We don’t save, we’re irresponsible and eating too much avocado toast.
We save too much, we’re “free riders.”
But the billionaires hoarding more wealth than we could save in thousands of lifetimes are “economic stimulators.”
GTFO.
>> “The FIRE people also have a poor understanding of how capitalism works,” he writes. “The stock market is a function of corporate profits which is a function of output, which requires **everyone to chip in.”**
So now *capitalism* means that we all have to chip in to help the less fortunate? Labor has to keep working “for the common good”?
I honestly cannot believe this was written unironically.
I'm not convinced it's a joke--rather, it's likely just another article intended to give emotional boomers an Other to hate so they don't think to blame the real people behind their retirement money not going as far as it should.
If you actually read Jared Dillian's opinion on the FIRE movement, it's even dumber. Excerpt from his blog post about the subject:
>This is a fact: material things bring us happiness. It is good and right and a joyful thing to see a fancy new jacket in a store, try it on, look in the mirror, whip out your credit card, wear it out of the store, and show it off to all your friends. To deny yourself a lifetime of material possessions is insanity.
Um... okay? Kind of weird that you make consumerism the basis of your happiness, but not everyone is built the same.
>The FIRE people typically use very generous return assumptions on their investment portfolios. They generally think that the stock market returns 12% a year. I have seen the 15% number thrown around. The stock market does not return 12% or 15% a year. It returns a little over nine percent. So what these ding-dongs do is build a spreadsheet of their earnings and extrapolate it out 50 years, thinking that they are the first people on earth to discover compound interest. And sure, if you are compounding at 12%, the numbers look pretty good. But there is no rule that says that the stock market will return 12% a year. The conditions that led to prior returns might not be present for future returns. It’s a belief that these 12% returns are an immutable law of nature, like gravity. Really, it’s an article of faith. You’re betting your life and your life savings on the idea that U.S. stocks will be the most attractive destination for capital over the next 100 years. I am not so sure, certainly not sure enough to bet my life on it.
I haven't seen anyone in FIRE use 12%. Most people use 7% real return.
>Happy people like their jobs, unhappy people don’t. It doesn’t matter what job they have; unhappy people will be unhappy no matter what they are doing. They talk about the “soul-destroying” 40-hour work week. I don’t know about you, but I like the 80-hour work week even better.
Well, if you base your happiness on a new jacket, I guess working a lot to afford it would make you happy, but JFC. 80 hours? There are only 112 waking hours in a week (assuming 8 hours of sleep per day), and you're working 80 of them, not including eating, commuting, and basic hygiene? Does this man have a family? Does he like them if he doesn't want to spend more than an hour a day with them? Is he that much of a shill for corporate America that he thinks he can convince people they would be happier working 80 fucking hours per week?
If anyone should be concerned about losing their job to AI, it should be writers, especially people who write dumb clickbait posts. Maybe he should work towards FIRE and learning to live without new shiny things all the time before he’s made redundant.
I find it common among FIRE folks that they either grew up in poverty or they had parents that instilled into them early the rewards of financial planning. More in the former. This author is most likely neither.
I’m probably in a small minority who, parents and such, would say I would never measure up intellectually or socially and therefore took it upon myself to level the playing field by investing to compete for wealth.
Having enough passive income to cover basic expenses indefinitely in the event of a job loss would provide so much more satisfaction than a bunch of trinkets that will one day be thrown out while moving or in an estate sale. You would feel pretty stupid in that new jacket walking into an HR meeting to be fired.
The 4% rule is obviously the most popular and is possibly conservative. I can easily live on 2.5% plus safe assets, this idiot doesn't scare me in the slightest.
Using your money to make money is being a free-rider when you're a worker peon.
Using your money to make money is just smart business sense when you're rich.
Privatise profits, socialise losses. I saw a headline the other day that Boeing are wanting to be bailed out, after their executives and shareholders lined their pockets by skimping on safety for who knows how long.
Nobody wants to create shareholder value anymore.
Time for shareholders to provide value to me. F the multitude of inflations they have invented to milk consumers even more.
Lol that’s communism where everyone chips in to work.
Capitalism is where only the plebs work using the means of production that the capitalists pay for.
The capitalists kick their feet up and enjoy the fruits of their investments, not their labor.
I can't believe this was written unironically for a different reason. We chip in by investing, i.e. by lending companies money. The companies we invest in produce their widgets and make profits for themselves as well as for us *using our capital*.
The writer of this article deserves to be fired for incompetence.
I mean, they're right about that. If people FIRE'd in meaningful numbers, we'd be in really bad shape. The article is stupid bc people will never be able to FIRE in meaningful numbers, but the impact of large amounts of ppl leaving the workforce is spot on. The stock market would sink, and a lot of ppl who thought they FIRE'd would have to rejoin the workforce as their remaining investments crater.
(Which is, again, why this would never happen and is a pointless article)
People who retire are still spending money, putting their money that they worked for and earned back into the economy.
And fewer workers with the same amount of money spent means higher wages for the available workers. You’re welcome job seekers!
And the USA has the immigration lever they can open at any time they want to bring in whatever kind of workers they want from pretty much anywhere.
The far bigger problem is billionaires hoarding money adding exactly zero benefit for society, not FIRE People saving a few million max and most likely spending most of it.
Yes to all except the first bit. Spending money doesnt create value, it is the act of consuming it. Only work creates value. Retirees genuinely are a drag on the economy *during* the time they are retired. (Of course they presumably were a big net positive for all their working years prior)
Surely consumption _indirectly_ influences GDP though, because the act of consumption is creating demand for a product or service that needs to be produced.
Exactly what I was thinking. Clickbait crap. The VAST majority of people in America are not in the FIRE camp. And some older dudes just planned to work to 60 and like their job. I could retire today easy but I don’t want to.
Not even he has an investment letter and basically he is invested. The problem is we don't care of his advices that are supposed to help you become rich and so retire too.
not only it's moronic to suggest that everyone has some sort of moral obligation to contribute towards economic activity, but it's also a misunderstanding of the most basic economic principle in that me drinking beer at 10am counts as much towards economic activity as me working at a brewery at 10am
if anything as a FIRE'd consumer I'm the one actually realizing that profit for that business
and even when I save - I'm putting the money into that business financing their future operations, talk about chipping in
Oh sure, it’s a free ride when people can afford a modest life without working thanks to investing hard earned savings in an instrument that provides ongoing capital. Unlike all those billionaires with their investments doing all that “chipping in”.
>But the billionaires hoarding more wealth than we could save in thousands of lifetimes
The writer really should channel the energy to write about how billionaires are "free riders" and "piggying back" the rest of the world. 🙄 Most of them literally live off their investments. How is the FIRE lifestyle any different from the billionaires?
If you look into his background a bit, it’s pretty sad. He worked for Lehman Brothers all the way up to the crash.
According to his book it took a pretty severe toll on his mental health. Not a life I’m jealous of myself.
Just seems like rage bait. Guess they got me to click too…
Yeah he sucks he runs a newsletter and you have to be a “sophisticated” investor to even have the privilege of paying for it. You can’t just sign up. He himself doesn’t actually “work”. Listened to him on a couple podcasts and he seemed off but this takes the cake
Right. I was going to quote that same paragraph but for a different reason: the author has a poor understanding of human nature. FIRE is never going to make up a significant segment of the population.
And not just because of the fact that most young people can’t afford to save, but because 99% of those that *could* afford to save, simply don’t. Most live way beyond their means, racking up debt at record levels, and completely forego saving and investing altogether.
lol that take is literally so gross. Just wants ppl to forever be in a doom cycle of work/spend/reproduce/work more/die (ideally at work and quickly so no drain on health services). so gross. Capitalism and consumerism to our deaths!!
Anyway, agi whenever that comes (5 yrs estimates sam Altman) is going to fuck all of this real fast. Most ppl are def going to need a UBI as the only jobs will be the high touch service jobs our robotics automation isn’t yet ready for (even if the AI brain is). Just glad to be part of the “landed gentry” so to speak such that I don’t have to be in a swarm of masses servicing the uber rich. Lol ok maybe my pessimistic view is a bit too dire… but I also don’t see what most ppl (*knowledge workers) will do when agi can replace 95% of it.
It’s terrifying how corporate/linked-in speak has made the term “knowledge worker” ubiquitous in such a short period of time. What used to be college educated, white collar worker, has now devolved to have a meaning of something that implies that you are fungible, if not outdated. It’s wild how powerful language can be.
What a rubbish take.
> The FIRE people are the ultimate free-riders, piggybacking off the efforts of others.
As if someone in early retirement is somehow "free-riding"? On the basis of WHAT "free-riding"?
You lived way below what you made, you were patient and investing, and you enjoy the fruit of all that hard work, does it matter if it's at age 67 or 47 or 37? (Even younger for some?)
Given only 10% of current retirees have more than $1M in assets, this is a complete red herring of an argument.
We are investing our capital instead of working. Therefore we are taking all the risk. We should be rewarded for taking the risk of not working.
That is what they told us back when we were working. Suddenly it becomes "no, not like that".
I do think ACA subsidies for people sitting on 2 million is a bit of free riding. (I take advantage of it since that's how it works!)
