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This is one of the biggest missing pieces in internet FIRE discussions. So much of the FIRE discourse is about not working that many don’t realize that they’re

This is one of the biggest missing pieces in internet FIRE discussions. So much of the FIRE discourse is about not working that many don’t realize that they’re going to be extremely bored with 16 hours to fill every day. Worse, their friends are all busy with their lives. It’s actually a common failure point of FIRE post-mittens that didn’t work out. Especially with couples, where it’s more likely that at least one person will realize that maybe jobs, and the sense of purpose and social life that comes with them, aren’t so bad. The other big issue is that people underestimate their spending in a post-work FIRE lifestyle. It’s tempting to subtract out costs like commuting and work clothes and assume your costs will go down. In practice, if you plan on traveling and spending more time on hobbies your costs are likely to go up.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Got to admit that watching people struggle with the question of what to do without a job to fill their time is just completely wild to me. It is difficult for me to imagine someone who has so little they want to do outside of work that they can't easily find ways to fill up the 8+ hours a day their job takes from them. I have a list of things I'd like to do a mile long that I know I'll never actually find time to do because I've prioritized other shit I want to do.
- luffapi 5y ago
  Exactly I have so many hobbies, social opportunities, home improvement projects, chores… that get neglected because the bulk of my time and energy goes to work. I’ve saved enough to have multiple year breaks in my career and not once was I at a loss for something to do. Quite the opposite, it was apparent exactly how much of my life was being wasted on goals I found uninteresting (at best), all in the name of not starving to death or living on the street.
- nend 5y ago
  It's a completely wild thought to most people. It's one of the reasons why so many people end up struggling with it. "That won't happen to me, no need to make a plan for how to avoid it or make a plan for what to do if it happens, because it's not going to happen." Obviously not everyone has problems filling their time. But for most people it's difficult to imagine what it'd take to fill years worth of free time, when they've never experienced anything close to having to do that.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > It is difficult for me to imagine someone who has so little they want to do outside of work that they can't easily find ways to fill up the 8+ hours a day their job takes from them It’s not that simple. I felt the same way before I crossed the FIRE threshold and took some time off (mini-FIRE, I guess). It turns out, most of the things I had been putting off weren’t as time consuming as I thought. I found myself regretting not doing many of them sooner, such as putting a few hours in on weekdays and weekends or scheduling a 1-week vacation to make a trip happen. It’s hard to truly understand until you’ve crossed the threshold and tried it, but there’s a certain aspect of FIRE discussions that divides life too much into pre-retirement and post-retirement activities in a way that isn’t always necessary. In retrospect, there was little stopping me from doing most of the things I wanted to do while I was working, and plenty of people do manage to accomplish a balance of work and other things just fine. I’m not alone in this. Even the author of this blog later returned to work after his interest in his writing hobby slowed to a crawl, his friendships started dwindling, and his relationship came to an end at least in part due to the FIRE lifestyle: https://livingafi.com/2021/03/17/the-2021-early-retirement-update/ https://livingafi.com/2021/03/17/the-2021-early-retirement-u...
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    I think there might be a component here of people able to reasonably achieve FIRE level wealth are already predisposed towards functioning well in the work place, and therefore maybe not so well suited for a life outside of that institution. When I say I have projects I know I'll never do, I'm talking about the kinds of things that range from "will probably take several years" to "might not be completable in the lifetime I have remaining". Even if each of those things takes an eighth of the time I think they will, I still easily have enough to fill up the rest of my life even if I never do anything purely for the enjoyment of it.
  - driverdan 5y ago
    > It’s not that simple. It is. I took about 18 months off a few years ago. It was great until I ran out of money. My main motivator was a very big project (converting a bus to live in) that took a lot of time but after that was done I still did lots of other projects, played video games, and traveled. In some ways I missed contributing my skills to a team but, other than needing money, I wasn't strongly motivated to go back to work.
- the_only_law 5y ago
  > It is difficult for me to imagine someone who has so little they want to do outside of work that they can't easily find ways to fill up the 8+ hours a day their job takes from them. There are so many things I like to do or would love to do if I didn’t ha RTP work, but I doubt it would be maintainable in the sort of withdraws I see early FIRE people talk about taking. I often have problems figuring out how to afford my hobbies while working.
