How is the FIRE movement doing?

[theanimal]

Side note: do we actually have any EREs at / before 30, especially without being in an ultra high paid field? @white belt or @c40 maybe? I'm wondering if even in the group about doing the thing any youngster has the inclination / discipline to fully execute FI by 30.

I think I’d qualify.

I don’t think this is as much a side note as the main point. Saving money in your 20s is a very radical thing to do, especially at the rate we are accustomed to here. Hearing that 20 year olds still like to spend money doesn’t seem like a good indication to me that the younger generations are not interested in FIRE or ERE. As Slevin indicates, I think the majority of people here are reaching their savings goals in their mid 30s and beyond, after starting to save seriously later on. There’s a lot more of “I wish I started saving earlier” versus “I saved through my 20s and I’m FI by 30.”

[Slevin]

@theanimal yeah I also think you would qualify. Mad props, it’s an insanely difficult thing to do.

My partner and I are also optionally FI on paper, but we are not planning to stop working. We would rather gain more lifestyle and optionality (that was the choice, we talked about just resting on our laurels but it seemed against what we wanted to be doing). To be FI we would have to move to somewhere with cheaper housing costs / find a lucky rental situation, but that’s basically it. I didn’t save 75% for years and years, I’ve just gotten lucky in huge ways and also ended up having a fairly high income the last couple of years, so I’m a bad example (we’re likely to bring in >300k next year). @AE also probably falls in this same camp of being optionally FI by 30 but not choosing to be, but I think AE did a much more consistent and solid job saving than I did.

So I’m not sure if we should call the tech job path successful or failed, because the tech people just seem to not want to turn off the money faucet while the money is good. The spice must flow.

[C40]

I retired at 34. Definitely could have gotten my stuff together sooner and retired around 30.
On the forum yeah I think there are some that retired near 30 years old. Perhaps @Akratic did? and others I forget. @MikeBos is one who was on the forum some though not a frequent member (he had a blog called 'Lacking Ambition' though I think it's gone now. You can google and find his story including being one of the early MadFientist podcast guests)

So yeah I do think there are quite a few that did or that could have.

Thinking back about people I went to school with (Engineering college within a large public University in the midwest) - and knowing their mindset and their simple/conservative natures I am surprised that a larger amount of people in society don't become FI by about 30 or 40 years old.

[chenda]

I suspect many of those who retire around 30 ish are lifestyle entrepreneurs rather than 4% SWR. Mikebos was getting something like a 30% ROI on his rental properties; fantastic but difficult to replicate.

[jacob]

Side note: do we actually have any EREs at / before 30, especially without being in an ultra high paid field? @white belt or @c40 maybe? I'm wondering if even in the group about doing the thing any youngster has the inclination / discipline to fully execute FI by 30.

Fish's chart (the contour lines are time-to-FI) might provide a partial answer although it sounds like some of the coordinate entries that I put in some years ago need to be changed what with MMM's lifestyle drift and how reddit apparently had to create a povertyFIRE (damnit, why didn't they call it slimFIRE?) as leanFIRE turned into chubbyFIRE.

Here's a Fish chart from viewtopic.php?p=197249#p197249

PS: It's probably best to put numbers on it rather than call it "ultra-high", because those adjectives mean different things to different people. I'll just do that here using: https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/
25% (2023) = $25k for an individual
50% (2023) = $50k
75% (2023) = $82k
90% (2023) = $135k
95% (2023) = $188k
98% (2023) = $294k
PPS: Before someone asks what the kink in the lines is, I forget, but it's explained somewhere in some thread.

[jacob]

Looking at the graph above, the cycle/diffusion theory is that a movement-cycle starts in the yellow area, gets popularized in the orange area, and finally dilutes in the the bluer areas with advice conditioned on how much people earn. The median, of course, being the 50,50 coordinate. Indeed, each colored band can be interpreted as a different Wheaton Level. The communication range might be inferred by interpreting the contour lines as an elevation map. It's physically easier to travel at the same color and hard to go up or down even if the distance is short. As such, it's easier for ERE to talk with FrugalWoods than mainstream (50,50) ... but fatFIRE, while nominally still zoned yellow/orange is too far away.