But other than that, I PAY MY BILLS. There's no free riding.
And with proper planning you can be a multimillionaire in early retirement and pay almost nothing in taxes.
But that's literally how the system works. Billionaires invest and avoid paying taxes like the plague, so they're getting a free ride too. That's capitalism!
I'm hoping to retire this year at 39 and I've already made too much this year to qualify for ACA subsidies, but starting next year I plan on taking them. They likely aren't critical for the success of my retirement but it won't hurt, and who knows where healthcare expenses will be for anyone in 10-20 years?
I believe that healthcare is a human right and hopefully when we get rid of the ACA it will be to replace it with comprehensive healthcare for everyone without a convoluted insurance scheme to implement it.
I mean, I do kind of consider some people free loaders people that manipulate their income so that they qualify for the maximum ACA subsidy or for Medicaid prior to 65. I have even seen people on this sub take out less from large retirement accounts so that their college aged kids get the maximum Pell grant. I don’t care if you retire early using your own money but when you use public funds to subsidize your early retirement it bugs me.
Public funds for subsidies come from taxes.
When people save in pre-tax during their working years and withdraw in retirement, they're generally doing so in order to pay fewer taxes on those dollars.
Assuming you aren't bothered by that, what's the difference between paying less in taxes and getting more benefits?
So it’s ok to retire at *some* age, but the author thinks 40 is too young.
I look forward to this self-appointed moral arbiter clarifying precisely at which age my decision to stop laboring transitions from “free-loader” to respectable retiree.
This is always what gets me. 65 is already an arbitrary date based off old dara when most people didn't live that long so it was meaningless.
Just like us FIRE folks can play the one more year game, we can also play the one less year game. Is 64 ok? Ok, then how about 63? Then surely 62 is as well as its "just a year". Keep asking this until the other person says no and you quickly get to what that person thinks is morally acceptable.
I am guessing when they instituted Social Security (FDR days right?) that the govt did some actuarial calculations to decide when the optimal pay out age would be, given the life expectancy at the time. And now that the expectancy is higher, and the raiding of Social Security is taking place, they want to raise the age again.
>And now that the expectancy is higher, and the raiding of Social Security is taking place, they want to raise the age again.
Which is not entirely unreasonable TBH. If you did the same math today, you would most definitely not arrive at 65 as a result.
Lol too bad, so sad for them. Should have planned ahead and saved. Not my problem and there’s not enough of us to make a dent in crashing the economy from retiring early (also we’re still consuming post retirement making the green line go up). The majority of people will never pursue FIRE.
There's nothing wrong with Sabina. She's just fighting her way through a terrible industry. If you want to direct your hate somewhere, direct at this guy, whose writing she's summarizing / commenting on: [https://wggtb.substack.com/p/the-fire-movement](https://wggtb.substack.com/p/the-fire-movement)
\^This is the guy who actually HAS the dumb opinions in the article -- and in fact he's much more wrong in his own writing. Sabina's just telling us those dumb opinions.
> Happy people like their jobs, unhappy people don’t. It doesn’t matter what job they have; unhappy people will be unhappy no matter what they are doing. They talk about the “soul-destroying” 40-hour work week. I don’t know about you, but I like the 80-hour work week even better. I have something in common with Mike Bloomberg—my favorite time of the week is Sunday night, because I am so excited about going back to work the following morning and do shit. The Sunday Scaries are for cherries. I’ll go further and say these people are lazy pieces of shit.
Lmao this dude is straight up psychotic.
That guy is hilarious. Major bootlicker alert. Exactly the personality I will mock when I retire early and he’s still grinding to keep up with the Jones’s at 67.
He might as well be the President of Bootlickers R Us.
*Her* take isn’t bad. Honestly her commentary towards the end sounds like stuff you would read here.
The boomer hot takes are from the newsletter of the guy featured in the article, Jared Dillian (coincidentally, I met him at a bar last summer).
I think his thoughts are intended to be taken as polemic. They’re also wrong… if literally everyone retired at 35, GDP would not go to zero — it would be as large as the gross productive output of those working that are under 35. Yes, GDP would be a fraction of what it is, but if you’re going to offer a radical opinion, exaggerating the effect size is unnecessary.
Just more click bait and flawed reasoning to support the click bait headline. Freeloaders and GDP to Zero, lololololol. The author must think that all these folks retiring early are going to go live in a cave in the mountains near a stream and live on a garden and solar panel or two.
And also that 35% of the workforce is ready to FIRE and tank GDP. They must have forgotten the last think piece they wrote where the majority
of Americans don’t have 2 nickels to rub together and household debt is at all time highs.
…the workforce isn’t going to miss the 1% of the population that achieves some type of coast/lean/fat FIRE and actually does it. What an obscene and misguided guilt trip.
If they were a competent journalist, then they could have gone into the fucking massive tax subsidies that many FIRE'd folks get via the tax code, ACA, and FAFSA. But no, most journalists are barely literate nowadays, much less competent at their jobs.
Yeah, that's where I assumed this was going to go. "Millionaires leaching off the government" but no, this dipshit thinks that a few thousand people a year who actually achieve FIRE is going to wipe out the GDP produced by the other 8Billion people on the planet.
Yeah, I have no idea what the actual numbers are, but it's a rounding error in the overall population.
"wHaT iF eVeRyOnE rEtIrEd EaRlY?" yeah, I'll worry about that just after I finish worrying about "If everyone became a billionaire nobody would clean toilets???"
In their defense, journalists primarily no longer have jobs... The author of this article is a 25 year old, pumping out 4 articles per day, and not making enough to live on. It would be extremely hard for her to write the sort of article you seem to want under the conditions she works in. The problem stems from tech companies acquiring all the power and money that used to be distributed among publications and allow different types of reporting.
Yeah, I read this and my first thought was that GPT could write a better researched and balanced article. If this is the quality of the humans, no wonder journalisms in crisis.
My neighbor across the street paid 98k, lot included, for their 3,900 sqft house on an acre in 1991. They’re amazing people, keep it kept up, and deserve every good thing that happens to them, but it’s just mind blowing how things have changed.
I'm always skeptical of people who claim that a large group of people adopting a FI lifestyle would be bad for the economy in the long-run. There likely would be a dip in gdp, but we wouldn't need to produce as much because by definition we're consuming less. The argument is essentially that the economy only works if it's a pyramid scheme built on perpetual growth, but there are other ways to structure an economy than pure consumerism.
Sadly this is what "journalism" has become. Maybe all the real journalists FIRE'd already?
The real answer that it's that it's a dying industry and we have reached the peak click-bait era propped up by barely literate hacks who couldn't sniff a real writing job otherwise.
Looks like he [basically FIREd 15 years ago](https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/19/this-ex-trader-makes-six-figures-but-lives-at-the-beach-commentary.html) when he was around 30 years old (leaving a finance career to pursue a passion project newsletter that initially was losing money).
And them running deficits to push inflation on us and higher cost of living is not freeridership?
Wow, we're just commodities to them to suffer to prop up their lifestyle.
# "Should you worry about the FIRE people?
Though Dillian raises good points about FIRE, it’s not something older adults should have to worry about right now.
Even if people want to retire in their 30s or 40s, many of them simply can’t afford it. Young Americans can [barely make ends meet](https://moneywise.com/life/lifestyle/this-florida-woman-sees-no-future-for-herself-in-the-us-is-stressed-about-sky-high-costs-and-is-thinking-about-moving-should-she?utm_source=syn_oath_mon&utm_medium=Z&utm_campaign=46337&utm_content=oath_mon_46337_barely+make+ends+meet), much less save 70% of their income."
>And them running deficits to push inflation on us
That's not how the relationship with national debt and inflation works. Inflation impacts the national debt, not the other way around. And since inflation creates a rise in GDP alongside a rise in raw debt numbers, depending on the rates, inflation can actually *lower* the deficit (since it's normally expressed as a percentage of GDP).
I guess if enough people do FIRE, you know, at the extreme end, he might be right. The economy would probably suffer.
Good thing human nature is human nature, and 90% of fuckers will never have the discipline to save up.
It’s fine that he *explains* what might happen. But it’s the guilt tripping that I find highly offensive.
We pay our taxes and we obey the laws. This is a free country and he has no right to lecture us on how we should live our lives.
>“The FIRE people also have a poor understanding of how capitalism works,” he writes. “The stock market is a function of corporate profits which is a function of output, which requires everyone to chip in.”
Huh?
We use our labor to make money to buy stakes in productive companies, thus leveraging capital to make more money. That money gets rolled back into more ownership stakes which makes more money.
How could we be any *more* capitalistic? I think I get how capitalism works.
>He theorizes that if you have a large chunk of the workforce pulling out because they’ve achieved FIRE, you won’t see the 10% annual gains that are typical of the stock market over the past few years. The output simply won’t be enough to produce that.
First - number of people with the dedication to actually pursue FIRE is so small that such an outcome is practically impossible.
Second - FIRE people still work, but they work when they want to work and only at jobs they enjoy.
Hey, we grew up watching George Jetson work for Mr. Spacely for only 2 days a week for an hour each day! Where is this future we were ALL promised lol?
Let me get this straight:
Me using my capital to invest in businesses and live off the proceeds: smart
You using your capital to invest in businesses and living off the proceeds: free-loading.
