I was once caught up in the FIRE (financially independent and retire early) movement. It was 2018 when I first heard about this movement, blown over from America. People with high salaries lived very frugally so that they could set aside as much as possible. Saving and especially investing, they did that with that money they could unlock. Preferably investing, because that way they both built up wealth faster, and they could eventually live off their assets. And tadaa, financial independence is there! Never work again, get out of the rat race, and live off the returns on your investments? Say no more!
And there I went. Like a wild comboy, I stormed the stock market, buying stocks and ETFs. Skipped all my manicure appointments, invited girlfriends to eat at my house instead of eating out, and sold many clothes through marketplace.
The idea of not having to work anymore was like a dream at that time. I wasn’t exactly happy. There were sad things going on privately, and on the work front it was gnawing. I had a very high salary, but also a high mortgage and a rather wild spending pattern. I felt that I wanted the freedom to do something else, but if I kept handling money the way I did, I would be trapped in that one job, with that high salary.
But I no longer wanted to get up every morning stressed out, connecting in traffic, to sit inside all day meeting for the sake of meeting.
I no longer found any satisfaction at all in my work.
No shit that I wanted to become FIRE. Anything better that that rat race.
But becoming FIRE is quite ambitious. Or not at all. Not wanting to work anymore? And apart from that, if you want to live on the return on your assets, you’ll soon need tons of invested assets anyway.
(Short calculation. Imagine that your assets return 6% per year (please dear people, distrust anyone who says that 10% return on assets, year on year, is achievable). And you need €3000 net per month to live on.
€3000 x 12 = €36,000 net per year.
€36,000 as a 6% return means you must have €600,000 in invested assets. Never mind all the taxes and such).
But just apart from the math and the great power you need, there’s another aspect that made me fall off my FIRE high horse: meaning.
I found no meaning in my job at the time. But there is no meaning in “no work” for me either. I think work can be a very beautiful thing. Contributing to something bigger, working together toward a goal, being part of a group, a social network of nice colleagues. Work can give meaning, and there for me was the outcome toward freedom. That, for me, is where financial independence comes in: creating a financial status that allows me to explore what work satisfies me, and to be able to change jobs if it’s time.
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