[Seppia]

Amongst our age group there is a lot less talk about retirement in general. Post-covid, some people can work from home most of the time and are happy to collect a pay check as long as they can work in pajamas. Others are happy to be back in a social setting post-covid, even if it's work. I was surprised at how many people missed their work settings.

Anecdotally, I am seeing a lot of this around me.

For all the whining people normally do, working conditions for the average office worker have improved immensely from pre covid.
Employees may be making slightly less money (adjusted for inflation), but there are significant savings from less driving, not having to buy as many fancy clothes and, frankly, hours worked are down a LOT.

I know many people who are now “working” maybe 3 hours a day from home VS having to at least try to pretend they were working for 9 hours before covid.
I run the subsidiary of an Italian company here in the USA. We have a system that tracks active hours of all the 36 employees*: measuring those who are not in sales, the average person works somewhere around an hour and a half less when WFH.
Small sample size, and there are outliers of course, but I’d be surprised to see that it’s dramatically different in the aggregate.

Those who are ok with their careers are super happy as they have a much less stressful life and make the same money.
Those who are ambitious look at how little “the others” are working and double down on working hard because they see less competition and an easier path to better position/pay.

I think this forum is fairly unique and people here have more interests than the average, but I think for most people the ultimate goal of FIRE is “so I can watch Netflix all day in my pijamas and drink margaritas/smoke weed at 11am while showering occasionally”.
Why quit work if you can do 90% of that already while collecting a paycheck?

I have been part of the workforce in some capacity since I was 14 (now I’m 43) and cannot remember a more favorable time to be an employee than today.

*Side note: these systems catch every trick like mouse movers, etc. I would strongly advise anybody working from home to refrain from using such tricks as they immediately put a target on your back from HR and management.

[7Wannabe5]

Thinking back about people I went to school with (Engineering college within a large public University in the midwest) - and knowing their mindset and their simple/conservative natures I am surprised that a larger amount of people in society don't become FI by about 30 or 40 years old.

Since I have dated this guy in his 50s quite frequently, I know that the basic answer would be that conservative nature also tends towards wanting to keep making money and piling the pile up higher. Also, they often end up marrying other humans who are much more spendy and or drinking too much if they can't find a partner. Finally, they tend to be like working dogs, so if they don't go out to work, they need to have a lot of wood to chop or similar activities.

It's physically easier to travel at the same color and hard to go up or down even if the distance is short.

Doesn't this imply that it's easier to increase your income than to lower your spending percentile at given income?

[Ego]

I agree with @JP 100%. The covid lockdowns did unimaginable harm to a generation and it changed everything, including the timing of the four turnings.

I also believe WRC is spot on....

While generations as a whole may be worse off financially, there are great opportunities for those willing to work hard and implement a modest level of frugality. Young people have never had more options to take an unconventional career path and find some level of financial success than they do today.

The social pressure to do better than ones parents is dead for all but new immigrants. It is much easier to choose your own adventure. The expectation that someone must have children, support parents in old age, have a big wedding, follow a traditional career path, own a nice vehicle, wear particular labels, consume fancy restaurant meals, join the best health club, stay at all inclusive resorts, purchase gifts for everyone and maintain a facade of "doing well", is disappearing fast.

Being free-from all of those shoulds creates freedom-to opportunities that my generation could not imagine.

On the other hand, many of us here at ERE central figured out hacks to the freedom-from system and are now struggling to figure out what we want to do with all of the freedom-to the hacks produced. A whole generation of younger people who are free from those social guardrails are struggling to cope with that freedom.

Maybe the kindest thing we can do for them is to show them examples of how to hack freedom-to. But we need to figure it out first.

[AnalyticalEngine]

@AE also probably falls in this same camp of being optionally FI by 30 but not choosing to be, but I think AE did a much more consistent and solid job saving than I did.