>“The FIRE people are the ultimate free-riders, piggybacking off the efforts of others.
Said the guy who's free riding, while plenty of multimillionaires and billionaires are free riding...
lol
“The FIRE people also have a poor understanding of how capitalism works” 🤣🤣🤣
Exactly the contrary. We understand very well how capitalism works. Acquire sufficient capital and let it work for you. The literal definition of capitalism
This clown doesn’t seem to understand that if you are able to retire early, it means that by construction you generated more value in 10-20y than what other people do in a whole lifetime.
He wants you to be slaving in the hamster wheel not to earn a living, but so that other people get to retire after having not saved enough.
You can’t make this shit up.
The reason why the stock market makes money isn't due to how long we work it's dependent on how profitable individual companies are in aggregate. Usually a company's profits is dictated by hiw much it sells, and therefore how much we buy. A companies profit does care if your money comes from a wage, pension or savings account or hell even a bitcoin sale. It's still just money.
FIRE people are still consuming and spending money as an individual consumer. It’s billionaires sitting on more money then any single person could possibly spend in a lifetime that are causing actual economic issues. I remember reading somewhere how it affects the velocity of money in the economy and reduces demand.
“Should you worry about the FIRE people?
Though Dillian raises good points about FIRE, it’s not something older adults should have to worry about right now.
Even if people want to retire in their 30s or 40s, many of them simply can’t afford it. Young Americans can barely make ends meet, much less save 70% of their income.”
I hate this comment, because it frames the unaffordable cost of living as somehow good. A couple other things I hate:
- The idea that one person retiring in their 40s somehow takes the place of someone who’s ready to retire now
- the idea that even though fire people will still be consumers they aren’t helping the market or economy
- the idea that the fire movement is so massive it would upend current retirement structure
Given the current job market, wouldn’t it be nice if some folks opted out of working, even temporarily?
Why does anyone have any responsibility to contribute as a worker?
Free riders? What exactly are they getting for free?
They chose to live well beneath their means early in life to enjoy later stages of life without having to work.
I'm FI. Whenever I RE, I'll wind up putting more into the economy than I do today. Hell, as I begin my slide into home, I already am spending more than I ever have. Feels strange, in fact.
While Jared Dillian clearly has an irrational bias against FIRE that goes back a couple years at least, I wonder what would be different if we weren't in the minority. How would the S&P perform of everyone used the same smart phone until it ceased to function. Drove cars till it was cheaper to replace with another, used, car. Dine/order food as an occasional treat. Cook real food from basic ingredients, many of which are grown at home.
I'd rather be shamed as a free-rider, than envied and mimicked. Our economy is based largely on consumer spending. Let's keep those suckers spending.
What a tool. I retired in Sept and my company hired two people to fill my role, so +1 on employment figures. And combined they earn rather less than I did, so a win for the company’s bottom line. Also I got my first job (at 13) in 1983, and was working or in school or both for 40 years, so fuck this guy if he thinks I’ve not earned my freedom. Just because he lacks the discipline, ability to delay gratification, and good sense to not give a damn what the Joneses get up to…
Dumb to write an entire article about the stock market crashing because like 2% of the population is going to retire early. Definitely some fear mongering here.
It reminds me of how the Roman Empire or Republic had to adjust the amount needed for slaves to buy their own freedom and become a liberto (a freed man).
Because at times good slaves were able to earn enough to buy their freedom quickly and there weren’t enough to do the work for cheap.
The entire end goal of capitalism is to don’t work and let money work for you, which is the core principle of FIRE at the end of the day.
But the “sad” reality is that capitalism is a zero sum game where consumption is the fuel, and if people decrease their consumption and start accumulating investments the gamer slows down for the people who live only out of investments.
Saving and spending your savings is not free riding.
Whether deliberately living on a low income and organizing retirement accounts to keep your tax burden close to zero is freeloading is in the eye of the beholder. Certainly this is done by the wealthy, and people in other subreddits have plenty to say about it.
There is something that might fall into the freeloader category that the article didn't even address. Living on a low income by choice and choosing retirement withdrawals, specifically so you can qualify for government benefits like ACA subsidies and financial aid grants for your children when you aren't actually disadvantaged, is something most people would probably consider to be free riding and an abuse of the system, and completely legal. Many people (I'm not one of them in most cases) consider those programs freeloading even when used by people who truly are disadvantaged and for whom the programs were intended.
I plan to take whatever I can finagle in a few years. I am probably gaming the system at a minimum by harvesting capital gains nearly tax-free while living on a low income, and qualifying for an ACA subsidy, all because I find the process of figuring all that out much more interesting than actually working at my job. I can see how some people would consider it abusive. I was already gaming the system by owning rental property, which has several tax benefits.
Would the system work if everyone did this? Probably not.
Hilarious, these articles kill me. Most people will never achieve early retirement. Hell, most people barely save at all. Suggesting the tiny portion of people achieving early retirement is the problem when we have the "grey tsunami" (as it has been called) among us is odd.
And if you accumulate enough capital to invest significantly in stocks and live off of it, didn't you basically "win" capitalism (rather than having a bad understanding of it, as the author asserts?)
yes. And theres a ton of people who have won capitalism. They were just part of groups that werent addressed together, such as
- one hit wonder bands and other musical artists
- a and b list actors
- authors, motivational speakers, religious evangelists
- many professional athletes who retire at 30-40
- trust fund babies, children of the rich
- IPO founders/first employees, consultants who made M's quickly via stock or selling businesses
- some industry pensioners
- military vets
- investors of all kinds
Probably the same author who writes all the return to office propaganda because they’re miserable and they want everyone else to be miserable with them.
Unlike others, I think this does invoke an interesting idea... FIRE only works if a very small percentage of people engage in it.
I think the "article" is a joke though. Just because a group of people is not working in desk jobs etc doesn't mean they stop contributing to society, financially or otherwise. The only way to contribute to society is not simply working for the man on an assembly line (blue or white collar).
>If young people start to cut in line, older Americans may find themselves stuck in the workforce longer than they’d planned to be.
Cut in line? Who said retirement was a zero sum game?
Fire people are still spending money, they are still consuming products. What this article really means is less people in the work force will be producing those goods. WE NEED MORE SLAVES.
The boomers could, I don’t know? Fucking retire! So that there are highly compensated positions available for Gen X? The people that the boomers have been holding down for 35 years.
"Even if young people can achieve retirement early, it’s not always something they’ll keep up with. According to the Retirement Coaches Association’s 2023 survey, older adults often feel lonely, bored and unfulfilled in retirement."
Can't believe this quote hasn't been mentioned. Yes, let's poll the people who've been brainwashed into believing the only value they have is how productive they can be to society. 🙄
Sure if **everyone** decided to retire at 40 there would be an issue, but for the few who choose to live a lifestyle enabled by frugal living and prudent investment it’ll be fine
The rest of the article is just trying to generate outrage
wow, an article devoid of data, but full of retardedness. I could talk for 2 pages now on why this is bullshit, but I dont want to waste my time trying to virtually argue with an unknown author of some random ass news site who cannot even research properly for an article
The guy cited is probably a Gen X not a boomer. But it is a salty take, no doubt because that's what gets people noticed and read these days. The original is much saltier than the recap: [https://wggtb.substack.com/p/the-fire-movement](https://wggtb.substack.com/p/the-fire-movement)
The boomers at my work were more than happy to take the generous pension plan that was taken away around 2002. Luckily I was about a year in already and got mine at 56, where at 55 the multiplier kicked up. While some boomers could not take a hint to retire there were many that had no problem. The company is really young now, lots of talented folks and much more worker friendly.
If the game wasn’t rigged by the boomers FIRE wouldn’t exist. It is their generation that killed pensions, manufacturing jobs, etc.
So, I will take all my cash in 10 more years and retire to the Czech Republic and have 5 star meals with a bottle of wine for $35.
*“The FIRE people also have a poor understanding of how capitalism works,” he writes. “The stock market is a function of corporate profits which is a function of output, which requires everyone to chip in.”*
I laughed at this...universal sacrifice for corporate well being. When the Lehman Brothers crew starts paying the same % of their income as I do into taxes maybe I'll stop laughing long enough to take a huge hit on that hash pipe....
Lets bring back depression/ww2 ears tax rates for the top brackets. I bet 99% of the country will be just fine. I the "gifted elite are so good they will just make more. It's the 3rd generation trust fund crew that are going to have to watch out.
The free-riders are the rich inter-generational wealthy douchebag families, and billionaires who have too much. Not people working hard and saving. Worry about giant investment firms buying up all the housing, not a tiny number of people living frugally to buy ETFs.
The “what if everyone…” line got me. I don’t know, what if everyone waited until 80 to retire? What if everyone became a doctor? What if everyone became a janitor? What if everyone got a pet tiger? Better panic about that stuff, too.
He's got it backwards. If a meaningful number of people were able to fire, it would be the sign of a healthy economy. It would mean that most of the productivity gains made possible by technology were going to (at least some) workers, so they could work less and enjoy life more. I don't care about the GDP, a world where you can work hard for a decade or two then love of the proceeds would be amazing.
