Your Money or Your Life, what rubbish. I do not know who came up with these options, but they absolutely do not reflect the full depth of the philosophy of this dispute.
I wanted to discuss it on such an unbiased service as this one, because on the FIRE forums they just throw stones at me.
For those who do not know, FIRE Movement https://rockstarfinance.com/history-of-financial-independence-early-retirement-movement/ is a movement that stands for finance independence, retire early. The bottom line is that you try to earn enough money and invest when you are young in order to leave your job as soon as possible and live on dividends from investments and savings, instead of working you focus on something else (by the way, for me a big question is how are you going to spend so much time).
Honestly, I think the whole story is sad and devoid of any meaning.
Let’s do a mental experiment.
Meet Mr. Lucky. Let’s imagine that Mr. Lucky has a good start-up capital: a house or apartment, which he has inherited. Mr. Lucky is not a bummer, he is a highly paid professional in some field and, all of a sudden, he decides that everything is enough for him and he wants to quickly leave his job and focus on something more interesting. He lays off most of the funds every month and at the age of 35 he comes to work with an application for dismissal.
He has a good monthly income in the form of the percentage of his investments, as well as that, he wants to change his house for a small apartment. In principle, he has enough to live. Not for the kind of luxury that could be in his earnings from the past.
What’s next, Mr. Lucky?
– I must travel, I worked for so many years not in order to continue to sit in my kennel.
– But it is expensive,it will eat more than he planned to spend monthly. Well, that means cheap travel. Did you count on that, Mr. Lucky, giving up your successful career?
Maybe you don’t need to travel, but you have to focus on your family: your wife and children.
– Your children need you to run around with them like a brood hen and try to replace all their surroundings?
You took the time that you would like to spend with friends and become more versatile, made useful connections and learned to put yourself in society. And with your wife, such close communication will not exactly break the balance to which you have been used for so many years. You can quickly get tired of each other and when everybody is bored with an abusive father, what’s next?
The only thing that can justify such behavior of Mr. Lucky for me is the fact that he worked in a well-paid job that did not warm his soul. All that time he was saving in his «pillow» in order not to let his family down for himself. And, in the end, he left this job in order to start doing what his soul is for.
– For example, I have started writing a book.
– Good luck with that, Mr. Lucky. We hope that this is really your vocation and it will not disappoint you in a year. And if you get bored, will it be it worth sacrificing so many years for it to eventually not justify the means?
My opinion boils down to the fact that it all becomes some kind of cult and people are more interested in the process of counting money, calculating the period of leaving work and so on, making their choice in favour of dying young at work in order to afford to idle in an old age with an average income.
Life must be in balance. At any age, you can find time for family and hobbies, for gardening, home repairs, reading books, and so on.
And if you understand that you are working at a hated job in the hated sphere, just change it now. Yes, you take a step back, but after a couple of years of zeal you will reach the same point and move on even faster, because you are doing what you like to do, which is your hobby.
What do you think of it all, guys? Maybe I do not know something about these people?
The opinion of the author is subjective, please do not beat me with your sticks.
