Use FI/RE to Create a Better Life Not To Build a Nest Egg as Quickly as Possible | Freelance Lifestyle, Finance and Entrepreneurship Blog

To me FI/RE is about creating conditions that allow you to focus on what you value. Some people do focus too much on saving money quickly as though the goal is to save as much as quickly as possible. But that isn’t what FI/RE means. FI/RE doesn’t mean make yourself a slave to saving quickly in order to remove yourself from being a slave to a job until you are 65.

Any concept can be misapplied. Two posts on related ideas:

The aim should be the best life, not work v. life balance

“I achieved my goal by not my aim. That happens a lot, we honestly translate aims to goals. And then we do stupid things in the name of the goal get it the way of the aim. We forget the aim sometimes and put the goal in its place.” Mike Tveite

FI/RE should be about figuring out what you value and examining the tradeoffs between working, spending and what you really want to get out of life. For some people getting a large investment portfolio quickly is more important than time off, taking expensive vacations, having a job they really like… For some they are happy to have a job they really like even though it pays less and it will take 8 more years to reach FI and be able to retire. FIRE is a process to examine what you value and really think about savings versus spending (largely important because of all the emphasis in our culture to spend and worry about the consequences of debt you took out to spend later).

If you turn FI/RE into an accelerated treadmill of working and not living that isn’t of much value in my opinion (it does have a little bit of value in that you are likely to reach a point where you are free but this is not a good path). You should think about tradeoffs of what you value (healthy living, family, learning, fun…) and what short term versus long term tradeoffs you make. You don’t have to go to the extremes some people do in order to adopt FI/RE principles and create a better life for yourself.

For some people the tradeoffs for achieving financial independence and the ability to retire at 40 are worth great sacrifices up until 40. That is fine if that is what they want. Others would rather make choices from 25 to 40 (lower paying jobs, splurging occasionally…) that mean they won’t reach financial independence until 48. That is also fine.

To me what is most important about FI/RE is examining the choices you make and taking control of the decisions instead of just floating along as so many people do without considering the choices they make. Frankly, doing that and deciding to not even retire early is fine with me (though I do agree it is a bit at odds with the name). Essentially what I mean is even in that case you can apply FI/RE principles, you just do it is a way that make it FI/RR. Where you Retire Realistically instead of as the majority of people do today don’t even come close to adequately considering and planning for their retirement (even at 65 or 70).