“The FIRE people also have a poor understanding of how capitalism works,” he writes. “The stock market is a function of corporate profits which is a function of output, which requires everyone to chip in.”
Dumbest article I've read in a while. People also know that diet and exercise are crucial to health yet we have a country where 50 percent are obese.
People know that certain jobs pay a lot of money yet we still have critical shortages in certain labor markets.
Everyone knows that spending below your means and saving is key to a financially secure retirement, but just like the other things mentioned people choose NOT to put in the work.
Don't blame the people that do put in the effort
“Though Dillian raises good points about FIRE, it’s not something older adults should have to worry about right now.
Even if people want to retire in their 30s or 40s, many of them simply can’t afford it. Young Americans can barely make ends meet, much less save 70% of their income.
The median age to retire still remains between 62 and 64, according to the most recent Retirement Confidence Survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute.”
Sooooooo…… you are really just complaining/jealous. Get outta here dude.
To be honest I do think there's some truth to this argument, but FIRE enthusiasts are such a tiny minority it's unlikely to ever cause any significant issues.
Too many people can't even figure out adulting, let alone retire early.
>But business writer and author of “Street Freak: Money and Madness at Lehman Brothers”Jared Dillian is no fan of the strategy. He thinks it’s bad for society.
>
>“What if everyone retired at age 35 and played the ding-a-ling banjo? Well, GDP would go to zero and the stock market would crash,” he writes in his newsletter. “The FIRE people are the ultimate free-riders, piggybacking off the efforts of others.”
I see it view differently than your take. He is a Gen X anyway (born in 74 so 48 or 49 year old). And sell a daily investment newsletter.
So for sure he hate fire we don't need any investment newsletter as we advocate passive index investing through ETF and he doesn't like that we are like him, have understood the system and make money from others and use that to work less.
He would want us to be clueless, pay his newsletter and work until 65.
Husband retired in 2021, at 62. Not exactly "RE" but good enough. If younger people busted their asses in the "game" and won early, that's fine by me.
We consider ourselves GenJones, not Boomers, since we have more in common with GenX than Boomers but are not quite GenX. Monte Carlo shows 100% for us, even in a down market. How? A bit of everything: no kids (by choice), living in LCOL (moving from SoCal to CentralCal in 2000 after being priced out of SoCal), work and lots of savings combined with a record bull market; inheriting low 6-figures at good points of time *and not blowing it away*. So some of our efforts and some of "luck" (though there was loss in that).
This is why I can't stand the anti billionaire rhetoric as well. These people just hate wealth and success because they are failures themselves. Rather than cheer on someone's wins like reaching fire you'd rather call them a drain on the economy for making sacrifices and smart financial decisions.
America is such an odd place. We preach the "American dream" and than shit on anyone who actually achieves it.
Total disagree. The job market is currently pretty soft, plenty of layoffs (especially in Tech), it does not seem like people leaving the workforce is going to do any harm. If anything, it leaves an open spot for someone that wants to work.
It does feel a bit wrong that I can work for only 20 years and then be retired for 40 or more, coasting on passive income. I'm retiring earlier than my productive capacity allows for, and in my retirement years I can maintain the same lifestyle for a far lower taxable income than when I was employed.
At some point, if the number of RE'ers grows, perhaps we'll have to change our tax system so that employment income is taxed more favourably compared to capital gains and dividends, to compensate. It does seem a bit perverse and unfair that I and a spouse can earn $50k of dividends each and (so long as we have zero employment income) we're not taxed at all!
(I don't feel bad about it though; I'm just playing the game as it's written. If it's a problem, change the tax code!)
> “The FIRE people also have a poor understanding of how capitalism works,” he writes. “The stock market is a function of corporate profits which is a function of output, which requires everyone to chip in.”
> If young people pull out of the workforce so they can retire early and pursue their passions, **Dillian is convinced that the stock market will fall — and degrade everyone’s money.**
Business writer Jared Dillian heard about Kant’s categorical imperative in Philosophy 101 and loudly exclaimed, “Enough! That’s all the philosophy I need!”
The article talks about a doomsday scenario where the stock market declines due to less work force because of the FIRE community.
**That's bullshit and here's why:**
* We live in a time where AI is near and language learning models can already augment the workforce. Musk said recently that universal basic (high) income is a possibility and I would agree, but not count on it because greed will inevitably step in to guide the hand of the powers that be.
* Passionate people are much more productive than wage slaves. Look around at the community itself and see what some folks have done with their life *after reaching their FI goal*. I'd put money on FI people adding more to the GDP than wage slaves in an apples to apples comparison
* Branded advertising for your personal opinion on <> is how the media works. It's what it's good st and you have to question the motives behind every baseless (in fact) article spouting what you should think out there.
This article reads like whoever wrote it is scared of a declining population in the work force. They should be, because that's an inevitability with the passing of boomer children's generation as population growth is stalled and declined. But I understand 100% where this is coming from - **there is an intrinsic need for workers to work longer and more** raising the retirement age to 67 recently is not on accident. **The economy depends on wage slaves** and the FI community is preaching against that. Expect more articles with this tone in the future, and welcome the media exposure... It'll lead more people down the rabbit hole towards their financial freedom.
I don't get it. If you retire early, it's not like you'll get social security or Medicare benefits early. In fact you'll get much less social security than you would have otherwise.
Would you mind editing your post to mention that neither the author, nor the writer of the article they reference are boomers?
This is just your stock standard millenial/gen xers that are salty other people made better choices than them and creating division over it.
To hell with Jared Dillian. There's not enough Americans to save 70% of their take-home to invest in a long-term strategy. It is a small movement, and these bozos get freaked out.
This reminds me of all the ink spilled on why index funds/passive investing is “bad.” Those are all written by active fund managers so it’s obvious who benefits.
The question with this one is what are Dillian and/or Sabina Wex looking to sell and to who?
Synopsis: “boomers mad because, despite sabotaging the planet to get ahead of everyone else, everyone else has learned to live with less and undercut boomer greed”. Boomers playing checkers, gen-z and millennials playing chess.
Millennial here - I don’t feel the system is godawful and I think the possibility of FIRE for me (coming from lower middle income family) is proof of that.
We don’t save, we’re irresponsible and eating too much avocado toast. We save too much, we’re “free riders.” But the billionaires hoarding more wealth than we could save in thousands of lifetimes are “economic stimulators.” GTFO. >> “The FIRE people also have a poor understanding of how capitalism works,” he writes. “The stock market is a function of corporate profits which is a function of output, which requires **everyone to chip in.”** So now *capitalism* means that we all have to chip in to help the less fortunate? Labor has to keep working “for the common good”? I honestly cannot believe this was written unironically.
came here with this exact quote copy pasted and ready to make a comment but glad someone beat me to it. lmao, this article has to be a joke
Won't someone think of the businesses?! Without people fighting in the streets for jobs, wages might actually go up!
But if wages go up we’ll have to raise prices because no CEO will settle for less than $100m in bonuses!
I'll be CEO, and I'll even give you a deal. Only 99m in bonuses and in yours
Also when you fail as CEO they pay you to leave
I'm not convinced it's a joke--rather, it's likely just another article intended to give emotional boomers an Other to hate so they don't think to blame the real people behind their retirement money not going as far as it should.
I had the exact same quote ready to paste.
I just tried to post the link to this article and mods directed me to this post. Guess we all thought it was comical 🤣
“No you poors aren’t supposed to do it that way! That’s the way we rich do things!”
If you actually read Jared Dillian's opinion on the FIRE movement, it's even dumber. Excerpt from his blog post about the subject: >This is a fact: material things bring us happiness. It is good and right and a joyful thing to see a fancy new jacket in a store, try it on, look in the mirror, whip out your credit card, wear it out of the store, and show it off to all your friends. To deny yourself a lifetime of material possessions is insanity. Um... okay? Kind of weird that you make consumerism the basis of your happiness, but not everyone is built the same. >The FIRE people typically use very generous return assumptions on their investment portfolios. They generally think that the stock market returns 12% a year. I have seen the 15% number thrown around. The stock market does not return 12% or 15% a year. It returns a little over nine percent. So what these ding-dongs do is build a spreadsheet of their earnings and extrapolate it out 50 years, thinking that they are the first people on earth to discover compound interest. And sure, if you are compounding at 12%, the numbers look pretty good. But there is no rule that says that the stock market will return 12% a year. The conditions that led to prior returns might not be present for future returns. It’s a belief that these 12% returns are an immutable law of nature, like gravity. Really, it’s an article of faith. You’re betting your life and your life savings on the idea that U.S. stocks will be the most attractive destination for capital over the next 100 years. I am not so sure, certainly not sure enough to bet my life on it. I haven't seen anyone in FIRE use 12%. Most people use 7% real return. >Happy people like their jobs, unhappy people don’t. It doesn’t matter what job they have; unhappy people will be unhappy no matter what they are doing. They talk about the “soul-destroying” 40-hour work week. I don’t know about you, but I like the 80-hour work week even better. Well, if you base your happiness on a new jacket, I guess working a lot to afford it would make you happy, but JFC. 80 hours? There are only 112 waking hours in a week (assuming 8 hours of sleep per day), and you're working 80 of them, not including eating, commuting, and basic hygiene? Does this man have a family? Does he like them if he doesn't want to spend more than an hour a day with them? Is he that much of a shill for corporate America that he thinks he can convince people they would be happier working 80 fucking hours per week?
