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Social media FIRE content has become very weird. It started as an interesting take on lifestyle choices and personal finance education, but influencers took it

Social media FIRE content has become very weird. It started as an interesting take on lifestyle choices and personal finance education, but influencers took it and ran it through the social media optimization play book. Now a lot of it is hyper optimized to maximize clicks with exaggerated scenarios that make you wonder how they’re making claims (Retire by 30? I must read this article to understand how…) The outcomes are also increasingly weird. People are quickly realizing that, no, retiring by 30 (or 35, or 40) isn’t going to happen for most people without extreme reduction of expenses. So then it becomes a weird game of minimizing expenses to an extreme degree to make their FIRE spreadsheets look better. What they don’t realize is that while it’s easy to go 1 or 2 years without buying new clothes or 5-10 years without buying a new car or computer, you can’t use those short sampling periods to estimate your expenses for the rest of your life. I stopped reading FIRE blogs after seeing several stories from people who thought they had FIRE retired at a young age, only to discover years later that it wasn’t what they wanted or that their expenses were higher than expected, setting them on a path to failure. One particularly sad story involved a guy who FIREd with his girlfriend (or maybe wife?), but later she decided that she didn’t want to live an austere, childless lifestyle forever. They split up, and without combining housing and expenses he couldn’t afford to be retired any more. Now he had to rejoin the workforce having spent years doing nothing and letting his skills fall behind. It was a particularly sad story despite having done everything “right”.

vineyardmike 4y ago
I have the exact same take as you... > later she decided that she didn’t want to live an austere, childless lifestyle forever. They split up, and without combining housing and expenses he couldn’t afford to be retired any more. My partner and I are both DINKs working in tech. I did the math and said "hey we could retire by 30 if we cut our expenses and changed our habits" (or other extreme age). The response I got was "I like the nice things we buy and do and thats worth working longer. When I'm sick of working, we can do this math again". I think everyone should do the math, and understand how their finances interplay with future planning, because you may discover you can retire at 30 with changes, but you also may discover that you can't retire ever without changes.
- h4ch1 4y ago
  If you don't mind me asking, what all parameters go into the math and what all do you account for? For context; I'm 23, just turning 24, just started working full-time at a well paying job, so have been recently exposed to a lot of things that I need to do in order to "adult" per se; taxes, insurance, etc. Would be really grateful to have some light shed on this great unknown.
  - IanCal 4y ago
    You can get drowned in a lot of information on this, but the fundamental part of the typical advice (not advice in the more official financial sense) is this: If you are able to save nothing for retirement, you can never retire. You'll never build up any savings. If you are able to put away literally everything you earn, you already can retire - your expenses are already covered. In between those is not a linear scale (as it goes from 0 to infinity). As you setup a life where you are able to save more of your income you do two things: 1. You are able to save more and you get to your target figure faster 2. You need to save less because your lifestyle requires less money Those combine very powerfully. This can be impacted heavily if you earn well when you're younger because as you invest compound interest makes a big difference over time. Investing in boring index funds (I mentally categorise this as a broad bet on capitalism) and continuing until you have about 25-35x your annual expenses (depends on your risk, there's loads on this) is the overall picture. To save me redoing the maths, assuming 5% return after inflation and 25x your expenses, saving 10% of your income means working for 51 years, 25% of your income means working for 32 years, 50% means 17 years, and 75% just 7 years. [0] Before I get the usual responses "but I like nice things" - the point is being deliberate about your spending and your goals. I am in a very fortunate position with my income (as many of us techies are on this site) and could spend a lot more. I would get significantly diminishing returns for spending more however, and it would come at a cost of working more and spending less time with my loved ones. "ah but you can die any time why live a life of cold beans from the can" - the idea that I can die earlier strongly suggests to me I want to be in a position where I don't need my job earlier - to have more time retired rather than dying at my desk. Also the point is to build a life around things I actually value, not avoiding spending altogether. "I like my job" - great! Unless you'd work for free, there is something else you'd rather do. Before you're FI you also gain huge security. FI is just "I could walk away from this job and be fine forever" but before then you hit "I would be fine for a month" then a year, then 10 years, 20, etc. Having a decade of runway makes shaky job markets significantly less scary. Build the life you want to live, and save for it. Spend deliberately on things that you value. If that's cars, find the best way of spending your money to have the most fun with them (a cheaper daily driver and regular track days might be more fun and cheaper than a car a few models up). I'd check out the subreddits and the sidebars for the standard advice in the personalfinance and financial independence. https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics The UK specific one has the almighty flowchart https://ukpersonal.finance/flowchart/ https://ukpersonal.finance/flowchart/ The FI subreddit has good advice https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/ https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/ again check the sidebar for the must reads and key things there. Lots of the advice, particularly for someone your age, should be very generic. [0] https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...
Tade0 4y ago
> (Retire by 30? I must read this article to understand how…) I've met a few such people and unsurprisingly none of them did it by following such advice. It was always a combination of talent, circumstances and willingness to take huge risks. Not everyone has that and not everyone actually achieves this goal even when they do.
SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
The biggest thing with FIRE is that they very rarely/almost never account for the expenses increasing over time, and they never account for the fact that you will have multiple emergencies in your lifetime. Someone is going to break something and need an ER trip, a stoke scare, a heart attack scare, a relative is dying, etc.