- Frost1x 5y ago
  The whole deeply-seated protestant belief that work ethic instills value in life always escapes me as well. There are so many things I'd love to do that don't even require a lot of financial resources or resources in general to accomplish beyond time, but unfortunately, due to needs like having a home and food, I have to work quite a bit and just can't find the time to do these things in those gaps. I understand the bordem argument but I think that sort of boredom is socially conditioned on us. During my time at university I worked almost constantly. I remember after graduating and getting a job only working 8-hours a day, I suddenly found myself with excess fee time I didn't know what to do with. I distinctively remember my first day returning from work, that I got home and was lost: what do I want to do (not what do I need to do or should do)? I have no papers or assignments due tomorrow. No major project efforts weeks behind I'm trying to catch up on, no looming deadlines, no new tech I need to learn to be ready for the next job, etc. I came to the realization that I was bored and didn't know what to do because I was conditioned to be constantly busy working, largely for other people and not myself --from my parents, church, schooling, society, and so on. A goal can be for yourself but often the processes to attain said goals are for other people. I chose to do certain aspects because they were interesting but it was more so because I needed to, had to or should do to get to my goal. I believe most people don't need work to find value in life, they need the time to discover what it is they value, the basic resources to pursue it, and ability to live decently while doing it. Unfortunately, we have an economic system that doesn't really allow for that. There is some choice in our economic system but for many, that choice is an illusion or at best, heavily constrained. I believe we need to move away from this work tied to life value concept, but I believe too many people currently rely on exploiting this concept to have others create value for themselves while constantly selling the idea of work giving purpose in life so they can pursue their goals without working. The issue isn't that work exists and is needed to maintain certain structure to society, it's more that it's used as shackles on many.
  - WA 5y ago
    > There are so many things I'd love to do Like what?
    - Frost1x 5y ago
- alisonatwork 5y ago
  It's truly astonishing how many people apparently have a psychological need to be occupied with work in order to find meaning from their life. I can think of nothing better than to finally never have to worry about working just to cover my rent and food. Being in tech, I've had the privilege to be able to quit my job every few years and take extended sabbaticals. Without fail those breaks have been the best times of my life. Even when I just spent the time "doing nothing" from the point of view of an outsider - not taking up a new hobby, not working on any personal projects, not operating a side-hustle, just sitting around watching the world go by... it was fine. It was better than fine - it was great. It seems bizarre to me that anyone would prefer structured labor to that kind of freedom, but it turns out some people do. I just wish we had a society that would allow for both types of people to have the life they want.
  - handrous 5y ago
    I don't think most people, except maybe in the EU, experience enough time-off to ever feel what it's like to not be working, and also not be trying to work. Weekends and evenings are barely enough—if they are at all—to catch up with chores and such that accumulated during working hours (that is, unpaid work). Most folks have a couple weeks of vacation, which will tend to be eaten up finally fixing the fence or that dripping faucet or else frantically trying to do some Big Thing (usually some kind of trip) because actual time off is so rare that you don't want to "waste it". Most people don't get any useful amount of actual free time until they retire. No wonder so many are lost when they do. They've had no practice at it, and have had all their time-requiring interests beaten out of them over decades of the work-week utterly dominating the rhythms of their life.
- SCNP 5y ago
  To add to this, since the work I do at my job aligns very closely to my hobbies, I find that work saps my interest in putting time into said hobbies. If I were able to spend the entirety of my mental capacity on things I _want_ to do, I might do more. Who is to say. As a counterpoint, work can offer opportunities to work with technologies or concepts you might not think of or be able to afford while working on a personal project.
- CleverLikeAnOx 5y ago
  I am in the same boat. I am 6 months into FIRE, and the list of things to do is growing, not shrinking. However, I would say that some things on the list turn out to be false. That is, I like the idea of doing them, but not enough to actually do it. So do account for some of your post FIRE ideas turning out to be just daydreams you aren't actually committed to.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    Not something I really have to worry about since, unless I find out I have a fatal disease, FIRE is not a realistic possibility for me.