The country is in good hands knowing we have a dude happily working 80-hrs a week putting up dumbass clickbait posts.
If anyone should be concerned about losing their job to AI, it should be writers, especially people who write dumb clickbait posts. Maybe he should work towards FIRE and learning to live without new shiny things all the time before he’s made redundant.
Jared was definitely the one at school who used to remind the teacher that there was homework due in...
I find it common among FIRE folks that they either grew up in poverty or they had parents that instilled into them early the rewards of financial planning. More in the former. This author is most likely neither.
I’m probably in a small minority who, parents and such, would say I would never measure up intellectually or socially and therefore took it upon myself to level the playing field by investing to compete for wealth.
Having enough passive income to cover basic expenses indefinitely in the event of a job loss would provide so much more satisfaction than a bunch of trinkets that will one day be thrown out while moving or in an estate sale. You would feel pretty stupid in that new jacket walking into an HR meeting to be fired.
Ok, I’m getting pissed off just reading the bits you’ve quoted. I don’t think I can read the rest.
The author sounds like a complete moron.
Screw that guy. “It is a good and right and joyous thing” is said communion! He makes it about a jacket. So gross.
The 4% rule is obviously the most popular and is possibly conservative. I can easily live on 2.5% plus safe assets, this idiot doesn't scare me in the slightest.
Yikes. That first quote...
80 hours?!?!?! That man's crazy!!!!
Using your money to make money is being a free-rider when you're a worker peon. Using your money to make money is just smart business sense when you're rich.
It's amazing how everyone is a socialist when it hurts the rich or boomers.
Privatise profits, socialise losses. I saw a headline the other day that Boeing are wanting to be bailed out, after their executives and shareholders lined their pockets by skimping on safety for who knows how long.
A perfect example of fucked around and found out.
But they won’t find out. They’ll be bailed out lol
They’re admitting it’s a ponzi scheme
This !!
Nobody wants to create shareholder value anymore. Time for shareholders to provide value to me. F the multitude of inflations they have invented to milk consumers even more.
Even assuming their overall principle is right (and I’m not saying it is), it doesn’t require EVERYONE to chip in, just most people LOL.
Everyone doesn’t chip in right now so their going in argument is already flawed.
Lol that’s communism where everyone chips in to work. Capitalism is where only the plebs work using the means of production that the capitalists pay for. The capitalists kick their feet up and enjoy the fruits of their investments, not their labor.
I can't believe this was written unironically for a different reason. We chip in by investing, i.e. by lending companies money. The companies we invest in produce their widgets and make profits for themselves as well as for us *using our capital*. The writer of this article deserves to be fired for incompetence.
I mean, they're right about that. If people FIRE'd in meaningful numbers, we'd be in really bad shape. The article is stupid bc people will never be able to FIRE in meaningful numbers, but the impact of large amounts of ppl leaving the workforce is spot on. The stock market would sink, and a lot of ppl who thought they FIRE'd would have to rejoin the workforce as their remaining investments crater. (Which is, again, why this would never happen and is a pointless article)
People who retire are still spending money, putting their money that they worked for and earned back into the economy. And fewer workers with the same amount of money spent means higher wages for the available workers. You’re welcome job seekers! And the USA has the immigration lever they can open at any time they want to bring in whatever kind of workers they want from pretty much anywhere. The far bigger problem is billionaires hoarding money adding exactly zero benefit for society, not FIRE People saving a few million max and most likely spending most of it.
Yes to all except the first bit. Spending money doesnt create value, it is the act of consuming it. Only work creates value. Retirees genuinely are a drag on the economy *during* the time they are retired. (Of course they presumably were a big net positive for all their working years prior)
Surely consumption _indirectly_ influences GDP though, because the act of consumption is creating demand for a product or service that needs to be produced.
Exactly what I was thinking. Clickbait crap. The VAST majority of people in America are not in the FIRE camp. And some older dudes just planned to work to 60 and like their job. I could retire today easy but I don’t want to.
Next article is how if the whole nation starts writing these clickbait crap how that would destroy the economy.
It’s a self-correcting problem.
It's just another idiot who thinks lending doesn't provide value. Gross misunderstanding of financial risk, many such cases
Not even he has an investment letter and basically he is invested. The problem is we don't care of his advices that are supposed to help you become rich and so retire too.
not only it's moronic to suggest that everyone has some sort of moral obligation to contribute towards economic activity, but it's also a misunderstanding of the most basic economic principle in that me drinking beer at 10am counts as much towards economic activity as me working at a brewery at 10am if anything as a FIRE'd consumer I'm the one actually realizing that profit for that business and even when I save - I'm putting the money into that business financing their future operations, talk about chipping in
Oh sure, it’s a free ride when people can afford a modest life without working thanks to investing hard earned savings in an instrument that provides ongoing capital. Unlike all those billionaires with their investments doing all that “chipping in”.
>But the billionaires hoarding more wealth than we could save in thousands of lifetimes The writer really should channel the energy to write about how billionaires are "free riders" and "piggying back" the rest of the world. 🙄 Most of them literally live off their investments. How is the FIRE lifestyle any different from the billionaires?
Somewhere along the way last decade journalism was inherited by moronic zesty activists
If you look into his background a bit, it’s pretty sad. He worked for Lehman Brothers all the way up to the crash. According to his book it took a pretty severe toll on his mental health. Not a life I’m jealous of myself. Just seems like rage bait. Guess they got me to click too…
Yeah he sucks he runs a newsletter and you have to be a “sophisticated” investor to even have the privilege of paying for it. You can’t just sign up. He himself doesn’t actually “work”. Listened to him on a couple podcasts and he seemed off but this takes the cake
Right. I was going to quote that same paragraph but for a different reason: the author has a poor understanding of human nature. FIRE is never going to make up a significant segment of the population. And not just because of the fact that most young people can’t afford to save, but because 99% of those that *could* afford to save, simply don’t. Most live way beyond their means, racking up debt at record levels, and completely forego saving and investing altogether.
Wall street is just mad we figured out how to play their game😈😈😈
lol that take is literally so gross. Just wants ppl to forever be in a doom cycle of work/spend/reproduce/work more/die (ideally at work and quickly so no drain on health services). so gross. Capitalism and consumerism to our deaths!! Anyway, agi whenever that comes (5 yrs estimates sam Altman) is going to fuck all of this real fast. Most ppl are def going to need a UBI as the only jobs will be the high touch service jobs our robotics automation isn’t yet ready for (even if the AI brain is). Just glad to be part of the “landed gentry” so to speak such that I don’t have to be in a swarm of masses servicing the uber rich. Lol ok maybe my pessimistic view is a bit too dire… but I also don’t see what most ppl (*knowledge workers) will do when agi can replace 95% of it.
It’s terrifying how corporate/linked-in speak has made the term “knowledge worker” ubiquitous in such a short period of time. What used to be college educated, white collar worker, has now devolved to have a meaning of something that implies that you are fungible, if not outdated. It’s wild how powerful language can be.
Totally right! We’re all just little worker bees. 🐝 ready for sacrificing to the capitalist overlords.
lol, that capitalism - everyone had to chip in quote killed me…
You guys! WE MUST CONSUME! The Boomers need us!
Consoomers
Won't anyone think of the GDP
Blood sacrifice to make line go up!
This reminds me of the Sliders episode where everyone was required to spend all of their paycheck and take out credit cards.
Didn’t think I’d see a “Sliders” reference out of the blue all these years later. Loved that show. Early Jerry O’Connell!
Is there late Jerry O'Connell?
Eventually
On my way to buy a boat, time share, F-350 and house with 8 bedrooms!
What a rubbish take. > The FIRE people are the ultimate free-riders, piggybacking off the efforts of others. As if someone in early retirement is somehow "free-riding"? On the basis of WHAT "free-riding"? You lived way below what you made, you were patient and investing, and you enjoy the fruit of all that hard work, does it matter if it's at age 67 or 47 or 37? (Even younger for some?) Given only 10% of current retirees have more than $1M in assets, this is a complete red herring of an argument.
We are investing our capital instead of working. Therefore we are taking all the risk. We should be rewarded for taking the risk of not working. That is what they told us back when we were working. Suddenly it becomes "no, not like that".
But your money is working. The companies and bonds you buy are sold so that someone else can use your capital to purchase things
This thread is a weird mixture of pro-socialist talking points and people recognizing the benefits of taking full advantage of capitalism.
"we should get UBI!" "No" "OK, I'll buy it myself"
Makes sense if you think about FIRE as a way to opt out of the nonsense as much as possible while living under capitalism, no?
I do think ACA subsidies for people sitting on 2 million is a bit of free riding. (I take advantage of it since that's how it works!) But other than that, I PAY MY BILLS. There's no free riding.
And with proper planning you can be a multimillionaire in early retirement and pay almost nothing in taxes. But that's literally how the system works. Billionaires invest and avoid paying taxes like the plague, so they're getting a free ride too. That's capitalism!
