FIRE (financial independence, retire early) is an ideology that has recently gained a lot of popularity, but most discussions I’ve seen fail to ask a critical question:
Is financial independence what you truly value? Or is it a means to an end?
Do you want to have the ability to do anything in general? Or do you want to do specific things in mind such as spending more time with your kids, spending more time in nature, or having more time to write?
It’s important to clearly answer this question because you don’t necessarily need to achieve financial independence and retire early to meet specific goals. You could coach your kid’s sports team, become a forest ranger, or work paid writing jobs for example.
Of course, financial independence does not exist in a vacuum so it is also important to ask:
How much do you value financial independence? What tradeoffs would you be willing to make to achieve it?
The quickest way to achieve financial independence is by buying a cheap house with enough land for subsistence farming. But where do such places exist? In areas most people are not willing to live in…
When you make financial independence your highest value, it takes away from other values such as friendships, novelty, and even compassion.
Some people like to imagine they do not need such things, but that is colloquially known as bullshit. No man is an island. There is no such thing as a lone wolf. They may need them less than others, but they are as essential to well-being as food and air. Just because things are fine does not mean they could not be better. True, there is wisdom in being content and grateful for what one has, but only a fool does not also try to make things better.
There is a reason so many people move to New York and prefer to live impoverished there rather than live comfortably somewhere else. There is real magic in a place with so much possibility and while there are many valid reasons not to move to such a place, if you do not feel the allure of possibility in general, you are resistant to change, which is to say opposed to life itself since life is change.
So before you pick up sticks and move to somewhere more affordable, consider deeply what you would be giving up and whether there is a way to have the best of both worlds. You don’t need to achieve financial independence and retire early if you are doing what you love, in a place you love, surrounded by people you love. You can be financially independent and still feel impoverished.