I used to follow FIRE-related communities.

There were a depressing number of people who would post something along the lines of “I just pulled the trigger! Now what am I supposed to do to fill the time?” Your take is spot on, and it’s incredibly sad the number of people we’ve created whose only source of meaning or joy in their life is their desk job.

As someone who pulled the trigger about a year ago, I feel like there’s not enough hours in the day to fill with personally enriching activities, both mentally and physically stimulating. And I feel increasingly lucky to have a life like that.

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wing-_-nuts an hour ago | parent | next [-]

The largest FIRE sub on reddit is aptly named 'financial independence' because FI is much, much more important than RE.

The first post they link to on the sidebar is 'Build the life you want and save for it'

https://old.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/58j8...

I honestly don't know how someone gets to the position of being able to retire without having thought long and hard about it. Even if you get an unexpected windfall, it's probably best to keep working until you know you're mentally prepared to retire.

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qwerpy 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't understand why someone would FIRE and not already have spent years lining up all the things they will do. And the "won't you be so bored?" people. No, I'm not bored. You might be because you need someone else to tell you how to spend your hours.

Between learning new hobbies, tackling my backlog of projects in my old hobbies, taking care of my health, and spending quality time with my family, I still have more to do than I have time for. The awesome part though is that now I can do all the "must do" (family time, personal health) and "should do" (hobbies, socializing) things, and pick and choose between the "nice to do" things. When I was working, I struggled to even do the "must do" things.

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Aurornis an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> I don't understand why someone would FIRE and not already have spent years lining up all the things they will do.

It's a common phenomenon in those communities because many of the participants are young (the E is for Early retirement).

The common way to get to FIRE, unless hitting the lottery or getting a crazy RSU payout, is to be super frugal with a high savings rate.

Then they get to retirement and realize that doing the amazing things like traveling the world requires a lot of money. Even many hobbies start to require money. Then reading books, browsing the internet, and playing games starts to get boring when it's your entire life.

	▲	tbrownaw 6 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> The common way to get to FIRE, unless hitting the lottery or getting a crazy RSU payout, is to be super frugal with a high savings rate. Then they get to retirement and realize that doing the amazing things like traveling the world requires a lot of money. Partition living expenses from hobby expenses, and once you have enough to not have to work for living expenses switch to doing just enough part-time to cover hobby expenses?
	▲	vkou 32 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> Even many hobbies start to require money. Hobbies require money, but a lot of hobbies don't require very much of it. Yeah, if your primary hobbies are skiing and golfing and traveling and rebuilding 60s cars, that's not going to come cheap. But there is no shortage of much cheaper hobbies.

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Vedor 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You are talking about retirement, yet I was working with people who couldn't stand the 2-week long annual leave (which is mandatory for every under contract of employment where I live) because they had nothing to do. 30, 40 years old people. It's terrifying.

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JumpCrisscross 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> not already have spent years lining up all the things they will do

They aren't conditioned for it. Learning to relax, enjoy nature, prioritise friends and family, et cetera aren't hard coded like walking and talking. We benefit from it. But if you never learned to do it while your brain was most plastic, you probably aren't going to change because a number added a zero.

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antisthenes 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The tragedy is that people who are most likely to successfully FIRE have spent so long being laser-focused on making money to FIRE, that they neglected their (hobbies, social circle, health - underline as needed), so they find themselves in such a predicament.

Personally, I'd love to FIRE. I have at least 5-10 years of personal projects in my head that I would do if I didn't have a 9-5 job. Unfortunately, graduating into a shitty 2009 market and not having nepotism connections means I am unlikely to ever FIRE outside of some expat poverty FIRE in a cheap country.

	▲	singpolyma3 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		FIRE isn't about job market, you can't control that. Though in tech most people are still making quite large incomes which does help. Rather it is about controlling expenses. The thing you can actually control. My sister's family of 5 lives on less than 50k CAD / year, because they simply must (low income) so if one is making a 100k white collar salary (for example) one can live a lifestyle higher than hers while still banking 50k/an. Etc.

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lovecg 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I’ve noticed some people with seemingly fulfilling hobbies stop doing them after quitting their job as well. It’s entirely possible all those hobbies are valuable precisely as something powerful to latch onto and disconnect from the day job, and seem pointless the day after quitting. Seems like you had a strong sense of identity outside of your job already before quitting. Building that could be a lot of hard work for other people (and it sometimes comes as a surprise that it even needs to be built).

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rconti 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think the FIRE crowd is even more likely to fall into this trap than the average wage slave. In addition to finding meaning in their day job, they're also more likely to forego short-term costs (like recreation/socialization/travel/whatever). Plus the FIRE planning itself becomes a hobby. So when they retire, they "lose" even more than the average person who might have more side interests.

	▲	stouset 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I really appreciate that perspective. There’s definitely an aspect of FIRE people being more inclined to sacrifice short-term meaning in order to retire earlier, that may contribute to not having spent time actually building the life they were wanting to live free of work in the first place. And it’s a great insight that FIRE itself is in many ways a hobby, and one that you somewhat inherently “lose” once you actually go through with it.

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piloto_ciego 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Those people are wildly un-creative.