My story is pretty much as textbook FI as you can get. I discovered it at age 22, decided it sounded better than working in corporate for 40 more years, then saved 75% of my income for 8 years and here we are. It was the combination of my temperament (high contentiousness, low agreeableness) plus a career that paid decently (although I only made $60k-$80k during the period I was doing FI savings) and my total 20-year-old hubris of thinking "smoking weed all day while not showering" sounded like a great plan for the rest of my life. I do believe this temperament is over-represented in FIRElandia, as other people with different temperaments might solve the "I hate work" problem by quitting after a few months and then going totally broke or deciding work isn't so bad because it lets them buy things/keep up appearances. So if we're looking for younger people who are pursuing FI specifically, they are probably a minority because this personality type and life circumstances are not common.

However, much like @Slevin combined with what @Seppia says, WFH changes the equation because it makes all downsides of work (location dependence, commuting, annoying coworkers, etc) go away, so I can do my actual job in a few hours wearing pajamas, and having a high paying career you can do anywhere in a few hours opens up major optionality in the form of living where I want to live instead of having to settle for a shack in the middle of a LCOL place in order to quit. A few hours of remote paid labor a day are worth the trade-off of a lot of money and a career that may provide stability and options in an uncertain future.

What I think may be happening at a macro scale, however, is that we're seeing this wider gulf between people who have succeeded in this new environment and therefore have much better working conditions and don't want to quit versus people who have completely failed to thrive in this environment and have no ability to quit. Something like that might eliminate FIRE in favor of greenSmoothieFI for the winners and deciding to just "soft save" because of high future discounting for the losers.

[jacob]

After googling "soft saving", it doesn't seem to be different than the not uncommon advice/sentiment for 20somethings I grew up with:

"Spend part of your 20s traveling and creating memories, because once you get a real job, children, and a mortgage, it'll be too late." (A very high or alternatively negative discount rate where the present and the past is prioritized over the future.) This would be funded by doing unskilled menial labor for a few months before traveling again. Tim Ferris's mini-retirements were standard fare.

The majority would spend 1-2 years doing that, often between graduating HS and starting a tertiary education. A minority would spend most if not all of their twenties before realizing that everybody else had moved ahead of them on the standard lock-in path.

Another minority would skip the sabbatical, get an education and then start their career immediately. That was me... and frankly 90% of my STEM classmates. We were graduating with MScs when much of the rest of our cohort were still trying to find themselves somewhere in Nepal.

I suspect the straight to college&career is/was the dominant one in the US and that it's getting replaced by the intermittent sabbatical approach.

Also the former looks much better on instafacetok than the latter which may only be cool on linkedin.

[Seppia]

So what's going on with the FIRE movement these days? Still strong?

I will add a consideration regarding age with a southern European perspective.
There are a few people in their mid to late 20s that are interested in the FIRE concept, but they tend to look more at how to increase their earnings VS cutting expenses.
Back when I had time I had a semi-popular blog/podcast in Italian (pod got around 1200 dowloads per episode), 99% of the questions were around investing.
Italians on average have a lot less room to cut as they HAVE to be thrifty due to low salaries.
Just as an example, at 26, after being promoted once and working a sales role for a very good company, I was making 1500 usd per month, paying 650 usd in rent and 100 for public transport.
Not a lot of room for extravagant expenses, and I was faring much better than most of my peers

Americans do not always realize the kind of wealth that's available to them.

What I think may be happening at a macro scale, however, is that we're seeing this wider gulf between people who have succeeded in this new environment and therefore have much better working conditions and don't want to quit versus people who have completely failed to thrive in this environment and have no ability to quit.

I really feel bad about some people. Post covid WFH seems to have exacerbated the gap between winners and losers.
In fairness, it seems though that many of those who were losers have been able to drastically improve their situation. IE a couple making 50k each with two kids had it very rough in NYC pre covid. Now many of those can WFH, saving in commute and rent (living in a cheaper area) and generally get by much better.

