About five years ago, I discovered FIRE via a New Yorker article on Mr. Money Mustache (MMM). The article marveled at and mocked MMM in equal measure. As far as inflection points in my life go, it’s among the biggest. Up there with meeting and ultimately marrying The Missus, the births of Thing One (The Elder) and Thing Two (The Younger). Ow! Stop punching me, The Missus! OK, not quite. But at least as important as graduating undergrad and law school and getting my first proper job.
We’re on the road to somewhere
Tho I didn’t then know it, we’d by then set a foundation that ultimately led to my (hopefully) FIREing in 360 days at the end of 2021. We had, and were making regular contributions to, our retirement accounts, lived below our means, and hadn’t over-leveraged ourselves.
But the amounts in those accounts weren’t all that high. In part because paying off my law school loans had been a priority for many of the preceding years. Also because we’d been contributing an average of only about 5% of our salaries to them, and were invested in somewhat narrow funds, which also had average expense ratios in the neighborhood of 1%.
And although we were building equity in our lovely condo, had built up an ample emergency fund, and were enjoying generous and growing salaries and retirement-related benefits, we had neither taxable brokerage accounts nor other income streams. So, we were in decent financial shape. But were we in FIRE-worthy shape? Nyet.
The New Yorker article led to me MMM’s blog, which I quickly devoured. Then I discovered and devoured many other FIRE blogs. Changes in our financial lives followed in rapid succession.
Five years later, our financial situation is night and day. That’s in no small measure due to some of our changes having been made during—and benefitting from—the bull market that existed five years ago and (but for a ‘rona-induced short recession last year) has since continued. But it’s also due to other changes we made because of things I learned from FIRE blogs.
The same old, same old is no bad thing
While I still regularly consume several FIRE blog posts and podcasts, it’s mostly for entertainment and because I like the content producers. Rarely do I learn something new and valuable from them. But sometimes I do. And because I have the basics down, what new things I do learn often have outsized value. That’s certainly one of the reasons that I keep coming back.
The main reason that I rarely learn something new and valuable is because for the most part, their lessons are the same, some of the most important being: live below your means, invest the difference, reach your FI point, and/or create additional revenue streams.
The suggested nuances of living below one’s means are absolutely worth learning. Ditto for the suggestions for investing the difference and generating additional income. Only by reading these blogs and listening to the podcasts did I learn about low-cost index funds, discover travel hacking, and become educated about many new (to me) pros and cons of renting vs. owning and of real estate investing generally, among many other things.
I dunno how many hours it took (or should have taken) for me to learn these lessons, many of which I’ve since acted on. Maybe 15 hours, give or take? In my case, that minor time investment will save me more than 15 years of working (in a job that I don’t love or consider ideal). Had I discovered FIRE earlier, I could have saved even more years. I’m no mathematician, but I think that’s a pretty good return on investment.
Learning curves
I’m convinced that a lot societal ills have as a (or the) root cause an inadequate understanding of money and personal finance. Worse, many people have a fundamental misunderstanding of these subjects.
To put a finer point on this, I think that many people could avoid (crippling) debt, get ahead (faster), or avoid getting ripped off or scammed with a fuller and proper understanding of money and personal finance. Instead, their ignorance dooms them to harder lives and a menu of suboptimal options. For many, it also causes frustration and anger, which can be directed at “elites” and any number of institutions. Make no mistake, I’m by no means excusing that. Just suggesting a contributing factor.
I wish that schools would not just make learning about these subjects mandatory, but have the curriculum be a multiyear one. While I’m 100% percent in favor of mandating that students take a certain number of years of subjects like a language and science, realistically, a lot of kids will never use the knowledge gained in those classes going forward. But do you know how many students will have to handle money and personal finance issues after leaving school? All of them.
I’ve little doubt that this is nothing more than a pipe dream on my part. I console myself by: doing my part to educate my kids about these subjects, talking to administrators at their schools about my ideal money and personal finance curriculum, talking to people who I think would be receptive to learning, and banging away at the keyboard to draft posts for this here blog that hopefully reach the eyeballs of people not familiar with FIRE (and maybe not well versed in money and personal finance at all).
If you’re new to this blog, to the concept of FIRE, or to learning about money and personal finance altogether, welcome! There are tons of great resources that you absolutely should explore.
I’m confident that if you invest just 15 hours of your time in reading, you’ll see outsized returns on that investment. Maybe just in more stable personal finances. Or in being able to reach FIRE (a bit faster than you might otherwise have). Or even by moving up your FIRE date by 15 years or more.
And in the end . . .
Dear Reader, the title of this blog post obviously was inspired by the ubiquitous and wildly successful GEICO ad campaign. And while I’m no customer of the company, I admit to enjoying the mildly absurd commercials. But could those GEICO commercials be going away soon . . . ?
Couldn’t agree more. It’s such freeing, life-changing information. And none of it is rocket science. On the one hand I’m tempted to be completely unsympathetic to the people who make terrible financial decisions, but on the other I recognize that many just don’t know any better. I sure didn’t! Teaching this stuff in schools might not change the culture (as most people would probably treat it like I treated biology class), but it would at least eliminate the “nobody told me” excuse. It’ll never happen though. Sigh.
I’m actually a bit more hopeful as to the effects of teaching it in school. At least as to the potential. That said, the likelihood that more/all schools will teach it is slim to none. Much less that they’ll teach it in a way that the material will resonate and stick with the average student.
Unfortunately I think the research shows it is virtually impossible to teach youth about money until they are earning and spending a significant amount of money of their own. It’s also true of math and science, unless you are an engineer like me you probably couldn’t solve an algebra problem if your life depended on it, because you never used that kind of math in your daily life, much less calculus. I’m not sure what the solution is but I doubt mandatory courses will have much impact.
You’re probably right as to the personal finance stuff, but I still think that a multiyear curriculum would have outsized benefits. Personal finance isn’t like algebra, which only a small percentage of people need to use at all, let alone on a daily basis. Sure, no small number of students will forget some or all of what they covered in school. But others won’t. And even those who forgot, I have to think that recall memory would be helpful from time to time.