Maybe Retiring At 35 Was A Bad Idea

Yahoo has an article up about FIRE proponents going back to work because of rough market conditions and the recent increases in price inflation. FIRE of course stands for Financial Independence/Retire Early. It's an old concept but became more popular 13 or 14 years ago, shortly after the Financial Crisis bear market ended. 

If the Yahoo article is calling it correctly, then the first serious bear market to come along has seriously dented the movement. That didn't take long, it failed its first real top down test, again I am assuming Yahoo has it right. Sure, someone in their 30's with a couple of million in the bank and a passive income stream or two that covers their expenses could call themselves retired and probably be able to stay retired but having done a lot of reading, that scenario is not applicable to the majority of people who pulled the FIRE trigger. 

Of course many FIRE advocates, those living FIRE are not retired at all. They did what they needed to to have passive income, make money writing and other things, essentially cobbled together some side hustles. There is nothing negative about that, I feel like I am in that category for the most part. It's just not retirement. 

I've been writing about FIRE in various places for quite a few years, pretty much saying the same thing the whole time. The 4% rule should not be relied on for a 50 or 60 year time horizon.  The psychology of wanting to check out from doing anything at such a young age is very sad to me. I don't know how many people who have FIREd or who aspire to FIRE want to check out in that manner but some do and some who maybe don't could very realistically end up falling into unhealthy ruts with bad diets, playing video games all day. That shouldn't be too controversial of a take because a large portion of the population have already fallen into unhealthy ruts, working or not. And of course you pretty much give up any sort of future optionality from a Social Security benefit.

People who consider doing this are probably aggressive savers and have more financial acumen than most people which likely leads to their being nicely ahead of where the need to be at that age in the context of some sort of normal retirement age. Then they "retire" and pretty much giveaway that optionality they created for themselves. 

Time is precious. Health is precious. Optionality is precious. The work anyone has done to give themselves those attributes should not be so casually discarded. The focus here as always been on the first half of that equation, Financial Independence. 

Where I personally prioritize time, health, optionality and while we're at it, simplicity, I took part of the FIRE process that I needed to own my time to make sure I always have time for my health and have the optionality to do what I enjoy. This all happened long before I'd ever head of FIRE but regardless of labels, there are no new ideas here. The too clever by half adaptation became retiring at 35 or 40.

We have a new firefighter who is about 30 and already understands the importance of owning your own time. I don't know too much other than what he's said but he doesn't have a job, he owns investment property, sells things online (not entirely sure what that is about but self-improvement Twitter is big on it) and I believe he has trade training as an electrician as a backup and although I don't think he plans to this summer, he could go out with our engine for out of area fire assignments. He has impressively cobbled together side hustles and optionality to make his way. 

This will be a harsh point to close on but it is astounding how many people come to embrace a really bad idea like thinking they are actually retired before 40. Financial independence and all that goes with it, yes! Retired, like checked out, at 40, no. Arguably, retired, like checked out, at any age, no.