These Are the Most Popular Clichés About FIRE

That People Keep Repeating

Photo by Elizabeth R. on Unsplash

The FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) community has a cliché problem. There are ideas that keep getting repeated and rarely questioned. Things that make you sound smart, especially in the eyes of those who are just getting started.

Some of them aren’t bad advice, they’re just oversimplified and overused. Others are personal preferences that somehow get presented as generally applicable to everyone.

“Invest into yourself” is a good example of the former category. There is nothing wrong with it, but every time someone asks for advice, there will be someone saying that money should be invested in the person rather than the stock market.

You can invest a significant amount of money into yourself with no tangible returns, like buying an overpriced online course (since employers rarely count them as real experience) or learning something outdated.

When someone asks for advice on how to invest X amount of money, they’re likely past the stage where the “invest into yourself” advice is helpful.

Not to mention that every place I’ve ever worked already had a learning budget. Your employer will likely pay for courses and certificates that are useful for your job.

Another idea that people keep parroting is that FIRE is not about doing nothing, but about doing X and Y instead. Some say that early retirement shouldn’t even be the goal, but financial independence alone should be.

OK, thank you, but let me decide what my FIRE goal is.

Working hard for a decade or more, making all the sacrifices, and not enjoying the results seems to me like a waste.

I’ve never understood the idea of reaching a level of financial freedom that would allow you to quit your job for good, but then keep doing it like nothing happened.

For me, early retirement has always been the goal.

About 70% of employees hate their jobs. Saying that there is a way out, but you should still keep working, sounds contradictory.

Letting go of our active income after reaching your FIRE goal is very difficult. I went through this phase twice. Between the accumulation and early retirement phase, there’s a fear phase.

In this stage, you start second-guessing yourself and end up not pulling the trigger because of all the doubts and insecurities.

Then we start convincing ourselves that we still like our jobs and that it’s better to keep doing it. I know because I was there.

There are people who genuinely like their job, and that’s great. But ask yourself a question: would you still do it if you had an endless amount of money? If the answer is no, then it’s still partially about money, and not solely about the love of your job.

Many people feel they are not ready to retire just yet because they don’t know how they’ll spend all the time they gain. That time is honestly not that long, only about eight hours a day, minus weekends, public holidays, and vacations. Those eight hours will fly by.

So they subscribe to the idea that “you need to retire into something, not retire from something”. Another overused piece of advice I keep hearing.

First of all, you’re allowed to “retire from something”, like your job, if you don’t like it. Secondly, many people can’t figure everything out while they’re working (like how they’ll spend that extra time), due to a lack of time and motivation.

Once you’ve retired, you’ll have both, and it’s more likely you’ll find something that interests you.

It’s not a problem if this part is an afterthought. After you’ve stopped working, you can start experimenting with different things and see if something sticks.

The level of activity one needs also varies greatly. A person can sit on a bench with their thoughts or read a book for hours. Another needs constant stimulus and excitement.

Usually, a person from the latter category wants to tell the former how life should be lived.

This is very common nowadays, when everything is dominated by social media and people want to show off how meaningful their life is.

You can’t take a good photo of someone reading a book on a bench versus someone who keeps traveling to exotic places.

But it’s perfectly normal to live a quieter life. This should be entirely based on your personal preference, not on what FIRE influencers say.

The next one is not only FIRE-related, but I keep hearing it on financial forums.

“Your network is your net worth”

— Said by Bob, the extroverted

If this were true, I would be very poor. Luckily, my net worth still comes from the stocks, bonds, various securities, and properties I own.

I don’t want to keep a big circle of people around me, and I especially don’t want to keep people in that circle whose sole reason for knowing me is to help them get rich.

Maintaining relationships takes a lot of time. I want to focus on the few people who matter the most.

So just because a lunatic on LinkedIn took this advice literally and ends every single post with “let’s connect” doesn’t mean I need to. Luckily, you can still reach FIRE without knowing many people.

The main point of FIRE is personal freedom. Freedom to choose what you want to do instead of listening to others. So if someone says FIRE is not about X but Y, don’t take it for granted, because it’s up to you how you choose to live your life.

That’s it, these are the most common clichés I hear in FIRE circles.

Do you know any others?

Disclaimer

This article is intended for informational purposes only, and should not be considered financial, investment, business, tax, or legal advice. You should consult a relevant professional before making any major decisions.

— Aleena