two ideas taken to their conclusion.
My view has changed quite a lot since then.
What changed
I came to see that there is value in being present.
The future matters. But if all we do now is scrimp and save, and the things we want to do today never get done, so that we can retire some day, I think that asks too much of the present. I am not saying it is wrong. For people who are willing to make those sacrifices, more power to them. It is just not what everyone wants.
I think we can have both, and that is what I mean by freedom today, future secure. It means being able to live a good life now, the holiday, the time with the children, the things you have been putting off, while still knowing your future is taken care of. Both halves matter, and a plan should be built to deliver both.
Ask why, then ask again
Whenever I meet someone who strongly believes in FIRE, I ask them why they want it. Then I ask why again, and again.
When we get to the bottom of it, many of them tell me the same thing: they hate their job.
I understand that. Not everyone has work they enjoy. But if the real reason for retiring early is a job that makes you miserable, then the more immediate answer is to find fulfilling work.
I want to be careful with that word. I do not mean a job that makes you happy every day. Every job has hard seasons. I mean work that gives you meaning and purpose, so that even the difficult stretches feel worth it.
Many of us spend most of our waking hours at work, often more hours than we spend with the people we love. It follows that fulfilling work makes a fulfilling life far more likely, and miserable work makes it far less likely. That is why the root cause to work on is usually the job, more than the retirement date.
It is not easy, and it does not fall from the sky. It takes some honest work on yourself, and then moving step by step in that direction. I have written more about this in Career Resilience.
A question for my son
When my son was younger, I asked him a question, half in jest.
“If we go to Disneyland next month, you can go for one day. If we wait one year, you can go for one week. Which one do you want?”
He did not hesitate. “None of the above.” He wanted to go right now.
It was a perfect example of having no delayed gratification at all, and it made me laugh. But it also made me think, because there is something real in what he said: there is value in now.
Of course, we are not children. We can wait for things, and we should. Many good things in life come to those who are patient, and good things are worth working towards. But that is different from living miserably today for a reward that may be decades away.
Rethinking retirement
Some years ago, my team made a short animation on this same idea: that planning built only on sacrifice tends to leave people anxious, and that freedom does not have to wait until 65.
Balance
My thinking has moved away from suffering now for a better future later. What I want for my clients, and for my own family, is balance: freedom today, and a future that is secure.
That means being honest about which things are worth waiting for, and which are worth doing now. It means a plan that pays for the life you want this year as well as the one you want at 65. And it means asking whether the thing you are trying to escape is really the thing that needs fixing.