vineyardmike 4y ago

I have the exact same take as you... > later she decided that she didn’t want to live an austere, childless lifestyle forever. They split up, and without combining housing and expenses he couldn’t afford to be retired any more. My partner and I are both DINKs working in tech. I did the math and said "hey we could retire by 30 if we cut our expenses and changed our habits" (or other extreme age). The response I got was "I like the nice things we buy and do and thats worth working longer. When I'm sick of working, we can do this math again". I think everyone should do the math, and understand how their finances interplay with future planning, because you may discover you can retire at 30 with changes, but you also may discover that you can't retire ever without changes.

h4ch1 4y ago
If you don't mind me asking, what all parameters go into the math and what all do you account for? For context; I'm 23, just turning 24, just started working full-time at a well paying job, so have been recently exposed to a lot of things that I need to do in order to "adult" per se; taxes, insurance, etc. Would be really grateful to have some light shed on this great unknown.
- IanCal 4y ago
  You can get drowned in a lot of information on this, but the fundamental part of the typical advice (not advice in the more official financial sense) is this: If you are able to save nothing for retirement, you can never retire. You'll never build up any savings. If you are able to put away literally everything you earn, you already can retire - your expenses are already covered. In between those is not a linear scale (as it goes from 0 to infinity). As you setup a life where you are able to save more of your income you do two things: 1. You are able to save more and you get to your target figure faster 2. You need to save less because your lifestyle requires less money Those combine very powerfully. This can be impacted heavily if you earn well when you're younger because as you invest compound interest makes a big difference over time. Investing in boring index funds (I mentally categorise this as a broad bet on capitalism) and continuing until you have about 25-35x your annual expenses (depends on your risk, there's loads on this) is the overall picture. To save me redoing the maths, assuming 5% return after inflation and 25x your expenses, saving 10% of your income means working for 51 years, 25% of your income means working for 32 years, 50% means 17 years, and 75% just 7 years. [0] Before I get the usual responses "but I like nice things" - the point is being deliberate about your spending and your goals. I am in a very fortunate position with my income (as many of us techies are on this site) and could spend a lot more. I would get significantly diminishing returns for spending more however, and it would come at a cost of working more and spending less time with my loved ones. "ah but you can die any time why live a life of cold beans from the can" - the idea that I can die earlier strongly suggests to me I want to be in a position where I don't need my job earlier - to have more time retired rather than dying at my desk. Also the point is to build a life around things I actually value, not avoiding spending altogether. "I like my job" - great! Unless you'd work for free, there is something else you'd rather do. Before you're FI you also gain huge security. FI is just "I could walk away from this job and be fine forever" but before then you hit "I would be fine for a month" then a year, then 10 years, 20, etc. Having a decade of runway makes shaky job markets significantly less scary. Build the life you want to live, and save for it. Spend deliberately on things that you value. If that's cars, find the best way of spending your money to have the most fun with them (a cheaper daily driver and regular track days might be more fun and cheaper than a car a few models up). I'd check out the subreddits and the sidebars for the standard advice in the personalfinance and financial independence. https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics The UK specific one has the almighty flowchart https://ukpersonal.finance/flowchart/ https://ukpersonal.finance/flowchart/ The FI subreddit has good advice https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/ https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/ again check the sidebar for the must reads and key things there. Lots of the advice, particularly for someone your age, should be very generic. [0] https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...

Tade0 4y ago

> (Retire by 30? I must read this article to understand how…) I've met a few such people and unsurprisingly none of them did it by following such advice. It was always a combination of talent, circumstances and willingness to take huge risks. Not everyone has that and not everyone actually achieves this goal even when they do.

SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago

The biggest thing with FIRE is that they very rarely/almost never account for the expenses increasing over time, and they never account for the fact that you will have multiple emergencies in your lifetime. Someone is going to break something and need an ER trip, a stoke scare, a heart attack scare, a relative is dying, etc.