I think you have two things wrong here:
1) Most people don't plan to live "balls-to-the-wall" for 30-40 years before retiring. They work hard (maybe too hard!) so they can retire early. They don't live like kings and queens for that time; that would probably make it impossible to build that nest egg and actually retire. To do this right, you need to build enough wealth to maintain your lifestyle post-retirement. For most folks this means that their pre-retirement lifestyle won't be particularly extravagant.
2) Just because you retire, it doesn't mean you have a "silent death for 30" years. That's absurd, and plays into the whole "life is meaningless without work" idea, which I categorically reject. Maybe life has no meaning for you without work, but that's you, and not everyone. There's plenty to do in those last 30 years of life that will keep me fulfilled, happy, and busy, and none of it needs to have anything to do with drawing a paycheck.
"Retiring" doesn't mean not living, or even not "working". It just means that you get to do whatever you want without worrying about whether or not you're getting paid for it. Which is essentially what FI is as well, just with the added bit that you've decided to avoid gainful employment.
I guess I’d say I would need to specify my definition of “work” a bit more. I wouldn’t view work strictly as employment, but as productive tasks with some means to an end, but that could also include hobbies like cooking, or wood working, for example.
I would definitely challenge from a general standpoint any life where you’re not doing something productive. Not in the hustle culture sense, but in the means-to-an-end sense.
I do think we are in agreement though. Financial independence is the most important aspect here.
This is why in part I think the distinction between "FI" and "RE" is pretty small. I absolutely agree with you that the important part is financial independence, getting to a point where if you quit or lost your job tomorrow, and never brought in any labor-related income again, you'd be fine. From there it's just defining what life means to you. You might stick with a 9-to-5 for a while because that makes you happy. You might drop to part-time. You might quit entirely and focus on personal projects and interests (like the hobbies you mention). Or you might take 5 years to focus on personal projects, but then take a full-time job for a couple years just because you feel like it, with the knowledge that you can quit at any time if you don't like it.
> I would definitely challenge from a general standpoint any life where you’re not doing something productive.
Eh... if someone decided to retire and spend every day of the rest of their life going to the beach and lying in the sun, that's... fine? It's not what I'd do with my retirement, but I don't think I'm qualified to tell someone else what to do with their life, especially if they're financially independent and aren't a drag on anyone else.
But yeah, for me, I do agree that I want to be productive to some extent. But I love the idea of even that being infinitely flexible. Right now if I don't feel like being productive I can dick around on HN for a little while (like I am right now), but I have to limit myself, and get back to work soon, hoping that my short break will help me gain some desire to be productive. My midafternoon time is not my own; to a very real extent it belongs to my employer. I feel guilty about not being able to focus on work right now, and I hate that feeling. If it were just me doing whatever I want to do, I might feel guilty about not finishing a fun woodworking project, but that guilt would be isolated to myself: I'm not depriving someone else (like an employer) of something they're entitled to.
And with that... back to work.
I definitely would say “doing nothing” - however we would define that isn’t something I’d put a moral judgement on. I think maybe the colloquial “relax on the beach” isn’t really possible long term. Maybe a year at most. I think most people historically at least just say on the couch. Contrast with maybe the idea (reality is questionable) of the old man in the Italian country side or woman in Okinawa tending to their gardens and walking to the market each day. At least maybe there are some items to discuss further when thinking about what retirement really means.
Really enjoying your posts. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
For myself, I'd probably be happy to tinker with open source software and small electronics projects for most of my days, along with some language-learning, cooking experimentation, and other random hobbies, and relaxing, therapeutic tasks like playing with my cat (perhaps similar in feel to tending gardens).
> ... when thinking about what retirement really means.
The nice thing about approaching retirement from a FI perspective is that retirement can mean whatever you want it to mean, within your financial projections, at least.
> Really enjoying your posts. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
And yours as well! Thank you!
Even so, the freedom to... saw/split/stack firewood when the weather was perfect, build a movie nook for my wife, go on bike rides on a Tuesday afternoon in a warm breeze, take our dog on a long, leisurely walk at a local park, read a book in the shade out on the deck...
...or pre/post-pandemic visit a brewery or winery on a slow Thursday (and all other forms of travel that are less ideal right now.)
But also FIRE doesn't demand that you "work extra hard" during the accumulation phase. At least, I have been fortunate enough to avoid that fate. I've rarely worked overtime in my entire life as a software developer. And of course, given this career and income, living within my means (actually well below them) doesn't mean horrible deprivation, either. Sure, I can't go on a $20k weekend trip on a whim (at least not regularly!), and we have to research our options for vacation so we don't blow a lot of money, but again - it doesn't take much creativity to have a really rewarding life that doesn't necessitate spending at or above your means. (Again some of this assumes you have a "good" income. There are stories of those with lower income making it work, but the challenges change!)
