FIRE VS. Traditional Retirement

No, I don’t mean getting fired vs. traditional retirement! FIRE is an acronym for Financial Independence, Retire Early.  This movement has taken the blogging world by storm, and influenced me to start my blog.  In fact, one blogger Rockstar Finance, has compiled a directory of personal finance bloggers.  As of this post, there are 2,131 personal finance blogs in the directory.  Out of those, 366 categorize themselves as Early Retirement blogs.  As a comparison, only 18 categorize themselves as Traditional Retirement blogs. Some of the other categories are: Debt, Budgeting, Frugality, Minimalism, Millennials and more. You should check it out.

The FIRE enthusiasts believe that the traditional American path of education followed by 40 - 45 years in the workforce and retirement at age 65 is crazy.  They believe that if you start the FIRE lifestyle in your 20’s or 30’s you can achieve Financial Independence and not be reliant on a job aka “The Man”.  Instead, you can retire early, live off your investments and side hustles, and enjoy life while you are still young.

Unfortunately, early retirement is not an option for me.  For one thing, I am on the wrong side of 50 🙂so that ship has sailed.  Second, I work in government so my retirement will be primarily funded by my pension, and that requires a certain number of years. 

When I was in my 20’s and 30’s I worked part time because my children were young, and that means I have to work longer now at this end.  But that is OK, because my children are adults now and I don’t regret one minute being with them.  I would have hated working more in an effort to have saved money back when they were little and needed me around.  Plus, looking back, my husband and I don’t see how we could have changed our lifestyle much to save more than we did!  I mean, those FIRE people really do some dramatic things to save.

I will admit there are weeks when I wish I had more days to do things I enjoy like: reading, running, hiking, cooking, socializing with friends and family, AND the things I don’t necessarily enjoy but must get done like: laundry, grocery shopping, and errands.  Yes, an extra day or two or three or four or five off per week would be nice.  Boy, I am envious of those FIRE people.  

Thank you for reading!

  

"Sunset in the Alps" by mmartinsson is licensed under CC by-nc-nd 2.0