  - WA 5y ago
    Care to share a few examples? I know this feeling of the idea of doing them. I'm conflicted about art (drawing, painting). In some way, I want to be a good painter, on the other hand, there is no painting in me that needs to come out.
    - CleverLikeAnOx 5y ago
      For me, it's writing. Exactly as you described painting. Slowly some ideas are forming, but it will be years if ever before I get to it.
Koshkin 5y ago
> extremely bored Not if you have a hobby (or hobbies) or have an interest in working in art or science or math or with computers… (Did I just say “working”?)
fnord77 5y ago
I would think the most common failure point of FIRE would be the financial independence part.
senko 5y ago
> This is one of the biggest missing pieces in internet FIRE discussions. Interesting. Most of discussions I've seen explicitly deal with this, it's probably no2 topic (first being status updates). And the advice given usually boils down to "don't run away from work, run TOWARDS something", which is perfectly sensible.
OJFord 5y ago
> So much of the FIRE discourse is about not working that many don’t realize that they’re going to be extremely bored with 16 hours to fill every day. People are different, I suppose. Perhaps not in FIRE circles but this is certainly discussed regarding 'normal' retirement, and I don't feel the same way at all. I'm in my twenties, and honestly think I could fill the rest of my life more than once with non-work. Especially if I'm allowed to get paid for doing what I consider to be hobbies rather than work as part of that. At least one of those lifetimes could just be reading! Do you really find yourself reaching the end of a weekend and thinking Oh thank God I have work tomorrow, I'm so bored?
- benrbray 5y ago
  Agreed. To me, FIRE would mean the freedom to spend every day working on problems I think are important and learning stuff that I think is interesting, whether or not a company agrees with me. All with the knowledge that I can stop working at noon or take a month off whenever I need to!
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    Sounds like you would enjoy academic life!
    - benrbray 5y ago
      already tried that and it didn't go so well ;)
    - CrazyStat 5y ago
      Acadrmic like mostly just replaces the company deciding what's important with a grant funding agency.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > Do you really find yourself reaching the end of a weekend and thinking Oh thank God I have work tomorrow, I'm so bored? The comment above you is channeling the common need to say anything, no matter what it is, in response to an attack on tradition. This is why people in Oregon hear about a proposal to make pumping your own gas legal and respond "but what if somebody doesn't know how?", as if it were difficult to know what would happen in that case.
decebalus1 5y ago
> This is one of the biggest missing pieces in internet FIRE discussions. So much of the FIRE discourse is about not working that many don’t realize that they’re going to be extremely bored with 16 hours to fill every day. Worse, their friends are all busy with their lives. This is a frequent misunderstanding about early 'retirement'. It's not about not working at all. It's about not working for a living. Very important distinction. If tomorrow I'd acquire 'fuck you' money and not have to work, I will quit my job and finally start the book I've been planning for a while now, travel to my home country and build my genealogical tree, volunteer some of my time to the OCCRP or ACLU, etc.. It's not about not working. It's about working on the stuff I really do want to work on, without the threat of scarcity if I don't 'increase shareholder value'.
- wccrawford 5y ago
  For me, quitting work would probably not happen immediately after I get FU money, but it'd happen within that year, I bet. At first, I'd do a lot more of my hobbies, but then I'd probably move into finally making video games. I'd finally have the time to just sit and play with it. Right now, I don't feel like I have that kind of time, and getting more than 3 hours in a row is hard on weekends, and impossible on week days. It definitely isn't about not-working. It's about working on what I want to.
- solarengineer 5y ago
  I regular realise that a lot of my bucket list items don't require money and I then go do them. I have also realised that there's no need to wait to write a book. I've procrastinated for many years and have finally got my act together and I'm writing one.
  - decebalus1 5y ago
    Those are all fair points and people do write books or do stuff off their bucket list while being happily and gainfully employed. But people are different and not all jobs are the same. Some people don't have the time or energy [1]. Add the stress of supporting a family, a demanding boss and the fear of losing healthcare along with your job and you'll get to your bucket list either during the scarce vacation days or in your late 50s early 60s (if you're lucky). This is what FIRE's all about. It's about freedom basically. Money == freedom to do whatever you want to do without fear of losing the bottom of Maslow's pyramid. This is especially valuable in the US, where there is no social safety net. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory
neogodless 5y ago