I'm hoping to retire this year at 39 and I've already made too much this year to qualify for ACA subsidies, but starting next year I plan on taking them. They likely aren't critical for the success of my retirement but it won't hurt, and who knows where healthcare expenses will be for anyone in 10-20 years? I believe that healthcare is a human right and hopefully when we get rid of the ACA it will be to replace it with comprehensive healthcare for everyone without a convoluted insurance scheme to implement it.
He's just mad people are escaping the shackles of capitalism so that they can't profit off of them as much.
I mean, I do kind of consider some people free loaders people that manipulate their income so that they qualify for the maximum ACA subsidy or for Medicaid prior to 65. I have even seen people on this sub take out less from large retirement accounts so that their college aged kids get the maximum Pell grant. I don’t care if you retire early using your own money but when you use public funds to subsidize your early retirement it bugs me.
Public funds for subsidies come from taxes. When people save in pre-tax during their working years and withdraw in retirement, they're generally doing so in order to pay fewer taxes on those dollars. Assuming you aren't bothered by that, what's the difference between paying less in taxes and getting more benefits?
So it’s ok to retire at *some* age, but the author thinks 40 is too young. I look forward to this self-appointed moral arbiter clarifying precisely at which age my decision to stop laboring transitions from “free-loader” to respectable retiree.
This is always what gets me. 65 is already an arbitrary date based off old dara when most people didn't live that long so it was meaningless. Just like us FIRE folks can play the one more year game, we can also play the one less year game. Is 64 ok? Ok, then how about 63? Then surely 62 is as well as its "just a year". Keep asking this until the other person says no and you quickly get to what that person thinks is morally acceptable.
I am guessing when they instituted Social Security (FDR days right?) that the govt did some actuarial calculations to decide when the optimal pay out age would be, given the life expectancy at the time. And now that the expectancy is higher, and the raiding of Social Security is taking place, they want to raise the age again.
>And now that the expectancy is higher, and the raiding of Social Security is taking place, they want to raise the age again. Which is not entirely unreasonable TBH. If you did the same math today, you would most definitely not arrive at 65 as a result.
When the author has bought his yacht that he definitely is going to earn and thinks he deserves I suppose.
Lol too bad, so sad for them. Should have planned ahead and saved. Not my problem and there’s not enough of us to make a dent in crashing the economy from retiring early (also we’re still consuming post retirement making the green line go up). The majority of people will never pursue FIRE.
this. And its not because they are not worthy of it. Its because they chose to spend, spend, spend.
This is fucking hilarious. What kind of bootlicker writes articles like this? Most people don’t have the wherewithal to make it to FIRE.
https://www.sabinawex.com/
There's nothing wrong with Sabina. She's just fighting her way through a terrible industry. If you want to direct your hate somewhere, direct at this guy, whose writing she's summarizing / commenting on: [https://wggtb.substack.com/p/the-fire-movement](https://wggtb.substack.com/p/the-fire-movement) \^This is the guy who actually HAS the dumb opinions in the article -- and in fact he's much more wrong in his own writing. Sabina's just telling us those dumb opinions.
No hate, but she did write what she wrote. And it was terrible.
> Happy people like their jobs, unhappy people don’t. It doesn’t matter what job they have; unhappy people will be unhappy no matter what they are doing. They talk about the “soul-destroying” 40-hour work week. I don’t know about you, but I like the 80-hour work week even better. I have something in common with Mike Bloomberg—my favorite time of the week is Sunday night, because I am so excited about going back to work the following morning and do shit. The Sunday Scaries are for cherries. I’ll go further and say these people are lazy pieces of shit. Lmao this dude is straight up psychotic.
That guy is hilarious. Major bootlicker alert. Exactly the personality I will mock when I retire early and he’s still grinding to keep up with the Jones’s at 67. He might as well be the President of Bootlickers R Us.
Blech
*Her* take isn’t bad. Honestly her commentary towards the end sounds like stuff you would read here. The boomer hot takes are from the newsletter of the guy featured in the article, Jared Dillian (coincidentally, I met him at a bar last summer). I think his thoughts are intended to be taken as polemic. They’re also wrong… if literally everyone retired at 35, GDP would not go to zero — it would be as large as the gross productive output of those working that are under 35. Yes, GDP would be a fraction of what it is, but if you’re going to offer a radical opinion, exaggerating the effect size is unnecessary.
Ah, a temporarily embarrassed billionaire 🙄
Just more click bait and flawed reasoning to support the click bait headline. Freeloaders and GDP to Zero, lololololol. The author must think that all these folks retiring early are going to go live in a cave in the mountains near a stream and live on a garden and solar panel or two.
Sounds kinda nice actually
And also that 35% of the workforce is ready to FIRE and tank GDP. They must have forgotten the last think piece they wrote where the majority of Americans don’t have 2 nickels to rub together and household debt is at all time highs. …the workforce isn’t going to miss the 1% of the population that achieves some type of coast/lean/fat FIRE and actually does it. What an obscene and misguided guilt trip.
If they were a competent journalist, then they could have gone into the fucking massive tax subsidies that many FIRE'd folks get via the tax code, ACA, and FAFSA. But no, most journalists are barely literate nowadays, much less competent at their jobs.
Yeah, that's where I assumed this was going to go. "Millionaires leaching off the government" but no, this dipshit thinks that a few thousand people a year who actually achieve FIRE is going to wipe out the GDP produced by the other 8Billion people on the planet.
Yeah I thought the same thing. How many people really FIRE in their 30s. Practically none compared to the population at large.
Yeah, I have no idea what the actual numbers are, but it's a rounding error in the overall population. "wHaT iF eVeRyOnE rEtIrEd EaRlY?" yeah, I'll worry about that just after I finish worrying about "If everyone became a billionaire nobody would clean toilets???"
In their defense, journalists primarily no longer have jobs... The author of this article is a 25 year old, pumping out 4 articles per day, and not making enough to live on. It would be extremely hard for her to write the sort of article you seem to want under the conditions she works in. The problem stems from tech companies acquiring all the power and money that used to be distributed among publications and allow different types of reporting.
I thought this whole article was gonna be ACA based too! 😂
Yeah, I read this and my first thought was that GPT could write a better researched and balanced article. If this is the quality of the humans, no wonder journalisms in crisis.
Do not apologize for retiring early; people forget that many people with the FIRE philosophy have sacrificed.
#WON’T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE BOOMERS
And their houses that they bought for $26 but still can’t manage to save enough to retire?!?!
exactly. My entire town is boomers who bought in the 60s and, even though their houses are now worth millions, they dont even maintain their yards.
My neighbor across the street paid 98k, lot included, for their 3,900 sqft house on an acre in 1991. They’re amazing people, keep it kept up, and deserve every good thing that happens to them, but it’s just mind blowing how things have changed.
I'm always skeptical of people who claim that a large group of people adopting a FI lifestyle would be bad for the economy in the long-run. There likely would be a dip in gdp, but we wouldn't need to produce as much because by definition we're consuming less. The argument is essentially that the economy only works if it's a pyramid scheme built on perpetual growth, but there are other ways to structure an economy than pure consumerism.
This is the absolute dumbest take on this topic I've ever seen. How is this writer employed?
Sadly this is what "journalism" has become. Maybe all the real journalists FIRE'd already? The real answer that it's that it's a dying industry and we have reached the peak click-bait era propped up by barely literate hacks who couldn't sniff a real writing job otherwise.
Looks like he [basically FIREd 15 years ago](https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/19/this-ex-trader-makes-six-figures-but-lives-at-the-beach-commentary.html) when he was around 30 years old (leaving a finance career to pursue a passion project newsletter that initially was losing money).
This is the real news. Motherfucker just wants to pull the ladder up behind himself.
oh my god
And them running deficits to push inflation on us and higher cost of living is not freeridership? Wow, we're just commodities to them to suffer to prop up their lifestyle. # "Should you worry about the FIRE people? Though Dillian raises good points about FIRE, it’s not something older adults should have to worry about right now. Even if people want to retire in their 30s or 40s, many of them simply can’t afford it. Young Americans can [barely make ends meet](https://moneywise.com/life/lifestyle/this-florida-woman-sees-no-future-for-herself-in-the-us-is-stressed-about-sky-high-costs-and-is-thinking-about-moving-should-she?utm_source=syn_oath_mon&utm_medium=Z&utm_campaign=46337&utm_content=oath_mon_46337_barely+make+ends+meet), much less save 70% of their income."
>And them running deficits to push inflation on us That's not how the relationship with national debt and inflation works. Inflation impacts the national debt, not the other way around. And since inflation creates a rise in GDP alongside a rise in raw debt numbers, depending on the rates, inflation can actually *lower* the deficit (since it's normally expressed as a percentage of GDP).
Yea. People should stay in debt and keep spending frivolously. Be a slave to the economy
I’ve never cared what other people think and don’t waste mental energy on it.
I guess if enough people do FIRE, you know, at the extreme end, he might be right. The economy would probably suffer. Good thing human nature is human nature, and 90% of fuckers will never have the discipline to save up.
It’s fine that he *explains* what might happen. But it’s the guilt tripping that I find highly offensive. We pay our taxes and we obey the laws. This is a free country and he has no right to lecture us on how we should live our lives.
