Playing with FIRE - A Review
The Financial Independent, Retire Early (FIRE) movement has gone from a fringe group on a tightly networked series of blogs to a broader, more socially acceptable movement of people that are looking for a way out of the hustle and bustle of the modern economy.
In reality, the movement has been around for decades, with one of its earliest proponents being Vicki Robin, who collaborated with her partner, Joe Dominguez, to write Your Money or Your Life in 1992.
There are now multiple variations of FIRE, but the gist of the FIRE movement is to seek passive forms of income through various investments that will enable someone to live without having to rely on income from a regular, salaried job. In its most common form, FIRE leads its adherents to become frugal, saving a large portion of their incomes and investing them.
In the “traditional” FIRE movement frugality serves two purposes: (1) It enables one to save an invest a large portion of one’s income to create a source of future, passive income. (2) It reduces the overall living expense that one has, thus also shrinking the investment income one needs to truly retire early.
There are numerous stories that are regularly published by FIRE advocates that record the success of individuals that have been able to retire in their early thirties or forties. There are cases where individuals have been able to retire in their twenties, too.
Of course, there are also a number of reports of people who have attempted FIRE that have had to step back into the workforce for a variety of reasons, including the high cost of living in their chosen home, medical expenses, and others.
In 2019, recent convert to the FIRE movement, Scott Rieckens, decided to make a documentary of he and his wife’s beginning steps toward FIRE. The film includes a number of interviews with many of the key voices in the FIRE movement. Alongside the documentary, he also released a book that contains mostly the same information, with some more in-depth examples.
For those wondering what the FIRE movement is, both of Rieckens products are helpful. This provides a basic understanding of what FIRE is all about. It also provides a window into the motivation of many, like the Rieckens family, for pursuing FIRE: to have more time for family and leisure activities.
As something of a personal finance junkie, I’ve read a lot of the internet material on FIRE. It is a truly intriguing financial philosophy, but one that has particular dangers, especially for Christians.
Movie/Book Review
The Playing with Fire documentary and book, however, are not particularly compelling apologies for the movement. The concept, as presented by Rieckens, is more about the decision to be “counter-cultural” than it is about the mechanics of FIRE. Also, notably, the Rieckens’ vision for FIRE is to step out of the workforce in an arbitrary timeframe of 10-years, meanwhile holding onto the basic framework of a middle-class lifestyle. Additionally, Playing with Fire describes the early stages of the quest for FIRE, rather than presenting a vision of what the FIRE lifestyle looks like ten years after stepping out of the workforce or what it looks like to work through the years it takes to get to one’s FIRE number.
The book and documentary do include interviews from individuals who have been FIREd for an extended period of time, but in the attempt to tell a compelling story about the decision to become FIRE Rieckens neglects to sufficiently reveal why one should strive for it. The reason the Rieckens family gives is to have more time to care for their toddler daughter (which Mrs. Rieckens states will be their only child), though the math of a 10-year FIRE horizon shows that the decision is being made on the hope of seeing more of the child’s teenage years, rather than the time-intensive formative years.
In the end, individuals that already have done their research on the FIRE movement will find little of new value in Rieckens’ products. The FIRE concept is, after all, exceptionally simple. And, those who are pondering FIRE may come away with more questions than answers.
For those that aren’t aware of the FIRE movement, it’s a well-constructed documentary and the book is accessible prose. Renting the film from a streaming service may well be a decent way to spend an evening on the couch at home, but it is a beginning point, not an ending point.
The way we talk about humans also has moral implications, which are more significant than how we treat our pets. In his 2011 book, Less than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, David Livingstone Smith explores how language changes culture and leads to the justification of extreme violence against others, especially when they become perceived as less than human.