I will not be bored when I am not compelled to work. I was unemployed for six months during the pandemic. Boy did I fail to be bored! I overhauled my garage, building a French cleat system and organizing all of my tools. I built a movie/reading nook for my spouse, with a sliding bookshelf door. I caught up on cutting and splitting firewood for winter. I played board games, cooked, baked, rode bike almost every day, sat in the cool breeze overlooking nature, sat by the fire pit and boy, was I not bored. I also spent a lot less on clothes and commuting...
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > I overhauled my garage, building a French cleat system and organizing all of my tools. I built a movie/reading nook for my spouse, with a sliding bookshelf door. I caught up on cutting and splitting firewood for winter. I played board games, cooked, baked, rode bike almost every day, sat in the cool breeze overlooking nature, sat by the fire pit and boy, was I not bored. Your post looks a lot like what I did along side a 40 hour per week job before I reached FIRE. Sure, I couldn’t do it as quickly but it’s not as though having a job is mutually exclusive with riding a bike every day or overhauling the garage on weekends. One of the biggest things I learned post-FIRE was that doing the things I enjoy wasn’t as difficult as I had come to think while I was employed. There’s something about FIRE blogs that makes it easy to think of activities as pre-FIRE (work) and post-FIRE (fun). Instead, I’d rather work on balance. Find jobs where 40 hours per week is average and I don’t have to waste time on commuting. Then make time in the evenings and weekends to do things I enjoy.
  - neogodless 5y ago
    It's technically true, but also hard to do in reality. Right now, I barely have time to make coffee before my first meeting. My energy levels after sitting at the computer for 8+ hours are not great. The moments where the weather is "just right" for a lot of activities are severely hampered by the time I must be by the computer. I know, because I'm way behind on firewood again. There are some mornings where the weather would be OK for it, but they usually don't fall on Saturday for some reason. Or we have plans to go on a camping trip that Saturday, so again I skip that task. This adds up for each instance of those things. (I've seen it take weeks to build something simple... while unemployed I took on much bigger projects over much shorter time frames.) Sure, I agree that during your working career seek out jobs that don't overly impede your autonomy. But if you can wipe out 40 hours every week that is doing so, suddenly you have much more freedom. With that freedom, you spend each day, all day, choosing among the things you want to be doing. While working, it's much harder to take a couple of hours in the evening or your precious weekends, and splitting them up into all the things you want to do, and many of them get left behind.
icedchai 5y ago
Boredom is my own personal fear. I hit my FIRE number back in 2018. I was going to retire at N amount or age 45. I hit N pretty early, couldn't pull the trigger, a few more years passed by. Now I'm almost double N due to stock market / money printing inflation. This is approximately 50x my yearly expenses. Ideal situation is 2 to 3 days of work a week, with very few zoom meetings, scrums, or other bullshit.
- BoxOfRain 5y ago
  >Ideal situation is 2 to 3 days of work a week, with very few zoom meetings, scrums, or other bullshit. Wouldn't it be nice if you could trade pay or hours for avoiding arseache like you can negotiate a salary? Like, "I'll take a 5% salary cut but I'll not be required to attend certain meetings" or "I'll work an extra x hours a week for free but I'll never have touch an Atlassian product ever again".
- thrtythreeforty 5y ago
  Have you made motions toward your ideal situation? If not, is there anything that makes you hesitate toward making those changes? I ask because I see many people saying "couldn't pull the trigger" for a variety of reasons, and while I don't think I would have that issue, those people have also said that they didn't think they'd have that issue.
herbst 5y ago
What I don't get about fire is that I want to enjoy my life equally now and when I am old. I have no issues filling time without getting bored, but I don't feel like wasting any time of my current life in a job I don't really enjoy just so I may enjoy life more later? However I also believe that fire is a symptom and not a solution. It seems to be mostly popular in countries with little or non existent pension security.
- handrous 5y ago
  > However I also believe that fire is a symptom and not a solution. It seems to be mostly popular in countries with little or non existent pension security. In the US, it's also largely a fantasy thanks to our uniquely-shitty healthcare system, unless you're actually rich. Most of the frugal-FIRE schemes will fall apart as soon as someone in your family gets sick.
jjk166 5y ago
Hobbies, travel, volunteering, education, projects, consulting - there are a lot of ways to spend your time when you don't need to worry about money for survival. Hell even if you keep working your current job, the knowledge that you don't have to and that you can walk away at any time is extremely liberating. I enjoy what I do, and I'll keep on doing it in some capacity long after I retire, but the "in some capacity" is really key.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