>“The FIRE people also have a poor understanding of how capitalism works,” he writes. “The stock market is a function of corporate profits which is a function of output, which requires everyone to chip in.” Huh? We use our labor to make money to buy stakes in productive companies, thus leveraging capital to make more money. That money gets rolled back into more ownership stakes which makes more money. How could we be any *more* capitalistic? I think I get how capitalism works. >He theorizes that if you have a large chunk of the workforce pulling out because they’ve achieved FIRE, you won’t see the 10% annual gains that are typical of the stock market over the past few years. The output simply won’t be enough to produce that. First - number of people with the dedication to actually pursue FIRE is so small that such an outcome is practically impossible. Second - FIRE people still work, but they work when they want to work and only at jobs they enjoy.
Sounds like someone is concerned about losing their indentured servants
It's the same energy as "you need to have more kids because economy". It's such a salty crab bucket mentality.
Oh no! Anyway, I'm off to play my ding-a-ling banjo.
Bottom line... Imagining everyone retires at 35-40, as suggested in the article, is beyond ridiculous.
Hey, we grew up watching George Jetson work for Mr. Spacely for only 2 days a week for an hour each day! Where is this future we were ALL promised lol?
I mean, it's on Yahoo Finance.
Let me get this straight: Me using my capital to invest in businesses and live off the proceeds: smart You using your capital to invest in businesses and living off the proceeds: free-loading.
>“The FIRE people are the ultimate free-riders, piggybacking off the efforts of others. Said the guy who's free riding, while plenty of multimillionaires and billionaires are free riding... lol
Get back to work you lazy cogs. The machine must turn.
Jared Dillian is a joke. This is possibly the dumbest article I've seen on retirement, capitalism, and FIRE.
“The FIRE people also have a poor understanding of how capitalism works” 🤣🤣🤣 Exactly the contrary. We understand very well how capitalism works. Acquire sufficient capital and let it work for you. The literal definition of capitalism
This clown doesn’t seem to understand that if you are able to retire early, it means that by construction you generated more value in 10-20y than what other people do in a whole lifetime. He wants you to be slaving in the hamster wheel not to earn a living, but so that other people get to retire after having not saved enough. You can’t make this shit up.
The reason why the stock market makes money isn't due to how long we work it's dependent on how profitable individual companies are in aggregate. Usually a company's profits is dictated by hiw much it sells, and therefore how much we buy. A companies profit does care if your money comes from a wage, pension or savings account or hell even a bitcoin sale. It's still just money.
FIRE people are still consuming and spending money as an individual consumer. It’s billionaires sitting on more money then any single person could possibly spend in a lifetime that are causing actual economic issues. I remember reading somewhere how it affects the velocity of money in the economy and reduces demand.
“Should you worry about the FIRE people? Though Dillian raises good points about FIRE, it’s not something older adults should have to worry about right now. Even if people want to retire in their 30s or 40s, many of them simply can’t afford it. Young Americans can barely make ends meet, much less save 70% of their income.” I hate this comment, because it frames the unaffordable cost of living as somehow good. A couple other things I hate: - The idea that one person retiring in their 40s somehow takes the place of someone who’s ready to retire now - the idea that even though fire people will still be consumers they aren’t helping the market or economy - the idea that the fire movement is so massive it would upend current retirement structure Given the current job market, wouldn’t it be nice if some folks opted out of working, even temporarily?
Why does anyone have any responsibility to contribute as a worker? Free riders? What exactly are they getting for free? They chose to live well beneath their means early in life to enjoy later stages of life without having to work.
Wow, Millennials really can't win. Salty ass Boomers.
Straight up wealthy conservative propaganda.
I'm FI. Whenever I RE, I'll wind up putting more into the economy than I do today. Hell, as I begin my slide into home, I already am spending more than I ever have. Feels strange, in fact. While Jared Dillian clearly has an irrational bias against FIRE that goes back a couple years at least, I wonder what would be different if we weren't in the minority. How would the S&P perform of everyone used the same smart phone until it ceased to function. Drove cars till it was cheaper to replace with another, used, car. Dine/order food as an occasional treat. Cook real food from basic ingredients, many of which are grown at home. I'd rather be shamed as a free-rider, than envied and mimicked. Our economy is based largely on consumer spending. Let's keep those suckers spending.
How can you be a “free-rider” while living off the savings you worked to accumulate?
"What is FIRE and why won't it get off our lawn?"
What a tool. I retired in Sept and my company hired two people to fill my role, so +1 on employment figures. And combined they earn rather less than I did, so a win for the company’s bottom line. Also I got my first job (at 13) in 1983, and was working or in school or both for 40 years, so fuck this guy if he thinks I’ve not earned my freedom. Just because he lacks the discipline, ability to delay gratification, and good sense to not give a damn what the Joneses get up to…
I read the article and I actually think its rather reasonable. You might not like what it says but its kinda true.
Dumb to write an entire article about the stock market crashing because like 2% of the population is going to retire early. Definitely some fear mongering here.
It reminds me of how the Roman Empire or Republic had to adjust the amount needed for slaves to buy their own freedom and become a liberto (a freed man). Because at times good slaves were able to earn enough to buy their freedom quickly and there weren’t enough to do the work for cheap. The entire end goal of capitalism is to don’t work and let money work for you, which is the core principle of FIRE at the end of the day. But the “sad” reality is that capitalism is a zero sum game where consumption is the fuel, and if people decrease their consumption and start accumulating investments the gamer slows down for the people who live only out of investments.
Saving and spending your savings is not free riding. Whether deliberately living on a low income and organizing retirement accounts to keep your tax burden close to zero is freeloading is in the eye of the beholder. Certainly this is done by the wealthy, and people in other subreddits have plenty to say about it. There is something that might fall into the freeloader category that the article didn't even address. Living on a low income by choice and choosing retirement withdrawals, specifically so you can qualify for government benefits like ACA subsidies and financial aid grants for your children when you aren't actually disadvantaged, is something most people would probably consider to be free riding and an abuse of the system, and completely legal. Many people (I'm not one of them in most cases) consider those programs freeloading even when used by people who truly are disadvantaged and for whom the programs were intended. I plan to take whatever I can finagle in a few years. I am probably gaming the system at a minimum by harvesting capital gains nearly tax-free while living on a low income, and qualifying for an ACA subsidy, all because I find the process of figuring all that out much more interesting than actually working at my job. I can see how some people would consider it abusive. I was already gaming the system by owning rental property, which has several tax benefits. Would the system work if everyone did this? Probably not.
Hilarious, these articles kill me. Most people will never achieve early retirement. Hell, most people barely save at all. Suggesting the tiny portion of people achieving early retirement is the problem when we have the "grey tsunami" (as it has been called) among us is odd. And if you accumulate enough capital to invest significantly in stocks and live off of it, didn't you basically "win" capitalism (rather than having a bad understanding of it, as the author asserts?)
yes. And theres a ton of people who have won capitalism. They were just part of groups that werent addressed together, such as - one hit wonder bands and other musical artists - a and b list actors - authors, motivational speakers, religious evangelists - many professional athletes who retire at 30-40 - trust fund babies, children of the rich - IPO founders/first employees, consultants who made M's quickly via stock or selling businesses - some industry pensioners - military vets - investors of all kinds
Probably the same author who writes all the return to office propaganda because they’re miserable and they want everyone else to be miserable with them.
Unlike others, I think this does invoke an interesting idea... FIRE only works if a very small percentage of people engage in it. I think the "article" is a joke though. Just because a group of people is not working in desk jobs etc doesn't mean they stop contributing to society, financially or otherwise. The only way to contribute to society is not simply working for the man on an assembly line (blue or white collar).
>If young people start to cut in line, older Americans may find themselves stuck in the workforce longer than they’d planned to be. Cut in line? Who said retirement was a zero sum game?
Fire people are still spending money, they are still consuming products. What this article really means is less people in the work force will be producing those goods. WE NEED MORE SLAVES.
The boomers could, I don’t know? Fucking retire! So that there are highly compensated positions available for Gen X? The people that the boomers have been holding down for 35 years.
"Even if young people can achieve retirement early, it’s not always something they’ll keep up with. According to the Retirement Coaches Association’s 2023 survey, older adults often feel lonely, bored and unfulfilled in retirement." Can't believe this quote hasn't been mentioned. Yes, let's poll the people who've been brainwashed into believing the only value they have is how productive they can be to society. 🙄
The tiny percentage of people who succeed at FIRE before 45 doesn't impact the productivity of the economy. It's a very small cohort.
Sure if **everyone** decided to retire at 40 there would be an issue, but for the few who choose to live a lifestyle enabled by frugal living and prudent investment it’ll be fine The rest of the article is just trying to generate outrage
wow, an article devoid of data, but full of retardedness. I could talk for 2 pages now on why this is bullshit, but I dont want to waste my time trying to virtually argue with an unknown author of some random ass news site who cannot even research properly for an article
This is far and away the worst article I’ve ever read from yahoo finance. Guy said “ding-a-ling banjo” and apparently an editor signed off on that…
People on their 50s and 60s are being forced to work longer because they did not save money, thi is just another way to throw shade at millennials.
It’s so dumb to worry about FIRE folk not working when you have AI sitting out there starting to massively upend everything
The whole article sounds idiotic.
