FIRE? Unless you hate or are bad at your job, isn't work the best part of life?

LV_426

I think reaching the stage where you know you could pack it in, gives a whole new level of freedom in terms of what you are prepared to say, or put up with

Cus

The difficulty with FIRE for me is the concept of restricting yourself financially during the best years of your life.

k6chris

Cus said:

The difficulty with FIRE for me is the concept of restricting yourself financially during the best years of your life.

It need not be.  If you just invest half of any payrise, bonus or over-time you get, you will be amazed how quickly you can increase your chances of FI.  It does not have to be about knitting your own cornflakes.

pjcox2005

I always worry that having a career restricts the imagination; things are good, natural idea is to plough forward to promotion, then senior enough you feel you keep going.

Working into 70s could be great for a more rounded life if it allows you to take risks during it. Sabbaticals, change of career etc but otherwise does 50 years doing similar job have an impact.

Likewise Fire appeals if you then have years to explore hobbies or again have financial support to take risks but no good if you pause life to get there and then don’t have the ability to maximise it.

Retireinten

Cus said:

The difficulty with FIRE for me is the concept of restricting yourself financially during the best years of your life.

We have taken the concept of FIRE and adapted it to suit us.  We save around 45% of our net income but have what I'd call a very comfortable lifestyle alongside this. And that will continue into retirement. FIRE doesn't have to mean beans on toast every night for 10 years, it means whatever you want it to!

Cus

Retireinten said:

Cus said:

The difficulty with FIRE for me is the concept of restricting yourself financially during the best years of your life.

We have taken the concept of FIRE and adapted it to suit us.  We save around 45% of our net income but have what I'd call a very comfortable lifestyle alongside this. And that will continue into retirement. FIRE doesn't have to mean beans on toast every night for 10 years, it means whatever you want it to!

Fair enough. I have always had an eye on the future, whilst enjoying the rewards of today.  Everyone has their balance. Some of the extreme lifestyles you read about with FIRE are beyond reasonable to me.
When does FIRE become just prudent saving?

DT2001

Cus said:

The difficulty with FIRE for me is the concept of restricting yourself financially during the best years of your life.

I think I understand however we’ve done what we wanted to but not paid full price.
We love travel but build the holiday package ourselves - fly weekdays, use local transport, usually hand luggage only, self cater, park car using parkonmydrive app - so our trip will have cost a lot less than others pay allowing money to be invested.

We house swap as well, have rented out a room, converted property etc. When you’re young you tend to have much more energy so can generate income/wealth from more sources so easing the pressure to accumulate later.

Mind you 😋 children IMO have a much bigger effect on reaching FIRE than anything we might have done.

Workerdrone

Well I'm 45 and have just under 15 years to retirement (Fingers crossed). My job is comfortable enough. I have a great boss and it's a pretty solid large corporate. I've been a permanent home worker for the past 7 years ever since we adopted 2 children who turned out to have significant problems. Dropping the commute allowed me to be there morning and night.

I don't miss the office much, yes there is the banter and the practical jokes but I am pretty happy as a loner. I see my job more as something I plod at. Due to circumstance with the kids it would be pretty impractical for me to look at taking on more by climbing the greasy pole, or the instability of moving to a different employer.

Don't get me wrong, I can fully appreciate those who love their job. I had a job like that back around 2000. One where I was sad when Friday came and couldn't wait for Monday morning to roll around. I am happy for those that do. Perhaps as the kids grow and I come nearer to FI I can begin to look for something more rewarding. Of course I will be mid 50's by then so it would likely be a lateral transfer within my current company as I feel the job market may be a wee but tough at that age.

nigelbb

Albermarle said:

nigelbb said:

QrizB said:

RogerIrvine said:

Acknowledged that us in the middling MSE crowd don't have that leverage, still, isn't it better to have the focus of a job? I may be wrong and obviously no disrespect intended  but get the impression that tax-considerations or, even worse, a failure of imagination lies behind this FIRE goal.

I guess the question is, do you ever intend to retire? And if so, under what circumstances? Typically it's one of:

• When you physically can't work any more, or
  
• When you have alternative sources of income and have something you'd rather do with your time.
  

There's nothing special about state pension age other than you gain one alternative source of income (the state pension). Some people might need to work past SPA, others will be financially independent before SPA and so can choose to work or not.

A nice bonus of working past state pension age is that you no longer pay National insurance so you get an instant 10% pay rise which in combination with your state pension can allow you to reduce your hours.

This will change following the recent changes .
As part of the government’s health and social care reforms, around 1.3 million pensioners over the age of 65 who earn more than £9,568, will be paying national insurance contributions on their earnings for the first time.

No it won't change. It's only the new Health & Social Care tax of 1.25% that pensioners will pay. Pensioners are still exempted from regular National Insurance so someone who continues working after they start to receive their pension will still get a nice pay rise.

jamesd

Cus said:

The difficulty with FIRE for me is the concept of restricting yourself financially during the best years of your life.

Cus said:

Fair enough. I have always had an eye on the future, whilst enjoying the rewards of today.  Everyone has their balance. Some of the extreme lifestyles you read about with FIRE are beyond reasonable to me.
When does FIRE become just prudent saving?

A benefit of FIRE is not restricting yourself to a job during some of the healthier retired years of your life because you start the freedom to use those years as you want sooner. The degree to which you seek financial independence then the prudent capability to retire early and at what retired income level depends on the individuals involved, the trade-offs are personal. The trade-off: more spending or accumulated money vs more healthy retired years.

FIRE becomes prudent saving when it ceases to allow financial independence or retirement before commonplace retirement ages, meaning in the UK around a couple of years before state pension age. Not a formal definition but a pragmatic one. In some jobs there can be an earlier work pension age and that might be taken as normal, with FIRE being an age earlier than that.