Got to admit that watching people struggle with the question of what to do without a job to fill their time is just completely wild to me. It is difficult for me to imagine someone who has so little they want to do outside of work that they can't easily find ways to fill up the 8+ hours a day their job takes from them. I have a list of things I'd like to do a mile long that I know I'll never actually find time to do because I've prioritized other shit I want to do.

luffapi 5y ago
Exactly I have so many hobbies, social opportunities, home improvement projects, chores… that get neglected because the bulk of my time and energy goes to work. I’ve saved enough to have multiple year breaks in my career and not once was I at a loss for something to do. Quite the opposite, it was apparent exactly how much of my life was being wasted on goals I found uninteresting (at best), all in the name of not starving to death or living on the street.
nend 5y ago
It's a completely wild thought to most people. It's one of the reasons why so many people end up struggling with it. "That won't happen to me, no need to make a plan for how to avoid it or make a plan for what to do if it happens, because it's not going to happen." Obviously not everyone has problems filling their time. But for most people it's difficult to imagine what it'd take to fill years worth of free time, when they've never experienced anything close to having to do that.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> It is difficult for me to imagine someone who has so little they want to do outside of work that they can't easily find ways to fill up the 8+ hours a day their job takes from them It’s not that simple. I felt the same way before I crossed the FIRE threshold and took some time off (mini-FIRE, I guess). It turns out, most of the things I had been putting off weren’t as time consuming as I thought. I found myself regretting not doing many of them sooner, such as putting a few hours in on weekdays and weekends or scheduling a 1-week vacation to make a trip happen. It’s hard to truly understand until you’ve crossed the threshold and tried it, but there’s a certain aspect of FIRE discussions that divides life too much into pre-retirement and post-retirement activities in a way that isn’t always necessary. In retrospect, there was little stopping me from doing most of the things I wanted to do while I was working, and plenty of people do manage to accomplish a balance of work and other things just fine. I’m not alone in this. Even the author of this blog later returned to work after his interest in his writing hobby slowed to a crawl, his friendships started dwindling, and his relationship came to an end at least in part due to the FIRE lifestyle: https://livingafi.com/2021/03/17/the-2021-early-retirement-update/ https://livingafi.com/2021/03/17/the-2021-early-retirement-u...
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  I think there might be a component here of people able to reasonably achieve FIRE level wealth are already predisposed towards functioning well in the work place, and therefore maybe not so well suited for a life outside of that institution. When I say I have projects I know I'll never do, I'm talking about the kinds of things that range from "will probably take several years" to "might not be completable in the lifetime I have remaining". Even if each of those things takes an eighth of the time I think they will, I still easily have enough to fill up the rest of my life even if I never do anything purely for the enjoyment of it.
- driverdan 5y ago
  > It’s not that simple. It is. I took about 18 months off a few years ago. It was great until I ran out of money. My main motivator was a very big project (converting a bus to live in) that took a lot of time but after that was done I still did lots of other projects, played video games, and traveled. In some ways I missed contributing my skills to a team but, other than needing money, I wasn't strongly motivated to go back to work.
the_only_law 5y ago
> It is difficult for me to imagine someone who has so little they want to do outside of work that they can't easily find ways to fill up the 8+ hours a day their job takes from them. There are so many things I like to do or would love to do if I didn’t ha RTP work, but I doubt it would be maintainable in the sort of withdraws I see early FIRE people talk about taking. I often have problems figuring out how to afford my hobbies while working.
Frost1x 5y ago