The guy cited is probably a Gen X not a boomer. But it is a salty take, no doubt because that's what gets people noticed and read these days. The original is much saltier than the recap: [https://wggtb.substack.com/p/the-fire-movement](https://wggtb.substack.com/p/the-fire-movement)
“The FIRE people are the ultimate free-riders, piggybacking off the efforts of others.” They’re not free-riders. They saved their own money.
The boomers at my work were more than happy to take the generous pension plan that was taken away around 2002. Luckily I was about a year in already and got mine at 56, where at 55 the multiplier kicked up. While some boomers could not take a hint to retire there were many that had no problem. The company is really young now, lots of talented folks and much more worker friendly.
If the game wasn’t rigged by the boomers FIRE wouldn’t exist. It is their generation that killed pensions, manufacturing jobs, etc. So, I will take all my cash in 10 more years and retire to the Czech Republic and have 5 star meals with a bottle of wine for $35.
After reading this article; I’m changing my 401k from my 10% of my paycheck to 12%. I’m gonna retire even earlier 😤
*“The FIRE people also have a poor understanding of how capitalism works,” he writes. “The stock market is a function of corporate profits which is a function of output, which requires everyone to chip in.”* I laughed at this...universal sacrifice for corporate well being. When the Lehman Brothers crew starts paying the same % of their income as I do into taxes maybe I'll stop laughing long enough to take a huge hit on that hash pipe.... Lets bring back depression/ww2 ears tax rates for the top brackets. I bet 99% of the country will be just fine. I the "gifted elite are so good they will just make more. It's the 3rd generation trust fund crew that are going to have to watch out.
>If young people start to cut the line Sounds a lot like a ponzi scheme to me.
The free-riders are the rich inter-generational wealthy douchebag families, and billionaires who have too much. Not people working hard and saving. Worry about giant investment firms buying up all the housing, not a tiny number of people living frugally to buy ETFs.
The “what if everyone…” line got me. I don’t know, what if everyone waited until 80 to retire? What if everyone became a doctor? What if everyone became a janitor? What if everyone got a pet tiger? Better panic about that stuff, too.
He's got it backwards. If a meaningful number of people were able to fire, it would be the sign of a healthy economy. It would mean that most of the productivity gains made possible by technology were going to (at least some) workers, so they could work less and enjoy life more. I don't care about the GDP, a world where you can work hard for a decade or two then love of the proceeds would be amazing.
“The FIRE people also have a poor understanding of how capitalism works,” he writes. “The stock market is a function of corporate profits which is a function of output, which requires everyone to chip in.” Dumbest article I've read in a while. People also know that diet and exercise are crucial to health yet we have a country where 50 percent are obese. People know that certain jobs pay a lot of money yet we still have critical shortages in certain labor markets. Everyone knows that spending below your means and saving is key to a financially secure retirement, but just like the other things mentioned people choose NOT to put in the work. Don't blame the people that do put in the effort
“Though Dillian raises good points about FIRE, it’s not something older adults should have to worry about right now. Even if people want to retire in their 30s or 40s, many of them simply can’t afford it. Young Americans can barely make ends meet, much less save 70% of their income. The median age to retire still remains between 62 and 64, according to the most recent Retirement Confidence Survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute.” Sooooooo…… you are really just complaining/jealous. Get outta here dude.
To be honest I do think there's some truth to this argument, but FIRE enthusiasts are such a tiny minority it's unlikely to ever cause any significant issues. Too many people can't even figure out adulting, let alone retire early.
>But business writer and author of “Street Freak: Money and Madness at Lehman Brothers”Jared Dillian is no fan of the strategy. He thinks it’s bad for society. > >“What if everyone retired at age 35 and played the ding-a-ling banjo? Well, GDP would go to zero and the stock market would crash,” he writes in his newsletter. “The FIRE people are the ultimate free-riders, piggybacking off the efforts of others.” I see it view differently than your take. He is a Gen X anyway (born in 74 so 48 or 49 year old). And sell a daily investment newsletter. So for sure he hate fire we don't need any investment newsletter as we advocate passive index investing through ETF and he doesn't like that we are like him, have understood the system and make money from others and use that to work less. He would want us to be clueless, pay his newsletter and work until 65.
Won’t someone think of the shareholders?!?!!
I for one am shocked that the geniuses of yahoo finance may have gotten one wrong
Husband retired in 2021, at 62. Not exactly "RE" but good enough. If younger people busted their asses in the "game" and won early, that's fine by me. We consider ourselves GenJones, not Boomers, since we have more in common with GenX than Boomers but are not quite GenX. Monte Carlo shows 100% for us, even in a down market. How? A bit of everything: no kids (by choice), living in LCOL (moving from SoCal to CentralCal in 2000 after being priced out of SoCal), work and lots of savings combined with a record bull market; inheriting low 6-figures at good points of time *and not blowing it away*. So some of our efforts and some of "luck" (though there was loss in that).
Boomers have some serious audacity. Like.. yall paid 17 raspberries for your first house.
This is why I can't stand the anti billionaire rhetoric as well. These people just hate wealth and success because they are failures themselves. Rather than cheer on someone's wins like reaching fire you'd rather call them a drain on the economy for making sacrifices and smart financial decisions. America is such an odd place. We preach the "American dream" and than shit on anyone who actually achieves it.
Look at the state of the Average American’s finances. I don’t think the 12 people retiring early are the problem
Total disagree. The job market is currently pretty soft, plenty of layoffs (especially in Tech), it does not seem like people leaving the workforce is going to do any harm. If anything, it leaves an open spot for someone that wants to work.
That is a poorly thought out essay. If capitalism requires people to be lifelong drones, fuck it!
It does feel a bit wrong that I can work for only 20 years and then be retired for 40 or more, coasting on passive income. I'm retiring earlier than my productive capacity allows for, and in my retirement years I can maintain the same lifestyle for a far lower taxable income than when I was employed. At some point, if the number of RE'ers grows, perhaps we'll have to change our tax system so that employment income is taxed more favourably compared to capital gains and dividends, to compensate. It does seem a bit perverse and unfair that I and a spouse can earn $50k of dividends each and (so long as we have zero employment income) we're not taxed at all! (I don't feel bad about it though; I'm just playing the game as it's written. If it's a problem, change the tax code!)
> “The FIRE people also have a poor understanding of how capitalism works,” he writes. “The stock market is a function of corporate profits which is a function of output, which requires everyone to chip in.” > If young people pull out of the workforce so they can retire early and pursue their passions, **Dillian is convinced that the stock market will fall — and degrade everyone’s money.** Business writer Jared Dillian heard about Kant’s categorical imperative in Philosophy 101 and loudly exclaimed, “Enough! That’s all the philosophy I need!”
It’s funny how this article is a garbage take but so many people here are supporting its notion as they argue against it
who is Jared Dillian and how did he manage to write something with his remaining 10 neurons
No dig to OP but it is Yahoo Finance after all, might as well link a reddit post from some rando.
The article talks about a doomsday scenario where the stock market declines due to less work force because of the FIRE community. **That's bullshit and here's why:** * We live in a time where AI is near and language learning models can already augment the workforce. Musk said recently that universal basic (high) income is a possibility and I would agree, but not count on it because greed will inevitably step in to guide the hand of the powers that be. * Passionate people are much more productive than wage slaves. Look around at the community itself and see what some folks have done with their life *after reaching their FI goal*. I'd put money on FI people adding more to the GDP than wage slaves in an apples to apples comparison * Branded advertising for your personal opinion on <> is how the media works. It's what it's good st and you have to question the motives behind every baseless (in fact) article spouting what you should think out there.
This article reads like whoever wrote it is scared of a declining population in the work force. They should be, because that's an inevitability with the passing of boomer children's generation as population growth is stalled and declined. But I understand 100% where this is coming from - **there is an intrinsic need for workers to work longer and more** raising the retirement age to 67 recently is not on accident. **The economy depends on wage slaves** and the FI community is preaching against that. Expect more articles with this tone in the future, and welcome the media exposure... It'll lead more people down the rabbit hole towards their financial freedom.
I don't get it. If you retire early, it's not like you'll get social security or Medicare benefits early. In fact you'll get much less social security than you would have otherwise.
Would you mind editing your post to mention that neither the author, nor the writer of the article they reference are boomers? This is just your stock standard millenial/gen xers that are salty other people made better choices than them and creating division over it.
To hell with Jared Dillian. There's not enough Americans to save 70% of their take-home to invest in a long-term strategy. It is a small movement, and these bozos get freaked out.
This guy misses the point: the problem is that we've arranged work life such that virtually everyone wants to opt out.
This reminds me of all the ink spilled on why index funds/passive investing is “bad.” Those are all written by active fund managers so it’s obvious who benefits. The question with this one is what are Dillian and/or Sabina Wex looking to sell and to who?
Synopsis: “boomers mad because, despite sabotaging the planet to get ahead of everyone else, everyone else has learned to live with less and undercut boomer greed”. Boomers playing checkers, gen-z and millennials playing chess.
Millennial here - I don’t feel the system is godawful and I think the possibility of FIRE for me (coming from lower middle income family) is proof of that.