Living a lifestyle where you spend 50% less than your “normal” spending doesn’t sound like much fun. But that’s exactly what many members of the FIRE movement are doing. FIRE standing for Financial Independence, Retire Early.
I’ve been studying this movement big-time, because there’s a lot for you and me to learn by understanding what others are doing. This is not some hypothetical model of how you’ll live your life off your investments. This is real. It’s a lifestyle.
When I brought up living a FIRE-centered life to my daughter she said, “Dad please stop with the FIRE, you’re stressing me out.”
“Don’t you want to hear about the Savings Sherpa?” I asked.
The Savings Sherpa, for example, on an Air Force officer’s salary of just over $100k (these are not deadbeats) or $90k after-tax, went on a 12-day vacation to Hawaii on a $725 budget. How is that possible? With creativity.
When he travels, he uses his lounge memberships and often arrives the night before his flight, eats dinner for free, sleeps comfortably in his sleeping bag on his feather soft foam pad, has breakfast for free, and makes his flight in the morning.
He travels with food containers and saves what he doesn’t eat to have later or bring home to his girlfriend who loves their lifestyle. It actually sounds fun and becomes like a game once you start reading these stories.
Now this may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but what I’ve said from the very beginning when studying this FIRE movement is that, we can all certainly learn from what they are doing.
It’s romantic. It’s the frontier of discovering what you need in your life. And there’s thousands of examples of FIRE lifestyles. Stay tuned.
Follow along with my entire series on FIRE here.