The whole deeply-seated protestant belief that work ethic instills value in life always escapes me as well. There are so many things I'd love to do that don't even require a lot of financial resources or resources in general to accomplish beyond time, but unfortunately, due to needs like having a home and food, I have to work quite a bit and just can't find the time to do these things in those gaps. I understand the bordem argument but I think that sort of boredom is socially conditioned on us. During my time at university I worked almost constantly. I remember after graduating and getting a job only working 8-hours a day, I suddenly found myself with excess fee time I didn't know what to do with. I distinctively remember my first day returning from work, that I got home and was lost: what do I want to do (not what do I need to do or should do)? I have no papers or assignments due tomorrow. No major project efforts weeks behind I'm trying to catch up on, no looming deadlines, no new tech I need to learn to be ready for the next job, etc. I came to the realization that I was bored and didn't know what to do because I was conditioned to be constantly busy working, largely for other people and not myself --from my parents, church, schooling, society, and so on. A goal can be for yourself but often the processes to attain said goals are for other people. I chose to do certain aspects because they were interesting but it was more so because I needed to, had to or should do to get to my goal. I believe most people don't need work to find value in life, they need the time to discover what it is they value, the basic resources to pursue it, and ability to live decently while doing it. Unfortunately, we have an economic system that doesn't really allow for that. There is some choice in our economic system but for many, that choice is an illusion or at best, heavily constrained. I believe we need to move away from this work tied to life value concept, but I believe too many people currently rely on exploiting this concept to have others create value for themselves while constantly selling the idea of work giving purpose in life so they can pursue their goals without working. The issue isn't that work exists and is needed to maintain certain structure to society, it's more that it's used as shackles on many.
- WA 5y ago
  > There are so many things I'd love to do Like what?
  - Frost1x 5y ago
alisonatwork 5y ago
It's truly astonishing how many people apparently have a psychological need to be occupied with work in order to find meaning from their life. I can think of nothing better than to finally never have to worry about working just to cover my rent and food. Being in tech, I've had the privilege to be able to quit my job every few years and take extended sabbaticals. Without fail those breaks have been the best times of my life. Even when I just spent the time "doing nothing" from the point of view of an outsider - not taking up a new hobby, not working on any personal projects, not operating a side-hustle, just sitting around watching the world go by... it was fine. It was better than fine - it was great. It seems bizarre to me that anyone would prefer structured labor to that kind of freedom, but it turns out some people do. I just wish we had a society that would allow for both types of people to have the life they want.
- handrous 5y ago
  I don't think most people, except maybe in the EU, experience enough time-off to ever feel what it's like to not be working, and also not be trying to work. Weekends and evenings are barely enough—if they are at all—to catch up with chores and such that accumulated during working hours (that is, unpaid work). Most folks have a couple weeks of vacation, which will tend to be eaten up finally fixing the fence or that dripping faucet or else frantically trying to do some Big Thing (usually some kind of trip) because actual time off is so rare that you don't want to "waste it". Most people don't get any useful amount of actual free time until they retire. No wonder so many are lost when they do. They've had no practice at it, and have had all their time-requiring interests beaten out of them over decades of the work-week utterly dominating the rhythms of their life.
SCNP 5y ago
To add to this, since the work I do at my job aligns very closely to my hobbies, I find that work saps my interest in putting time into said hobbies. If I were able to spend the entirety of my mental capacity on things I _want_ to do, I might do more. Who is to say. As a counterpoint, work can offer opportunities to work with technologies or concepts you might not think of or be able to afford while working on a personal project.
CleverLikeAnOx 5y ago
I am in the same boat. I am 6 months into FIRE, and the list of things to do is growing, not shrinking. However, I would say that some things on the list turn out to be false. That is, I like the idea of doing them, but not enough to actually do it. So do account for some of your post FIRE ideas turning out to be just daydreams you aren't actually committed to.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Not something I really have to worry about since, unless I find out I have a fatal disease, FIRE is not a realistic possibility for me.
- WA 5y ago
  Care to share a few examples? I know this feeling of the idea of doing them. I'm conflicted about art (drawing, painting). In some way, I want to be a good painter, on the other hand, there is no painting in me that needs to come out.
  - CleverLikeAnOx 5y ago
    For me, it's writing. Exactly as you described painting. Slowly some ideas are forming, but it will be years if ever before I get to it.

