Since discovering FIRE, I’ve determined that what I’m really interested in is FI. RE? Meh.
Or, maybe to me RE means that I can take miniretirements when I want. In the old days we’d refer to “miniretirements” by its technical term: “taking some time off.” I think that’s Latin. But I never learned Latin, so maybe I’m wrong. Whatever.
So I determined our FIRE number, figured out ways to get there, selected the route we wanted to take, and started executing. I mentioned FIRE to a few friends along the way, but no one seemed terribly interested in the concept, let alone executing on it.
Shock value
One of those people I’d spoken to was a 30-something work colleague. To preserve her anonymity, I’ll call her “Not Joey.” Because why not.
I’d several times suggested that Not Joey check some out various FIRE blogs I’d sent her links to. Not Joey said she would. But each time I asked her if she had, Not Joey replied that she hadn’t but would. She never did.
And then, one morning at work, Not Joey came into my office. She closed the door behind her, an action which I’d learned meant that the visitor was going to: (1) unleash an expletive-laden tirade against a coworker or attorney in the firm, (2) impart some juicy gossip that would leave me squealing with glee or moaning with dread; or both, or (3) announce that he or she was leaving the firm. In this case it was door number three.
I’d previously thought there was a good chance that Not Joey was a lifer at the firm. She’d been there more than 10 years, had good relations with most of her coworkers (inluding me) and a lot of people in the firm who mattered, and had never taken any active efforts to leave.
Not Joey was also a SINK and pretty frugal. But she never struck me as FIRE-obsessed-save-70%-of-her-income frugal, or even close to it. And as for other income sources, as far as I knew she had no side hustles and owned no rental properties. If she had any investments (and I had no reason to believe that she was especially better or worse than most people in this area), I had no reason to believe that they were throwing off lots of money.
Shocked at what Not Joey had announced to me, I asked her why she was leaving and where she was going. To my complete surprise, she said that she was just taking time off, and maybe a lot of it. Maybe she wouldn’t go back to work at all.
I was gobsmacked. I asked Not Joey how she would be able to afford to do that. Not Joey said that she’d saved a fair amount of money over the years and had pretty low expenses. She said that she asked her financial advisor whether her numbers would allow for her to walk away from her job, either for a year or three and potentially for more, and that he replied “Yeah, I think you can.”
I’m a little embarassed to say that at that point, I got a little jealous. After all, I’d been actively pursuing FIRE for a year or two by that point, and while we were making a lot of progress, we had a long way to go. And here Not Joey was — never apparently having read anything on FIRE and how to reach it, much less seriously focusing on pursuing it to my knowledge — telling me that she’d either reached FIRE or a point at which she could take a few years or more off. And she was almost 10 years my junior.
Missusing in action
Notwithstanding my jealousy, I was over the moon for Not Joey and told her as much. Well, I tried to tell her as much, my jaw still being on the floor and all. Then I told her where The Missus and I were in our FIRE journey. At that point, I was more focused on RE than I am now, so assumed that once we reached our FIRE number, we’d be living off of passive income and investments.
The next morning, I thought about The Missus, for whom FIRE has never been as fascinating as it has been for me, and who enjoyed her job. Eventually she wants to retire. But retiring wasn’t then — and still isn’t — something she thinks about much. Retiring early is even less of a focus.
And then it hit me. If The Missus doesn’t want to retire early, but does want to continue working, that means for as long as she stays in her job, we have a base income that covers at least part, and potentially all of our expenses. As I’ve said before, I can be dumb, but I try not to be stupid. So, our FIRE number was way closer than I’d realized. Or, should I say, our FI number that would allow me to RE if I so chose was way closer than I’d realized.
When I got into the office, Not Joey stopped by my office. This time, I closed the door behind her. I told Not Joey again how shocked and delighted I was for her. And then I told her about my realization from earlier in the morning. Not Joey laughed and congratulated me on my realization, if not on our actually having reached our destination.
My challenge now will be actually pressing the button on leaving my current line of work and either taking time off a miniretirement (with the possibility of RE in full for me) or taking a job or pursuing work that I want to do for the pure enjoyment of it. Sure, that’s something I’ll have to grapple with. But I’ll tell you, Dear Reader, it beats the heck out of having to worry about finances generally, much less when, if ever, reaching FIRE. I’ve been in less-than-ideal financial situations before, and they unequivocally suuuuccccckkkk. They take up a lot of my mental bandwidth, not to mention causing me a tremendous amout of stress.
So thank you, The Missus. For not caring much about FIRE (or at least RE)!
Not Joey, slayer of inefficiencies
I’ll end with an update as to Not Joey. After taking a bit more than a year off from working, she realized that she did, in fact, want to go back to work. But not in a law firm or with lawyers. Amen, sister.
So Not Joey started causally looking for low-stress jobs with a set eight-hour workday where you don’t have to think about work once you leave the office, much less do actual work; generally the opposite of what you get when working for a law firm. These jobs would surely pay less than her job with the firm. But she was operating from a position of power, so it didn’t really matter.
Not Joey found the job for her, working for a hospital. And she loved it. I spoke to Not Joey after she’d been in her position for a while and she told me about the gross inefficiencies she saw in the hospital. Not Joey is good about finding inefficiencies anywhere, and they needle at her like nothing else. She started flagging and taking steps to address the inefficiencies and in relatively short order was promoted to a position where she’d focus more on that and have more authority to address the problems.
What a great win-win. Not Joey is in a position that she loves and is great at, and the hospital and its patients benefit greatly from her work. All because Not Joey was smart with her finances, which enabled her to take a huge leap she otherwise wouldn’t have been able to take. Awesome.
Dear Reader, will you be able to make a major transition once you reach FIRE? Or will you find that you made a transition too early? I wish you luck in determining when to press the button.