I had a job where I could do this. On any given week I worked normal(ish) hours, but I had pretty close to full control over when and where I worked, with significant autonomy on what and how. I spent most of my afternoons outside unless I really felt like working on my project. At the same time, being at a company gave me resources, teammates and scope I would have struggled to recreate working on my own open-source projects. I had just come off a one-year break and I ended up enjoying working more than I did not working. It's a real shame that we can't have more jobs like this; it requires giving people a level of trust and autonomy most organizations can't stomach.
If I could arrange a role like that into the indefinite future, I'd have absolutely no questions about working well into my 60s, and not at all thanks to a "lack of creativity".
But that’s my fault. I wasn’t specific enough. :) thanks!
Having enough money that you don’t need to worry too much about work seems like 95% of the benefit. Spoken as someone fairly early working towards FI.
Having a paid off house, no debt, and enough money to survive tragedy unscathed is really the goal. I want to be able to work whatever job makes me happy without feeling the need to be competing for the highest salary. Take a few months off work here and there without sweating about getting a new job. To let my future wife or I stay home with the hypothetical kid without needing to think about the money.
This extends all the way down into little things. Maybe I'd like to go for a walk right now, but I can't because I have a work meeting in 10 minutes.
I doubt there is anyone in the world who can say they are 100% happy with their job 100% of the time. While you might not be 100% happy 100% of the time in retirement, that is something you can control and change. You generally can't change many of the things about a job that make you unhappy.
I just feel like most people are so socially conditioned to believe that working a job is The Correct Way To Live Your Life that they simply can't imagine anything different.
> I want to be able to work whatever job makes me happy without feeling the need to be competing for the highest salary.
Why does it have to be a job? Why can't you just do things that make you happy? Why is it necessary that happiness falls into the narrow range of an employer-employee (or freelancer-client) relationship?
I’m not saying having enough money to retire forever isn’t better. I get that you have even more options. But why not also be semi-FI all along the way and afford yourself those things that make you happy, even if it means you save more slowly and retire a bit less early. It’s about the right balance.
I’d rather take 3-months of unpaid leave to backpack Europe at age 30 than skip the trip in a saving-frenzy to retire. That same backpacking trip would be way less enjoyable at age 40, or even impossible with kids.
Plus, my job does make me happy — I know it may not forever, which is why I save so much money. But assuming I keep enjoying work, it doesn’t hurt to keep making money even after RE. I really just see FI as giving yourself options.
I don’t foresee it being a huge event when I hit my “FIRE number” since I’ll already be living the life that I want.
I'm lucky that I'll be able to retire soon and still be financially secure against all but the worst medical disasters (agree that the US sucks in this regard), medical disasters that would likely bankrupt me even if I was working (and would likely mean I couldn't work anymore anyway). I know this isn't possible for many people in the FIRE crowd, let alone most people in general. I've also been lucky that I've been able to travel a lot in my 30s and a decent amount in my 20s, despite working hard for most of it. So it's not like I've been all-work-and-no-play up until now; it's a balance I've been mostly happy with (certainly with some exceptions), but I know others might want a different balance (in either direction), and that's ok.
Just a bit on "enjoying work": I really want to make sure we're talking about the same thing. For the most part I enjoy and love the work I do, but overall I don't really enjoy "the job". I don't enjoy the meetings, the process that caters to the lowest common denominator, the politics, the fight to get things done the way I think they should get done. There are definitely some aspects of my current work that I probably couldn't do without all the other stuff (because they require a large organization with considerable financial resources). But there's a lot of it that I could do on my own, or (for example) in a small group of people working on an open source project. Retirement for me doesn't mean I stop being a software developer; it means I stop developing software on an employer's terms, and stop doing it for a profit motive. And if I get temporarily (or even permanently) tired of it, I can simply choose to do something else, on a moment's notice, without financial consequences. I'm not sure if this is the popular definition, but to me "retirement" means I do whatever I want -- including "work" -- without a care toward how it affects my income, and with the ability to shift my priorities on a dime.
For many people in many countries, there is no concept of "retirement". It seems so silly to me that people would go and say "I'll work really hard and do all this stuff for 40 years so I can sit around and do nothing for another 30 years".
What's the point? It's unsustainable. It's like doing a crash diet - it may work for a minute, but to have long-term results you need to have a lifestyle change.
Focusing on financial independence means you can achieve better long-term results. Living within your means over the course of 80 years instead of balls-to-the-wall for 30-40 and then a quick and silent death for 30 seems to be a better course of action and would lead to longer lifespan.
Once you reach financial independence - whatever that means to you - you can take on other interests. It could be working at a startup, or a non-profit, or volunteering, or gardening. You name it. But financial independence enables such things. FI > RE.