Koshkin 5y ago

> extremely bored Not if you have a hobby (or hobbies) or have an interest in working in art or science or math or with computers… (Did I just say “working”?)

fnord77 5y ago

I would think the most common failure point of FIRE would be the financial independence part.

senko 5y ago

> This is one of the biggest missing pieces in internet FIRE discussions. Interesting. Most of discussions I've seen explicitly deal with this, it's probably no2 topic (first being status updates). And the advice given usually boils down to "don't run away from work, run TOWARDS something", which is perfectly sensible.

OJFord 5y ago

> So much of the FIRE discourse is about not working that many don’t realize that they’re going to be extremely bored with 16 hours to fill every day. People are different, I suppose. Perhaps not in FIRE circles but this is certainly discussed regarding 'normal' retirement, and I don't feel the same way at all. I'm in my twenties, and honestly think I could fill the rest of my life more than once with non-work. Especially if I'm allowed to get paid for doing what I consider to be hobbies rather than work as part of that. At least one of those lifetimes could just be reading! Do you really find yourself reaching the end of a weekend and thinking Oh thank God I have work tomorrow, I'm so bored?

benrbray 5y ago
Agreed. To me, FIRE would mean the freedom to spend every day working on problems I think are important and learning stuff that I think is interesting, whether or not a company agrees with me. All with the knowledge that I can stop working at noon or take a month off whenever I need to!
- ModernMech 5y ago
  Sounds like you would enjoy academic life!
  - benrbray 5y ago
    already tried that and it didn't go so well ;)
  - CrazyStat 5y ago
    Acadrmic like mostly just replaces the company deciding what's important with a grant funding agency.
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> Do you really find yourself reaching the end of a weekend and thinking Oh thank God I have work tomorrow, I'm so bored? The comment above you is channeling the common need to say anything, no matter what it is, in response to an attack on tradition. This is why people in Oregon hear about a proposal to make pumping your own gas legal and respond "but what if somebody doesn't know how?", as if it were difficult to know what would happen in that case.

decebalus1 5y ago

> This is one of the biggest missing pieces in internet FIRE discussions. So much of the FIRE discourse is about not working that many don’t realize that they’re going to be extremely bored with 16 hours to fill every day. Worse, their friends are all busy with their lives. This is a frequent misunderstanding about early 'retirement'. It's not about not working at all. It's about not working for a living. Very important distinction. If tomorrow I'd acquire 'fuck you' money and not have to work, I will quit my job and finally start the book I've been planning for a while now, travel to my home country and build my genealogical tree, volunteer some of my time to the OCCRP or ACLU, etc.. It's not about not working. It's about working on the stuff I really do want to work on, without the threat of scarcity if I don't 'increase shareholder value'.

wccrawford 5y ago
For me, quitting work would probably not happen immediately after I get FU money, but it'd happen within that year, I bet. At first, I'd do a lot more of my hobbies, but then I'd probably move into finally making video games. I'd finally have the time to just sit and play with it. Right now, I don't feel like I have that kind of time, and getting more than 3 hours in a row is hard on weekends, and impossible on week days. It definitely isn't about not-working. It's about working on what I want to.
solarengineer 5y ago
I regular realise that a lot of my bucket list items don't require money and I then go do them. I have also realised that there's no need to wait to write a book. I've procrastinated for many years and have finally got my act together and I'm writing one.
- decebalus1 5y ago
  Those are all fair points and people do write books or do stuff off their bucket list while being happily and gainfully employed. But people are different and not all jobs are the same. Some people don't have the time or energy [1]. Add the stress of supporting a family, a demanding boss and the fear of losing healthcare along with your job and you'll get to your bucket list either during the scarce vacation days or in your late 50s early 60s (if you're lucky). This is what FIRE's all about. It's about freedom basically. Money == freedom to do whatever you want to do without fear of losing the bottom of Maslow's pyramid. This is especially valuable in the US, where there is no social safety net. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory

neogodless 5y ago

I will not be bored when I am not compelled to work. I was unemployed for six months during the pandemic. Boy did I fail to be bored! I overhauled my garage, building a French cleat system and organizing all of my tools. I built a movie/reading nook for my spouse, with a sliding bookshelf door. I caught up on cutting and splitting firewood for winter. I played board games, cooked, baked, rode bike almost every day, sat in the cool breeze overlooking nature, sat by the fire pit and boy, was I not bored. I also spent a lot less on clothes and commuting...