P.s. smoking weed at 11am and showering occasionally (+ some international travel) was my idea of a perfect life when I was in my 20s as well

[chenda]

a couple making 50k each with two kids had it very rough in NYC pre covid. Now many of those can WFH, saving in commute and rent (living in a cheaper area) and generally get by much better.

I doubt this will last long term for most remote workers. In fact it might depress wages as New York or Berlin company can now pay shite below-cost-of-living wages and expect you to work from Alabama or Calabria. Unless you have very in demand skills which most people don't have and never will have.

[Jean]

@Slevin
I retired at 28.
I really hated my life in academia, i would have probably rather gone homeless than kept working, but i got lucky with real estate, so i managed to get some income. I don't think academia qualify as ultra high paying( i was making 3900 a month at the time, about 2000 below median)
I didn't answer, cause i thougt you meant people who are 30 or less now (i'm 37), but apparently not, and i need everyone here to know how early i stopped working.
In switzerland, it looks easier to do ere now than before, because high paying job seem easier to find than 15 years ago, but i might be wrong.

[Seppia]

@chenda There are two things I tell young colleagues ALL the time

1/ contribute to the 401k at least till the match. It’s free money. I also tell them as an extra incentive that I will never sign off on salary increases for someone who doesn’t get the match, because clearly they don’t like money. I say that jokingly of course but it tends to get the message across

2/ get to the office as much as you can. Fully remote jobs can be done by anybody that has good English and a decent WiFi. Sooner or later companies are going to realize that and outsource their back office to Ireland, somewhere in the UK, or India in the most extreme cases.

@Jean congrats that’s a hell of an accomplishment

[chenda]

@Seppia, right, make hay whilst the sun shines.

[jacob]

Would it make sense to say that the FIRE movement is at the "slope of enlightenment" WRT the Gartner Hype Cycle now that the "weak hands" of the OG promoters have adopted or are settling on semiFI-level advice. Alternatively, fizzling and coming back to "work 40 years while saving 10% for your retirement"-plan.

[guitarplayer]

2/ get to the office as much as you can. Fully remote jobs can be done by anybody that has good English and a decent WiFi. Sooner or later companies are going to realize that and outsource their back office to Ireland, somewhere in the UK, or India in the most extreme cases.

This is a very good point, come to think of it. Since 'showing up' became much more optional, I can see how it can be more valued. Also, because it is now optional, it might just be more comfortable. Where I work, there is an open plan office space which I would not like to work at had it been full of people. But it isn't, it's largely empty for the most part. It is also 25min walk from my flat. I might give it a go and go there more often.

[7Wannabe5]

Would it make sense to say that the FIRE movement is at the "slope of enlightenment"

I think that model is for within a given context, but the context has changed. IOW, two or three things have happened that are akin to why "YMOYL" all treasuries advice had to be updated. It's not just the kids, most of the older post-retirement age people I know are also only semi-retired, because the new work landscape is so flexible. So, it actually might be that it's shifting more towards people flexing in and out of the labor (and educational and self-employed, etc.)market over 60 years. IOW, it's very difficult to detect the difference between the lifestyle of my 20-something artist niece taking a semi-sabbatical year in Thailand, my 40-something mid-life sister doing professional WFH on the beach in Florida, or my almost-70 year old poly-partner doing a bit of gig work to top up his retirement accounts prior to traveling to Costa Rica in alignment with his volunteer-work-avocation.

[Jin+Guice]

Americans do not always realize the kind of wealth that's available to them.

I feel like nobody realizes the wealth that's available to them! It's the tragedy of comparing yourself only to those around you. We still have access to unimaginable wealth by almost any geographic or historical standard. And yet we don't seem to be that much happier... almost like having more money isn't the key to happiness...



All of the other stuff I'm hearing is great news for everyone except the internet retirement police. Of course people will be working more if working conditions improve. Isn't that a good thing? The question is are they saving that money because they believe the increase will be short-lived and still at least seek freedom-from, if not freedom-to?

For me personally, an increase in pay and in working conditions lead to me working more, but it also means work fits into my WOGs more easily.