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> I overhauled my garage, building a French cleat system and organizing all of my tools. I built a movie/reading nook for my spouse, with a sliding bookshelf door. I caught up on cutting and splitting firewood for winter. I played board games, cooked, baked, rode bike almost every day, sat in the cool breeze overlooking nature, sat by the fire pit and boy, was I not bored. Your post looks a lot like what I did along side a 40 hour per week job before I reached FIRE. Sure, I couldn’t do it as quickly but it’s not as though having a job is mutually exclusive with riding a bike every day or overhauling the garage on weekends. One of the biggest things I learned post-FIRE was that doing the things I enjoy wasn’t as difficult as I had come to think while I was employed. There’s something about FIRE blogs that makes it easy to think of activities as pre-FIRE (work) and post-FIRE (fun). Instead, I’d rather work on balance. Find jobs where 40 hours per week is average and I don’t have to waste time on commuting. Then make time in the evenings and weekends to do things I enjoy.
- neogodless 5y ago
  It's technically true, but also hard to do in reality. Right now, I barely have time to make coffee before my first meeting. My energy levels after sitting at the computer for 8+ hours are not great. The moments where the weather is "just right" for a lot of activities are severely hampered by the time I must be by the computer. I know, because I'm way behind on firewood again. There are some mornings where the weather would be OK for it, but they usually don't fall on Saturday for some reason. Or we have plans to go on a camping trip that Saturday, so again I skip that task. This adds up for each instance of those things. (I've seen it take weeks to build something simple... while unemployed I took on much bigger projects over much shorter time frames.) Sure, I agree that during your working career seek out jobs that don't overly impede your autonomy. But if you can wipe out 40 hours every week that is doing so, suddenly you have much more freedom. With that freedom, you spend each day, all day, choosing among the things you want to be doing. While working, it's much harder to take a couple of hours in the evening or your precious weekends, and splitting them up into all the things you want to do, and many of them get left behind.

icedchai 5y ago

Boredom is my own personal fear. I hit my FIRE number back in 2018. I was going to retire at N amount or age 45. I hit N pretty early, couldn't pull the trigger, a few more years passed by. Now I'm almost double N due to stock market / money printing inflation. This is approximately 50x my yearly expenses. Ideal situation is 2 to 3 days of work a week, with very few zoom meetings, scrums, or other bullshit.

BoxOfRain 5y ago
>Ideal situation is 2 to 3 days of work a week, with very few zoom meetings, scrums, or other bullshit. Wouldn't it be nice if you could trade pay or hours for avoiding arseache like you can negotiate a salary? Like, "I'll take a 5% salary cut but I'll not be required to attend certain meetings" or "I'll work an extra x hours a week for free but I'll never have touch an Atlassian product ever again".
thrtythreeforty 5y ago
Have you made motions toward your ideal situation? If not, is there anything that makes you hesitate toward making those changes? I ask because I see many people saying "couldn't pull the trigger" for a variety of reasons, and while I don't think I would have that issue, those people have also said that they didn't think they'd have that issue.

herbst 5y ago

What I don't get about fire is that I want to enjoy my life equally now and when I am old. I have no issues filling time without getting bored, but I don't feel like wasting any time of my current life in a job I don't really enjoy just so I may enjoy life more later? However I also believe that fire is a symptom and not a solution. It seems to be mostly popular in countries with little or non existent pension security.

handrous 5y ago
> However I also believe that fire is a symptom and not a solution. It seems to be mostly popular in countries with little or non existent pension security. In the US, it's also largely a fantasy thanks to our uniquely-shitty healthcare system, unless you're actually rich. Most of the frugal-FIRE schemes will fall apart as soon as someone in your family gets sick.

jjk166 5y ago

Hobbies, travel, volunteering, education, projects, consulting - there are a lot of ways to spend your time when you don't need to worry about money for survival. Hell even if you keep working your current job, the knowledge that you don't have to and that you can walk away at any time is extremely liberating. I enjoy what I do, and I'll keep on doing it in some capacity long after I retire, but the "in some capacity" is really key.